With so many video games to choose from, I often have trouble deciding how to get the most bang for my buck.
Sometimes I compare how much I spend on a game to the amount of time I expect to play it. I wonder if other gamers do the same? Games like Kingdom Hearts, Okami, and Dragon Age: Origins may easily take 50 to 60 hours just to beat the initial storyline, to say nothing of any side-quests on which a […]
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Bill Kunkel, 1950-2011: Video Game Journalism Pioneer
On September 4th, the video game industry lost a true pioneer. Bill Kunkel, founder of Electronic Games magazine and longtime video game journalist, passed away at the age of 61.
Kunkel began his career writing comic books and covering the wrestling industry, but he made his greatest impact as a journalist chronicling, celebrating, and critiquing video games. Over the years he worked on numerous publications, designed games and taught about them, and in 1981 cofounded, with Arnie Katz and Joyce Wetzel, […]
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Been Here Before: Same Landscapes, Different Stories in Video Games
In college, I spent much of Critical Reading loathing the professor’s love of American Romanticism and wallowing in my disdain for his assigned texts. Many of my classmates held similar sentiments, but we kept quiet during discussions of titles such as “Bodily Harm: Keats’ Figures in the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’” However, I will never forget the rapid-fire conversation about how individual experience shapes varying degrees of reality. We all had encountered many of the same things—holidays, historical events, […]
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Gaming Television
Some fans of video games today don’t necessarily play the games before they get caught up in the gaming culture. Movies based on video games abound, t-shirts featuring video game characters hang from store windows, and action figures from popular games line store shelves. While growing up, I watched game-related programming before I even picked up a controller. And of all the ways to immerse myself in gaming without hooking up a console, such shows remain top on my list.
My […]
Gone, But Not Forgotten: Vector Games
Although vector technology in gaming lasted less than a decade, some of the designers from the industry’s Golden Era utilized this revolutionary display technology to create classics. Bright, crisp graphics gave vector games a distinctive look and their fast-moving game play mesmerized arcade-goers who lined up to drop quarters for titles such as Space Wars, Battlezone, and Tempest.
Vector games burst onto the arcade scene during a time of rapid innovation and creativity within the industry. In 1977, pioneering game designer […]
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Three Degrees of Stop-Motion in Video Games
I’m a Phillip Seymour Hoffman fan, which led me to his performance in Adam Elliot’s stop-motion film Mary and Max, which in turn caused me to think about how video games incorporate this marvelous animation technique. Typically, stop-motion involves a designer moving an inanimate object in small increments and then photographing each separate frame. When the creator plays the series of photographs in a continuous sequence, this creates the illusion of movement. Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Black first […]
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Saving in Video Games
The save feature is something a lot of gamers take for granted these days. Not only can a player save directly to a home console or computer hard drive, the number of opportunities we’re given to save prove higher than ever. This makes death and dying in games a lot less stressful. A player might lose some time and experience, but going back to the last save point is an option in most games. What I find interesting is how […]
Everyone’s a Gamer
The Entertainment Software Association just released their newest data on the current state of video game play in the United States. The document reports that sales of video game software and hardware topped $25 billion last year, the average age of a gamer is 37, and 29% of gamers are over the age of 50. The report also notes that 72% of American households play video games.
Given the popularity of video games and my job title, I’m not surprised when […]
Which Matters Most–the Game or the Name?
As a buyer, I’m surrounded by a myriad of game choices, and each one has about 30 seconds to capture my attention. The easiest way to hook me is with a snappy name. At ICHEG, I see thousands of games every year, but these titles are the ones that stuck with me:
Ninjabread Man: My current favorite is a platformer for the PlayStation 2, Wii, and PC. I love gingerbread men, both to decorate for the holidays or to sing silly […]
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