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Odyssey Software
Odyssey Software was a computer game developer founded in 1987 in Eastham, Massachusetts by Art V. Cestaro III. The company produced games for the Amiga and the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). History Odyssey's earliest titles were expanded works based on arcade games popular at that time. ''Byteman'' was based on ''Pac-Man'', ''Jailbreak'' was based on ''Arkanoid'', ''Deathbots'' was based on '' Berzerk'', and ''Space War'' was based on ''Asteroids'' as well as the original ''Spacewar!'' for the PDP-1. After its early attempts at working as an independent game developer Odyssey began taking contracts from other established companies. In 1990, ''Moon Ranger'', was produced under contract with Color Dreams for the NES. Odyssey established a relationship with American Video Entertainment, who contracted ''Deathbots'' for the NES. After ''Deathbots'', Odyssey went on to produce ''Solitaire'' and ''Blackjack'', which American Video Entertainment subsequently published. Three o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Game Developer
A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programmers, designers, artists, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support. Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games. A developer may specialize in specific game engines or specific video game consoles, or may develop for several systems (including personal computers and mobile devices). Some focus on porting games from one system to another, or translating games from one language to another. Less commonly, some do software development work in addition to games. Most video game publisher A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastham, Massachusetts
Eastham () is a New England town, town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, Barnstable County being coextensive with Cape Cod. The population was 5,752 at the 2020 census. For geographic and demographic information about the village of North Eastham, please see North Eastham, Massachusetts. History Originally inhabited by the Nauset tribe, Eastham was the site of the 1620 landing of a hunting party from the sailing vessel ''Mayflower'', which had stopped in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Provincetown harbor on Cape Cod Bay after a rough crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. This led to the first encounter of the Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony), Pilgrims with the local Nauset people at what became known as First Encounter Beach. The area would not be settled by Europeans, however, until 1644. The original lands included what are now the towns of Truro, Massachusetts, Truro, Wellfleet, Massachusetts, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, Massachusetts, Or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-bit or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These include the Atari ST as well as the Macintosh 128K, Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. The Amiga differs from its contemporaries through custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprite (computer graphics), sprites, a blitter, and four channels of sample-based audio. It runs a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS, with a desktop environment called Workbench (AmigaOS), Workbench. The Amiga 1000, based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, was released in July 1985. Production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. While ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the United States beginning on 18 October 1985, followed by a nationwide launch on 27 September 1986. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System. Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The Famicom was designed by lead architect Masayuki Uemura, with its controller design reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned by Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper, a light gun for shootin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pac-Man
''Pac-Man,'' originally called in Japan, is a 1980 maze video game developed and published by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called "Power Pellets" causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to also eat the ghosts for bonus points. Game development began in early 1979, led by Toru Iwatani with a nine-man team. Iwatani wanted to create a game that could appeal to women as well as men, because most video games of the time had themes that appealed to traditionally masculine interests, such as war or sports. Although the inspiration for the Pac-Man character was the image of a pizza with a slice removed, Iwatani has said he rounded out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi (). The in-game characters were made t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arkanoid
is a 1986 Block kuzushi, block breaker arcade game developed and published by Taito. In North America, it was published by Romstar. Controlling a paddle-like craft known as the Vaus, the player is tasked with clearing a formation of colorful blocks by deflecting a ball towards it without letting the ball leave the bottom edge of the playfield. Some blocks contain power-ups that have various effects, such as increasing the length of the Vaus, creating several additional balls, or equipping the Vaus with cannons. Other blocks may be indestructible or require multiple hits to break. Created by Taito designers Akira Fujita and Hiroshi Tsujino, ''Arkanoid'' expanded on the concept established in Atari, Inc.'s ''Breakout (video game), Breakout'', a successful game in its own right that was met with a large wave of similar clone games from other manufacturers. It was part of a contest within Taito, where two teams of designers had to complete a block breaker game and determine which one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berzerk (video Game)
