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Easter Egg (media)
An Easter egg is a message, image, or feature hidden in software, a video game, a film, or another—usually electronic—medium. The term used in this manner was coined around 1979 by Steve Wright, the then-Director of Software Development in the Atari Consumer Division, to describe a hidden message in the Atari video game ''Adventure (Atari 2600), Adventure'', in reference to an egg hunt, Easter egg hunt. The earliest known video game Easter egg is in the 1973 video game ''Lunar Lander (video game genre)#Graphical games, Moonlander'', in which the player tries to land a Lunar module on Moon, the Moon; if the player opts to fly the module horizontally through several of the game's screens, they encounter a McDonald's restaurant, and if they land next to it, the astronaut will visit it instead of standing next to the ship. The earliest known Easter egg in software in general is one placed in the "make" command for PDP-6/PDP-10 computers sometime in October 1967–October 1968, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adventure Easteregg
An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme sports. Adventures are often undertaken to create psychological arousal or in order to achieve a greater goal, such as the pursuit of knowledge that can only be obtained by such activities. Motivation Adventurous experiences create psychological arousal, which can be interpreted as negative (e.g. fear) or positive (e.g. flow (psychology), flow). For some people, adventure becomes a major pursuit in and of itself. According to adventurer André Malraux, in his ''Man's Fate'' (1933), "If a man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?" Similarly, Helen Keller stated that "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." Outdoor adventurous activities are typically undertaken for the purposes of recreation or wikt:excitement, excitem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paste (magazine)
''Paste'' is an American monthly music and entertainment digital magazine, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with studios in Atlanta and Manhattan, and owned by Paste Media Group. The magazine began as a website in 1998. It ran as a print publication from 2002 to 2010 before converting to online-only. History The magazine was founded as a quarterly in July 2002 and was owned by Josh Jackson, Nick Purdy, and Tim Regan-Porter. In October 2007, the magazine tried the "Radiohead" experiment, offering new and current subscribers the ability to pay what they wanted for a one-year subscription to ''Paste''. The subscriber base increased by 28,000, but ''Paste'' president Tim Regan-Porter noted the model was not sustainable; he hoped the new subscribers would renew the following year at the current rates and the increase in web traffic would attract additional subscribers and advertisers. Amidst an economic downturn, ''Paste'' began to suffer from lagging ad revenue, as did other m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Age Of Empires (video Game)
''Age of Empires'' (''AoE'') is a 1997 real-time strategy video game based on history, developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, and the first game in the ''Age of Empires'' series. The game uses the Genie Engine, a 2D Sprite (computer graphics), sprite-based game engine. The game allows the user to act as the leader of an Civilization, ancient civilization by advancing it through four ages (the Mesolithic, Stone, Neolithic, Tool, Bronze Age, Bronze, and Iron Ages), gaining access to new and improved units with each advance. Originally touted as ''Civilization (video game), Civilization'' meets ''Warcraft'', some reviewers felt that the game failed to live up to these expectations when it was released. Despite this, it received generally good reviews, and an expansion pack, titled ''Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome, The Rise of Rome'', was released in 1998. The game is now generally regarded as one of the List of video games considered the best, best video games ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fairchild Channel F
The Fairchild Channel F, short for "Channel Fun", is a home video game console, the first to be based on a microprocessor and to use ROM cartridges (branded ' Videocarts') instead of having games built-in. It was released by Fairchild Camera and Instrument in November 1976 across North America at a retail price of . It was launched as the "Video Entertainment System", but Fairchild rebranded their console as "Channel F" the next year while keeping the Video Entertainment System descriptor. The Fairchild Channel F sold only about 350,000 units before Fairchild sold the technology to Zircon International in 1979, trailing well behind the Atari VCS. The system was discontinued in 1983. History In 1974, Alpex Computer Corporation employees Wallace Kirschner and Lawrence Haskel developed a home video game prototype consisting of a base unit centered on an Intel 8080 microprocessor and interchangeable circuit boards containing ROM chips that could be plugged into the base unit. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-Aircraft (video Game)
''Anti-Aircraft'' is a two-player fixed shooter released in arcades by Atari, Inc. in 1975. The game was also released as ''Anti-Aircraft II'', denoting the two-player aspect of the game. Gameplay Planes fly overhead, either singly or in pairs, in random directions in the aircraft flight area. The object is to shoot down more planes than the player's opponent during the time limit. Each player controls an anti-aircraft gun located in the lower left and right corners of the screen, respectively. A player's gun is controlled by three buttons located in each player's control station, which consists of a button for moving up, down, and firing. The up and down buttons move the gun to any one of three predefined positions. Reception Legacy A home console port was included in the game cartridge, '' Air-Sea Battle'', one of the launch titles for the Atari VCS The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kee Games
