The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent (462-591)

Summary:

John Tobias and Ed Boon teamed up to create a game that was going to be able to compete with Street Fighter II. It took ten months to be created but the final result was much better than Street Fighter II. It was an instant hit. The game was known as Mortal Kombat. Later in 1993 the home version of Mortal Kombat was released with sales that went over the roof. The game was a very violent game and it didn’t have a correct rating system. Senator Lieberman said that the game was equal to an R-rated movie for children. A meeting was held for Nintendo to use a rating system that Sega used. Nintendo finally agreed to use a rating system and the Super NES version of Mortal Kombat 2 was both a disaster and successful. It had better sales that the Genesis version. The video game market fell into a bit of a slump in 1993. The sale percentage went down for all game systems. When Nintendo finally released Donkey Kong Country it was an even big hit than the original. The sales went back up and it was the best-selling game since Super Mario Bros 3. Other game systems followed on the footsteps of Nintendo. When Miyamoto brought Super Mario 64, for the Nintendo 64, it did a better job of bringing a two dimensional side scrolling game into the world of 3D than any other game before it. At E3 in 1996 Nintendo predicted that they would control most of the business and Sony would follow, while Sega wouldn’t even be a problem. But when Sony executive Jim Whims said that Sony’s Play Station would be sold at $199, everyone was shocked. Sega was trying to lower the price of their console to $299 but they knew they couldn’t compete with the Play Station. Sony proved itself to be the industry leader. In 2000, Sony planned on releasing the new generation Play Station and Nintendo planned on releasing a new console as well. It was going to be known as the Dolphin but not much information was given at E3.On February 1996 Nintendo released a new cartridge for Game Boy called Pokemon, short for Pocket Monsters. Its popularity grew steadily and more stores wanted copies because they had ran out. Pokemon wasn’t only a game, it was a small industry. A TV show was created from it and it was the most watched in Japan. Then toys, trading cards, clothing and food manufacturers followed. It became a billion dollar industry. The Japanese launch of the Play Station 2 occurred on March 4^th, 2000. It was by far the most anticipated video game launch in history. On March 10^th, 2000, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft had created a new video game console. The project had begun in 1999. With the release of the PS2, it was the end for Sega. At E3 in May 10^th, 2000, Sony said they were going to launch the PS2 in the U.S. with more games than the launch in Japan. To do so, Sony joined forces with EA. This was the beginning of games such as Madden NFL 2001, NASCAR, and SSX and Gran Turismo 1. Sega introduced games such as NBA 2K1, Shenmue, and Space Channel. In 2000, Bill Gates introduced the Xbox; Nintendo unveiled GameCube and launched Game Boy Advance which means the game industry never ends.

Quote:  

"Video games, once thought to be fad, have worked their way into the fabric of international culture...To put it in other words, the game never ends" (Kent 590-591).

Response:

I agree with Steven Kent because with the introduction of pinball, the video game industry arrived to where it is today. This book was published in 2001, since then a lot has happened with video games. Technology has advanced and now people have the ability to watch movies and use the internet while using the PS3 and the Xbox 360 and other consoles such as these. The industry is a multi-billion dollar industry which means it will never end. 

The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent (332-461)

Summary:

Sega is not a Japanese work. It actually comes from Service Games. People may think it’s a Japanese company because its headquarters is in Japan but the company itself was found by Americans. Sega began in 1952, just shortly after the laws were passed restricting the use of slot machines in the United States. Marty Bromly was the founder of Sega. When the machines were being confiscated by the government in 1951, he shipped the pinball tables and slot machines to Japan. Bromley found two partners and then took a new partner. Dick Stewart, Ray LaMaire and David Rosen were all partners. Rosen then decided to create his own company, Rosen Enterprises, but he was still part of Sega. Sega’s most successful game at the time was Periscope, which was exported to the U.S. One of the major games of 1987 released by Nintendo was Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. This was a home adaption of the original arcade game which was called Punch-Out. This was one of the first first-person games. The home version had more features than the original. Nintendo and Atari Games were on war with each other. This was displayed on the Tengen version of the game Tetris, a game which was created by Soviet mathematician Alexey Pajitnov. People who had seen the version of the game created by Alexey gave the info to others and so both Atari Games and Nintendo believed that the game was theirs. Nintendo won the trial for the rights of the game and Atari had to recall its cartridge. By 1898 Nintendo had become very popular and was part of the everyday life. When EA and Sega created a relationship, it proved to produce significant rewards for both companies. Nintendo had wanted to make a deal with EA, but EA believed that Nintendo was too slow for their games so they refused, but they realized that Nintendo was going to be very successful when it was too late. Toward the end of 1991, U.S. Senator Slade Gorton requested a meeting with Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln. They meet at Nintendo America headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The Senator asked them if Nintendo could buy the Marines in Seattle because if they could then the team wouldn’t have to move to Florida. They were not sure and they waited till’ somebody else bought it. Just like Sega, Nintendo turned to Sony Corporation as a partner. Sony proved to be a very dangerous partner, because Sony executives had already revealed their plans of creation a game console of their own known as Play Station.  Nintendo allowed Sony to reveal their plan and then told them that they already had made another deal. Sony this way got humiliated.

