Mobile Gaming

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Mobile gaming is a relatively new thing and it all started in 1997 when Nokia released it mobile phone the Nokia 6110, it was an innovation as the phone came pre-loaded with the first ever mobile game "Snake" the game only consisted of a few dots and lines yet it was one of the most addictive hand-held title since tetris.

While a couple of similar games followed Snake the technology of the time hampered the programmers developments.

The WAP (wireless action protocol) technology proved to be a significant development for mobile gaming for not only did it allow people to download simple games onto their phone it also enabled multi-player support after this mobile technology advanced rapidly.

The WAP was soon replaced with operating systems such as the BREW, J2ME, Nokia's series 40 and 60.
These systems allowed for better and more complex programmes to be distributed thus gaining the interest of major gaming studios.

It was at the turn of the century when colour handsets where all around, all with Java and flash support and better online capabilities.

Studio's Like EA, SEGA, Gameloft and the like jumped at this untapped resource and started to develop games specifically for the mobile phone users and while the big name titles of the time (I.E. Pacman) better thing were still to come.

It was SEGA who had the first ever successful console to mobile conversion with their game Super Monkey Ball which paved the way for other big name franchises to jump to mobile phones.

Although mobiles were advancing at an incredible rate hardware restrictions still addled mobile gaming.

In 2003 Nokia tried to rectify that constraint with its release of the Nokia N-Gage unfortunately it wasn't very popular due to the shape and the awkwardness of having to use it as a phone.

It was after this that smart phones came into being and phones like the blackberry and the Nokia N5 took things to the next level with their ability to support 3D graphics, innovative interfaces and extensive networking capabilities.

In 2004 Apple joined in and came out with the Iphone, the phone that would take mobile gaming to bigger and better things.

since then gaming on phone has improved exponentially and nearly all new phone are capable handling good quality games and now thing such as the Ipads and tablets have brought new heights to mobile gaming.

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Hand held Consoles

In 1979 a hand held console called the Microvision came out that had been designed by Jay Smith the designer of the vertex system, it consisted of a tiny screen and nine extremely delicate button that easily broke, all in all it was a disaster.

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It was in 1980 that the Game and Watch hand held console came out, now the Game and Watch was an electronic hand held that was created by Nintendo, the series was created by a Gunpei Yokoi and consisted of an LCD (liquid crystal display) screen and it also included a clock and an alarm. Most Game and Watch titles came with both an A and a B button, the B button is usually a faster and harder version of the A game.

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In 1989 Nintendo released the Gameboy, it was a plain rectangular hand held, it took four AA batteries but had an OK battery life, it was black and white but unlike earlier hand-helds this one took cartridges making it very popular.

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Atari followed that release with the release of their hand-held the Lynx, this hand-held held the title of the first ever hand-held with a colour LCD display, it also had advance graphics and an ambidextrous layout, unfortunately it didn't meet with much success.

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The SEGA Game Gear was released in 1991 and SEGA made sure it had a variety of games available for it but it was still not as popular as the Gameboy.

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In 1998 the Gameboy colour came out, this console was surprisingly backwards compatible meaning it was able to play games from the earlier versions on the Gameboy giving it a large library of games and it was twice as fast as the original Gameboy.

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The Gameboy Advance was released in 2001 and had better graphics, better sound, it was faster and you could like four GBA's together for multi-player also like earlier GB titles it was backwards compatible.

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Nintendo kept up with the hand-held releases and in 2004 brought out the Nintendo DS, it boasted 2 LCD display panels, separate processors and at least one gigabyte memory.

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In 2004 Sony decided to join in and released it's PSP (playstation portable) and it was said that it was the first ever hand-held that used an optical disc format.

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In 2011 Nintendo brought out its Nintendo 3DS that allowed for argumented reality gaming, was backwards compatible with the DS and was able to capture 3D images and watch 3D films, they also later released a version with a bigger screen called the 3DSXL.

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Game Console's And There Evolution!

Consoles area mixture of hardware and software that a created to play a specific type of game and since they were first created they have evolved and improved exceptionally.

In the 1970's when the home consoles first came out, they could usually only play one specific game, that game could not be complicated, it couldn't have allot of colours and by today’s standards it had an minuscule amount of memory capacity.

The first ever video game console was a very big and bulky rectangular wooden box that was named quite aptly the Wooden Box, this console only had six simple games available, ping-pong, tennis, handball, chase games and a light gun game.

Because of the brown Box game consoles,the console technology was then licensed by Magnavox in 1972.

That lead to the release of the first "official" home games console, The Magnavox Odyssey, the graphic were by today's standards simple and somewhat primitive and like old movies (I mean 1920's here lol) it was silent.

It was in 1975 when another home console was released and that was created by Atari after the popularity of their arcade game pong, that very same year Magnavox also decided to release not one but two improved versions of their home console.

In 1977 Atari decided to create more consoles to compete with Magnavox and released home console hits like the Atari 2600, video Pinball and Stunt Cycle.

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With the popularity increasing companies such as RCA, Fairchild and Coleco popped up to claim a piece of the pie, though some of the console brought out were rip offs of earlier home console that just looked a little different.

Copyright in the 70's and 80's was almost no existent for games companies and so there where many variations of the same consoles manufactured by different companies.

Out of the three knew companies the only one that had any success with their console was Coleco, who's Telstar console could not only play in colour but also provided different difficulty levels.