Kee Games was an American arcade game manufacturer that released arcade and video games from 1973 to 1978. History Kee was formed by Joe Keenan, a friend and neighbor of Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, in September 1973. In reality, Bushnell had worked with Keenan to create Kee Games in response to the pinball and arcade distributors of the time who demanded exclusivity deals; Bushnell believed that Kee Games could offer similar but renamed arcade games, or " clones", to distributors, which would greatly expand Atari's distribution beyond the limits of these deals. Bushnell assigned several of Atari's staff to work at Kee Games, including Steve Bristow, Bill White, and Gil Williams, and discreetly supplied them the parts for which they could make their games. To the public, Kee Games advertised itself as a competitor to Atari and claimed that it was hiring defectors from Atari. Through 1973 and 1974, Kee's games were slight modifications of Atari games already released or game ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kotaku
''Kotaku'' is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier. History ''Kotaku'' was first launched in October 2004 with Matthew Gallant as its lead writer, with an intended target audience of young men. About a month later, Brian Crecente was brought in to try to save the failing site. Since then, the site has launched several country-specific sites for Australia, Japan, Brazil and the UK. Crecente was named one of the 20 most influential people in the video game industry over the past 20 years by ''GamePro'' in 2009 and one of gaming's Top 50 journalists by Edge in 2006. The site has made CNET's "Blog 100" list and was ranked 50th on ''PC Magazine''s "Top 100 Classic Web Sites" list. Its name comes from the Japanese '' otaku'' (obsessive fan) and the prefix "ko-" (small in size). In 2009, ''Business I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ars Technica
''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. ''Ars Technica'' was privately owned until May 2008, when it was sold to Condé Nast Digital, the online division of Condé Nast Publications. Condé Nast purchased the site, along with two others, for $25 million and added it to the company's ''Wired'' Digital group, which also includes '' Wired'' and, formerly, Reddit. The staff mostly works from home and has offices in Boston, Chicago, London, New York City, and San Francisco. The operations of ''Ars Technica'' are funded primarily by advertising, and it has offered a paid subscription service since 2001. History Ken Fisher, who serves as the website's current editor-in-chief, and Jon Stokes created ''Ars Technica'' in 1998. Its purpose was t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Starship 1
''Starship 1'' is a first-person shooter space combat game developed and manufactured for arcades in 1977 by Atari, Inc. The game, which takes great inspiration from the television series ''Star Trek'', contains the first known Easter egg in any arcade game. The arcade game was distributed in Japan by Namco in 1978, and was ported to the Atari 2600 as ''Star Ship''.Interview with Bob Whitehead from DP Interviews Gameplay The object of ''Starship 1'' is to destroy alien spacecraft while maneuvering "Starship ''Atari''" through star and asteroid fields, "saving the ". The game uses a first person perspecti ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ed Fries
Ed Fries ( "freeze") is an American video game programmer and entrepreneur who was the vice president of game publishing at Microsoft during much of the Xbox's life-cycle. Early life Fries fell in love with games while playing arcade games in the early 1980s. Both of his parents were engineers, and he sees in his love for games something similar to his father's love for airplanes while working at Boeing. As a teen he programmed a clone of '' Frogger'' for the Atari 8-bit computers which was distributed through bulletin board systems. It was seen by someone from game publisher Romox who offered him a job, and the game was published as ''The Princess and the Frog'' in 1982. Fries wrote two other games for Romox: ''Ant-Eater'' (similar to '' Dig Dug'') and ''Sea Chase''. ''Ant-Eater'' was reviewed by '' C&VG'', who gave it a 7/10 for "getting started," and graphics, a 4/10 for value, and a 7/10 for playability. Fries co-founded Tom & Ed’s Bogus Software with Tom Saxton. They de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xyzzy (computing)
In computing, Xyzzy is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable or as a video game cheat code. ''Xyzzy'' comes from the ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' as well as TRS-80 Haunted House computer game, where it is the first " magic string" that most players encounter (others include "plugh" and "plover"). Origin Modern usage is primarily from one of the earliest computer games, ''Colossal Cave Adventure'', in which the player explores a cave with many rooms, collecting the treasures found there. By typing "xyzzy" at the appropriate time, the player could move instantly between two otherwise distant points. As ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' was both one of the first adventure games and one of the first interactive fiction pieces, hundreds of later interactive fiction games included responses to the command "xyzzy" in tribute. The origin of the word "xyzzy" has been the subject of debate. According to Ron Hunsinger, the sequence of letters "XYZZY" has been used as a mnemonic to remember th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colossal Cave Adventure
''Colossal Cave Adventure'' (also known as ''Adventure'' or ''ADVENT'') is a text-based adventure game, released in 1976 by developer Will Crowther for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. It was expanded upon in 1977 by Don Woods. In the game, the player explores a cave system rumored to be filled with treasure and gold. The game is composed of dozens of locations, and the player moves between these locations and interacts with objects in them by typing one- or two-word commands which are interpreted by the game's natural language input system. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's attempted actions. It is the first well-known example of interactive fiction, as well as the first well-known adventure game, for which it was also the namesake. The original game, written in 1975 and 1976, was based on Crowther's maps and experiences caving in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the longest cave system in the world; further, it was inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