Quote:

"With the 1989 releases of Genesis and TurboGrafx, Nintendo found itself lagging in technology behind the competition; but amazingly, technology did not seem to matter. Nintendo sold more than 17 million copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 world-wide, setting a lasting sales record for a game cartridge that was not packaged in with console hardware" (Kent 442). 

Response:

At first I didn't understand what he meant by technology didn't matter until I continued reading and then came back to read it over. Then I realized that technology didn't matter in that case because the game being released was Super Mario Bros. 3. That was a great game then and still is a great game so I believe that the technology didn't mater because if a great game is being released, it doesn't matter what the game will look like, it just matters how good the game is. 

The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent (201-331)

Summary: 

In 1976, Mattel began to work on a calculator-sized sports videogame that became known as the first ever handhold videogame. They first created a game that became known as Auto Race. They had the option of going with either a sports game or a racing game and they went with the racing game because it took less effort. The second game that came out was known as Football. It took nearly 2 years for Greenberg’s’ team to finally launch their new super mode game console known as ColecoVision. The game system was unveiled at the January Consumer Electronics Show in 1982. On February 1^st, 1982, Coleco and Nintendo signed an agreement in which Coleco paid Nintendo an undisclosed amount of money and promised royalties of $1.40 for every Donkey Kong cartridge and $1 for every tabletop machine sold. By the middle of 1822, even as the arcade industry began to fall, videogames were still doing well. In fact, Walt Disney Pictures even released a movie, Tron, in which Jeff Bridges saved the world by entering a super computer and defeating an evil program in a series of videogames. The biggest and most successful game company that emerged during the Commodore 64’s region was Electronic Arts, also known as EA. It was founded by Trip Hawkins, who in 1995 was included in People magazine’s list of 50 most attractive people. He had first gotten the idea to get into the computer industry in 1975 while he was studying in Harvard. In 1982 Hawkins prepared to open his company but asked Valentine for funding. With Valentines funding’s, he handpicked people that he thought were smart and persuaded them to join the team. In the early 1980’s companies were still selling their games in plastic bags with labels and Hawkins began to package his games in “album covers”. A lot of companies wouldn’t sign licensing agreements with Nintendo because the terms and agreements seemed entirely one-sided. In 1986, Americans purchased more than 3 million NES consoles and doubled the next year. Nintendo had been gaining a lot of momentum.

Quote:

"Greenberg began telling retailers about the system toward the end of 1981, unveiled it at the January Consumer Electronics Show in 1982, and began shipping it in July" (Kent 206).

Response:

I was kinda shocked when I read this quote because I didn't think that they had an electronics show where products could be unveiled at. It can connect to today because there are a lot of electronic shows in which companies just show a trailer of their upcoming game so that everyone will know what they are going to buy or not buy. Such an show is E3. It unveils games in June that are going to come out in November or December. I thought it was pretty cool that something from the 1980's could be similar to what's going on today. 

The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent (116-200)

Summary:

In 1987 Taito approached Midway to distribute a new arcade game. The game was called “Space Invaders”. In the beginning the game was not very welcomed in Japan, but within three years of its production the game started showing signs of life. Within one year the game has become a phenomenon. There was no way to beat Space Invaders, people would play until they gave up or they were killed. In October 1978 the game was introduce in the U.S. American audiences adapted to it immediately. In 1978, Cinematronics released Space Wars. Cinematronics was founded by Jim Pierce, Dennis Parte, and Gary Garrison in El Cajon, California in 1975. The company and its games went unnoticed until MIT graduate Larry Rosenthal joined the company. He convinced his boss’s to manufacture a game based on Spacewar using his processing technology and the game was called Space Wars. His vector graphic technology gave him an advantage over other designers who were still using raster-scan screens. Rosenthal believed that he wasn’t being paid enough so he left Cinematronics and tried to make his processing technology with him. He was sued by Pierce and Stroud and he had to sell his technology to the company. In 1981, Cinematronics released Tail Gunner, the first video game to feature 3-dimensional animated objects. In 1980, an Atari engineer named Howie Delman created a powerful vector-graphics generated for coin-op games. The first game to use this technology was Lunar Lander. Even though it was never particularly successful, its vector-graphics generator was the best of its time. In 1981, 15-year old Steve Juraszek of Arlington Heights, Illinois scored 15,963,100 points on a game of Defender that lasted 6-hours. That was a world record and he became a celebrity with his picture in Time magazine. Nintendo, a 100-year old company wasn’t able to break through to the American market. By 1980, Hiroshi Yamauchi the president of Nintendo Company Limited decided that his company needed a U.S. office if it was going to get through to the public. He hired his son in law, Minoru Arakawa, but none of the games being designed was helping. In 1979 Yamauchi asked Shigeru Miyamoto to his office to ask him to design an arcade game and Miyamoto excitedly said yes. He designed the famous videogame “Donkey Kong”. It was a big hit and couldn’t have come out to market in a better time because other companies were failing. 