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For the next few years more companies came in with very little success, one company was note worthy though, Nintendo.

In 1977 Nintendo brought out their very first home console, it was a colour TV series game and was only for sale in japan.

In competition with Atari's 2600 Coleco developed consoles for car racing, shooting and pinball games, it wasn't just Coleco though, Magnavox upgraded their own consoles but despite that they were still inherently pong-based games and when the company was bought by Phillips they tried  a few more variations of the Odyssey console but no matter what Atari's 2600 stayed as the top seller.

It was the 1980's when home consoles and the technology really took off, vast improvements were made and companies began to experiment with non-pong games like RPG, platform, adventure and fighting.

It was in the 80's when games icons such as Pac-man, Mario-bros, Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda were released.

It was also the era where home games consoles shifted from in-built games to cartridges.

SEGA and Nintendo both dominated the games industry for the next decade, in 1983 SEGA launched its SG-1000 in Asia and this lead to the creation and distribution of its popular successor the SEGA Master System.

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Despite the SEGA Master Systems popularity it was Nintendo's release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that reigned supreme, the console is most likely what made Nintendo easily identified with gaming.

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Coleco, Atari and Mattel all tried competing with SEGA and Nintendo and unfortunately they fell short, Coleco released its last ever console in 1982.

In the last years of the 80's it was a neck and neck competition between SEGA and Nintendo, in 1988 SEGA brought out its best ever console the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis, to contend with that Nintendo brought out its SNES and then SEGA once again brought out another console its Master System II, it was a huge battle.

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Due to the popularity of the console and the frequency that they were being brought out Atari started to slowly but surely slip out of the console market.

The 90's were the biggest change and game console went from using cartridges to using discs, this revolutionized the games industry as disc were able to store more memory allowing for longer, complicated and better graphical content for games.

Although a few consoles came out that used discs it want until the SEGA added the SEGA CD onto the SEGA Mega-drive/Saturn, it was also in the early 90's when Atari brought out its last console.

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It was 1994 when Sony entered the gaming industry with the release of its Playstation, SEGA was still active the the late 90's and came out with SEGA Genesis 2 & 3 and created a whole new console Saturn to rival the CD based games console while Nintendo decided to stick with cartridges for their N64.

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In 1998 due to the not so successful SEGA Saturn, SEGA produced another console that for its time was a pioneer, The SEGA Dreamcast provided an in built modem for online gaming.

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Two years after the Dreamcasts release Sony came out with the Playstation 2, in 2001 Nintendo came out with there DVD-ROM GameCube and it was also that year that Microsoft entered with their popular Xbox.

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From 2005 and onward there are only 3 main competitors in game console and they are Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and each brought out great consoles.

Nintendo brought out:
The Nintendo WII that used motion control to play.
The WII U that uses a tablet like controller which allows you to see the game in you hands and on the screen.

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Microsoft brought out:
Xbox 360, that allowed for good graphics and great online play, Later on Microsoft brought out the add on Microsoft kinect, their version of motion control.
Xbox One which a big internal memory and allows for great internet browsing and incorporate skype allowing people to talk to friends effortlessly.

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Sony Brought out:
Playstation 3 which had cutting edge graphics a big memory and an in-built blu-ray player, they later brought out the Playstation Move as their own motion control.
Playstation 4 which allows for player to personalize it, has a big in-built memory is fast and has excellent quality graphics.

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SEGA's first game...Arcade game that is!

Periscope


Last post I went over how SEGA was created in 1964 when Rosen Industries posed a merger and Service Games accepted, it was not until five years after the merger that SEGA brought out its first game.

In 1969 SEGA brought out a coin operated aracde game called Periscope, this game unlike arcade games nowadays was electro-mechanical, meaning it was operated by pullies and cogs.

To play periscope you had to look through the periscope (something like a submarine telescope) and shoot at the shipe you see.

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The game below while not periscope is quite similar and is also an electro-mechanical aracde game, it's called Missile.

 



I do not own this video

Sega and it's History!....Part 1

SEGA! Oh the name brings back some of my most fun memories as a child with me and my brothers playing the SEGA Megadrive, with games such as sonic and street fighter, those were the days.

Despite they fact that they are not as active today as they were years ago doesn't take away the fact that SEGA was a giant in the gaming industry.

While Nintendo, who were rivals with SEGA, managed to produce a few good blockbuster series, it was SEGA who managed to out do them in that area by creating some of the most brilliant and original franchises one after the other.

Both of the founders of Sega came from America before they went to Japan and started separate companies.

In the 1964 their paths crossed and Rosen Industries negotiated a merge with Service game creating SEGA, a games company that started huge gaming titles that you still see today.



Marty Bromely                 founders of SEGA                        David Rosen

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A few Facts on Nintendo From The 1950's

Nintendo

Before Nintendo became the huge games company it is today it had the less popular job of printing playing cards.

Now as you can probably imagine this is not as lucrative as some might believe, so in the 1950's the CEO of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, decided that he wanted to take his company to bigger heights.

But before you think that is when they started creating games, well they didn't.

Before Nintendo started in the gaming business they tried a few other ventures first, they made a cab company, created their own instant rice brand and most shockingly created a chain of sex hotels.

Nowadays while they do not own a chain of sex hotels you will find that in Japan nearly all sex hotels include a wii in the rooms that customers pay for by the hour as a tribute to Nintendo's past.

                                                          I do not own image, procured from google images