''Berzerk'' is a 1980 List of maze video games, maze Shooter game, shooter arcade video game designed by Alan McNeil and released by Stern (game company), Stern Electronics. The game involves a Humanoid Intruder who has to escape maze-like rooms that are littered with robots that slowly move towards and shoot at the Humanoid. The player can shoot at the robots to try and escape the room. Along with the robots, a smiley face known as Evil Otto appears to hunt down the player within each room. Following a task to fix some technical problems on Arcade video game#Technology, boards, Stern allowed McNeil to develop his own game. He slowly developed a game initially with robots, later adding the walls and the Evil Otto character to expand on the gameplay. After the company was visited by a salesperson promoting a "speech chip", McNeil took the offer and incorporated digitized voices in the game that taunt the player during game play and Glossary of video game terms#attract mode, attra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asteroids (video Game)
''Asteroids'' is a multidirectional shooter video game developed and published by Atari for arcades. It was designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg . The player controls a single spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers, while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The game becomes more difficult as the number of asteroids increases. ''Asteroids'' was conceived during a meeting between Logg and Rains, who decided to use hardware developed by Wendi Allen (then known as Howard Delman) previously used for '' Lunar Lander''. Asteroids was based on an unfinished game titled ''Cosmos''; its physics model, control scheme, and gameplay elements were derived from '' Spacewar!'', '' Computer Space'', and ''Space Invaders'' and refined through trial and error. The game is rendered on a vector display in a two-dimensional view that wraps around ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spacewar!
''Spacewar!'' is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After its initial creation, ''Spacewar!'' was expanded further by other students and employees of universities in the area, including Dan Edwards and Peter Samson. It was also spread to many of the few dozen installations of the PDP-1 computer, making ''Spacewar!'' the first known video game to be played at multiple computer installations. The game features two spaceships, "the needle" and "the wedge", engaged in a dogfight while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. Both ships are controlled by human players. Each ship has limited weaponry and fuel for maneuvering, and the ships remain in motion even when the player is not accelerating. Flying near the star to provide a gravity assist was a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-1
The PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor-1) is the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1959. It is known for being the most important computer in the creation of hacker culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and elsewhere. The PDP-1 is the original hardware for one of the first video games, Steve Russell's 1962 game '' Spacewar!.'' Description The PDP-1 uses an 18-bit word size and has 4096 words as standard main memory (equivalent in bit size to 9,216 eight-bit bytes, but in character size to 12,388 bytes since the system actually divides an 18-bit word into three six-bit characters), upgradable to 65,536 words. The magnetic-core memory's cycle time is 5.35 microseconds (corresponding roughly to a clock speed of 187 kilohertz); consequently most arithmetic instructions take 10.7 microseconds (93,458 operations per second) because they use two memory cycles: the first to fetch the instruc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moon Ranger
''Moon Ranger'' is an action video game that was developed by Odyssey Software and published by Bunch Games. The player must fly through outer space, destroying meteor A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...s and aliens along the way.Moon Ranger at MobyGames References External links at GameFAQs * 1990 video games Ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Color Dreams
Color Dreams ( d/b/a StarDot Technologies) is an American company formerly known for developing and publishing unlicensed video games for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The company left the video game industry in the mid-1990s, shifting its focus to IP cameras and related surveillance equipment. History While most companies that developed NES games obtained an official license from Nintendo to produce game cartridges, Color Dreams was unusual in that it developed NES games without an official license. To produce these unlicensed games, Color Dreams had to bypass the NES's "lock out" chip (the 10NES). The company successfully bypassed the system, developed a game ('' Baby Boomer''), and released it in 1989. Several other titles followed in 1989 and 1990, including '' Captain Comic'', '' Crystal Mines'', and '' Robodemons''. As a result of its reputation for releasing poor games, Color Dreams formed the label Bunch Games in 1990. Bunch Games was meant to be a l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
