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Software Projects
Software Projects was a computer game development company which was started by ''Manic Miner'' developer Matthew Smith, Alan Maton and Colin Roach. After leaving Bug-Byte as a freelance developer, Smith was able to take the rights to his recently developed ''Manic Miner'' game with him, due to an oversight in his freelance contract. Software Projects was then able to market and publish the ZX Spectrum hit game separately from Bug-Byte. Their logo was a Penrose triangle. Released games * ''Anaconda'' * ''Astronut'' * '' BC's Quest for Tires'' * ''Binky'' * ''Crazy Balloon'' * ''Crypt Capers'' * ''Dinky Doo'' * ''Dodo Lair'' * ''Dragon's Lair'' * '' Dragon's Lair Part II - Escape from Singe's Castle'' * ''Ewgeebez'' * ''Fatty Henry'' * ''Galactic Gardener'' * ''Harvey Smith Showjumper'' * ''Hunchback at the Olympics'' * ''Hysteria'' * ''Jet Set Willy'' * ''Jet Set Willy II'' * ''Karls Kavern'' * ''Learning with Leeper'' * ''Ledgeman'' * ''Legion'' * ''Loderunner'' * ''McKensie'' * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Game Industry
The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , video games generated annually in global sales. In the US, it earned about in 2007, in 2008, and 2010, according to the ESA annual report. Research from Ampere Analysis indicated three points: the sector has consistently grown since at least 2015 and expanded 26% from 2019 to 2021, to a record ; the global games and services market is forecast to shrink 1.2% annually to in 2022; the industry is not recession-proof. The industry has influenced the advance of personal computers with sound cards, graphics cards and 3D graphic accelerators, CPUs, and co-processors like PhysX. Sound cards, for example, were originally developed for games and then improved for the music industry. Industry overview Size In 2017 in the United Stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crazy Balloon
''Crazy Balloon'' is an arcade video game released by Taito in 1980.Crazy Balloon at Killer List of Videogames ''Crazy Balloon'' requires the player to maneuver a through a maze full of thorns to reach the goal. Gameplay The player controls a tied to a floating , which swings left and right continually, within a maze ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Perils Of Willy
Miner Willy is the protagonist in a series of platform games for the ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amstrad CPC and the Commodore 64 home computers. The first two games - ''Manic Miner'' and ''Jet Set Willy'' were written by Matthew Smith during the early 1980s. The Willy saga was to be a trilogy and a third game in the series was planned, ''Miner Willy Meets The Taxman''. The series started in 1983 with the release of ''Manic Miner'', and was followed up a year later with ''Jet Set Willy'' and '' Jet Set Willy II''. Another game in the series, ''The Perils of Willy'', was released solely for the VIC-20. ''Andre's Night Off'' was published as a type-in listing in the June 1984 issue of Computer & Video Games. In addition, quite a few unofficial sequels, remakes, homages and updates have been released. listing, showing the large number of fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Star Paws
''Star Paws'' is a video game for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and the ZX Spectrum. This video game was released by Software Projects in 1987. Gameplay The game's plot involved captain Rover Pawstrong (a dog in a space suit) in his adventures on a planet, attempting to capture 20 Space Griffins (essentially large, fast chickens). Gameplay involves the player's character running back and forth on a side-scrolling planet surface, attempting to catch the Griffins. The player finds crates which contain items that the player can use to help catch the bird - or the player can simply try and run and jump on top of the bird, thus catching it. During playtime, there is a time limit by which a bird must be caught (indicated by a roast chicken slowly turning into chicken bones), or else the game ends. At later stages in the game, the player must navigate abandoned mines, where the Griffins may be hiding, and even use a mortar to shell Griffins as they move across a landscape. Development ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loderunner
''Lode Runner'' is a 2D puzzle-platform game, developed by Doug Smith and published by Broderbund in 1983. Its gameplay mechanics are similar to ''Space Panic'' from 1980. The player controls a character who must collect all the gold pieces in a level and get to the end while being chased by a number of enemies. It is one of the first games to include a level editor. After the original game, a number of remakes, spin-offs and sequels were published in the ''Lode Runner'' series for different computers and consoles, and by different developers and publishers. Tozai Games holds the copyright and trademark rights. Development Around late 1980, high school student James Bratsanos heard from a friend about a new arcade video game, ''Space Panic'' by Universal, which involves climbing platforms and ladders while digging holes to trap monsters. Bratsanos was intrigued by his friend's description of the concept, and wanted to develop it further. He began writing a Commodore PET progra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jet Set Willy II
''Jet Set Willy II: The Final Frontier'' is a platform game released 1985 by Software Projects as the Amstrad CPC port of ''Jet Set Willy''. It was then rebranded as the sequel and ported other home computers. ''Jet Set Willy II'' was developed by Derrick P. Rowson and Steve Wetherill rather than ''Jet Set Willy'' programmer Matthew Smith and is an expansion of the original game, rather than an entirely new one. Gameplay The map is primarily an expanded version of the original mansion from ''Jet Set Willy'', with only a few new elements over its predecessor several of which are based on rumoured events in ''JSW'' that were in fact never programmed (such as being able to launch the titular ship in the screen called "The Yacht" and explore an island). In the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and MSX versions, Willy is blasted from the Rocket Room into space, and for these 33 rooms he dons a spacesuit. Due to the proliferation of hacking and cheating in the original game, ''Jet Set W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jet Set Willy
''Jet Set Willy'' is a platform video game originally written by Matthew Smith for the ZX Spectrum home computer. It was published in 1984 by Software Projects and ported to most home computers of the time. The game is a sequel to ''Manic Miner'' published in 1983, and the second game in the Miner Willy series. It spent over three months at the top of the charts and was the UK's best-selling home video game of 1984. Plot A tired Miner Willy has to tidy up all the items left around his house after a huge party. With this done, his housekeeper Maria will let him go to bed. Willy's mansion was bought with the wealth obtained from his adventures in ''Manic Miner'', but much of it remains unexplored and it appears to be full of strange creatures, possibly a result of the previous (missing) owner's experiments. Willy must explore the enormous mansion and its grounds (including a beach and a yacht) to fully tidy up the house so he can get some much-needed sleep. Gameplay ''Jet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Escape From Singe's Castle
''Escape from Singe's Castle'', also known as ''Dragon's Lair Part II - Escape From Singe's Castle'', is a computer game for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum home computers, released by Software Projects in 1987. ReadySoft released it for the PC (developed by Bethesda Softworks) in 1989, and for the Amiga and Atari ST in 1990 and 1991, respectively. An Apple IIGS version was released in 2022. The game is sometimes referred to as ''Dragon's Lair II'', but is not the official arcade sequel '' Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp''. Gameplay Players control Dirk the Daring, the player character from ''Dragon's Lair'', who has returned to the lair of Singe the dragon in order to claim a pot of gold (to save Daphne again in the 16 bit version). Singe has laid traps throughout his lair, forcing players to guide Dirk across a number of differently themed screens in order to steal the gold and escape. In the 8 bit versions there are eight different levels. Development Software ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dragon's Lair (1983 Video Game)
''Dragon's Lair'' is an interactive film Interactive film#LaserDisc games, LaserDisc video game developed by RDI Video Systems, Advanced Microcomputer Systems and published by Cinematronics in 1983, as the first game in the ''Dragon's Lair'' series. In the game, the protagonist Dirk the Daring is a knight attempting to rescue Princess Daphne (character), Princess Daphne from the evil dragon Singe who has locked the princess in the foul wizard Mordroc's castle. It featured animation by ex-The Walt Disney Company, Disney animator Don Bluth. Most other games of the era represented the character as a Sprite (computer graphics), sprite, which consisted of a series of pixels displayed in succession. Due to hardware limitations of the era, artists were greatly restricted in the detail they could achieve using that technique; the resolution, framerate and number of frames were severely constrained. ''Dragon's Lair'' overcame those limitations by tapping into the vast storage potential of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Personal Computer Game
A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-determined gaming hardware and software; and generally greater capacity in input, processing, video and audio output. The uncoordinated nature of the PC game market, and now its lack of physical media, make precisely assessing its size difficult. In 2018, the global PC games market was valued at about $27.7 billion. Home computer games became popular following the video game crash of 1983, leading to the era of the "bedroom coder". In the 1990s, PC games lost mass-market traction to console games, before enjoying a resurgence in the mid-2000s through digital distribution on services such as Steam and GOG.com. Newzoo reports that the ''PC gaming sector'' is the third-largest category (and estimated in decline) across all platforms , with the ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penrose Triangle
The Penrose triangle, also known as the Penrose tribar, the impossible tribar, or the impossible triangle, is a triangular impossible object, an optical illusion consisting of an object which can be depicted in a perspective drawing, but cannot exist as a solid object. It was first created by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934. Independently from Reutersvärd, the triangle was devised and popularized in the 1950s by psychiatrist Lionel Penrose and his son, prominent Nobel Prize-winning mathematician Sir Roger Penrose, who described it as "impossibility in its purest form". It is featured prominently in the works of artist M. C. Escher, whose earlier depictions of impossible objects partly inspired it. Description The tribar/triangle appears to be a solid object, made of three straight beams of square cross-section which meet pairwise at right angles at the vertices of the triangle they form. The beams may be broken, forming cubes or cuboids. This combination of proper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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