Quote:

"In the late 1970s and early 1980s, our main competitor was Atari. I always looked at it as we had a hit, they had a hit, etc. It was great because we were creating a constant interest out there" (Kent 137).

Response:

This quote was said by David Marofske who was a former president of Midway Games. I am not surprised by what he said because without competition people/industries wouldn't work hard to achieve the best product they could. If it wasn't for competition, a product would be created, and even if there were problems with it the producers wouldn't do anything to change tat because there is nobody there to challenge them and work hard to get the best product they can. 

The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent (2-115)

Summary:

There were a lot of inventions that lead to today’s videogames, but the main was Baffle Ball. This was a game invented by David Gottlieb. The game didn’t use any electricity and it almost has no similarities to modern pinball games. The sales for these games were so high that Gottlieb could barely keep up with them. Once Gottlieb proved that money could be made from these games, his competition began growing. Harry Williams, a Stanford-educated was Gottlieb’s main competition. In 1933, Williams built Contact, the first electric pinball machine. Even though David was well aware of Williams’s innovations, he was more frightened by a different invention. Slot machine manufacturers began making pinball-like machines which combined pinball with gambling. These machines were known as “pay-outs”. David was afraid because these machines were a threat to his industry. He had the right to be afraid. Politicians were against pay-out games and they passed a law to prohibit them, which meant any form of pinball. In 1947, one of Gottlieb’s engineers, by the name of Harry Mabs, added an innovation to the game. He added six spring-powered levers that players use to control and keep the ball in the playfield. As soon as Harry Mabs invented the “flipper bumpers”, all other companies heard about it and used it for their own good. Competition had been waiting for an invention such as that to make their machines better. Later in January 1948, Steven Kordek introduced a two flipper design. Every industry began working to use that design in their machines. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s students from MIT had a huge impact on computers. Once these students discovered computers they became known as “hackers”, before they were just nerds. IN 1960 many computers were large enough to fill a room. They needed cooling systems because vacuum tubes generated great amounts of heat and they could cause fires. Steve Russell was the first to create a game that took place in space. It was a game about rocket ships dueling. It was known as “Spacewar”. The first video game was created by engineers at Sanders Associates, a New Hampshire based defense contractor. When Ralph Baer first introduced this project to his team they wanted him to stop because they thought it was impossible. Another person from another company took the idea and told his boss. They thought it was a great idea and so they worked on it. The first product was called “Odyssey”.

Quote:

"You can't say that video games grew out of pinball, but you can assume that video games wouldn't have happened without it. It's like bicycles and automobiles.One industry leads to the other and then they exist side by side. But you had to have bicycles to one day have motor cars" ( Baxter 1).

Response:

I totally agree with this quote because in order to have a product you have to begin somewhere. You can't just go from step one to the final product. There have to be problems to be fixed to finally arrive to a much better product. Without the idea of pinball, the video game industry wouldn't have arrived to where it is today in our society. 

Green Zone (The Film)

I enjoyed reading the book and watching the movie. I found the movie more interesting because it focused on only one main problem in Iraq and what a soldier had to go through to discover the truth. The thing that was interesting was that the movie was much different than the book. The only thing that the book and the movie had in common was when the book had a small chapter in which it talked about the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), which was the main focus of the movie. The film started with an extreme long shot, to show a big explosion in Baghdad. Then the movie skips to 4 weeks later when Chief Miller, played by Matt Damon and other soldiers of his team are looking for the WMD. They encounter a sniper, and I noticed that the music that was being played in the background was tense because it was a matter of life and death. Something that took my attention was the close-up when Miller was talking to Martin Brown, a CIA agent. They were talking about confidential information, so the close-up made the conversation seem very important. The scene dissolved into darkness and then the camera showed Miller and his team in their Humvees going to help General Al Rawi. He was one of Saddam’s Generals. When Miller is going to meet General Al Rawi there is a dolly shot. It follows Miller as he walks in the darkness following one of Al Rawi’s people. When General Al Rawi gives his men the order to kill Miller, there is a low-angle shot to show the power of Al Rawi, and there also is a high-angle shot to show that Miller is powerless. After Miller escapes he is following Al Rawi. This is a birds-eye shot because the action is recorded from the helicopters that are there to help Miller. I would recommend this movie to anybody that is into action movies because there is a ton of action. This was a very interesting movie, because there was a lot of scenes in which I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next.

Green Zone (The Movie Review)

Scott, A. O. "Movie Review - Green Zone - A Search for That Casualty, Truth - NYTimes.com." Movie Reviews, Showtimes and Trailers - Movies - New York Times - The New York Times. 12 Mar. 2010. Web. 25 Feb. 2011. http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/movies/12green.html.

Scott said that “…While the picture they paint of infighting among the Americans and growing factionalism among the Iraqis may not be literally accurate in every particular, it has the rough authority of novelistic truth.”

I agree with Scott because this movie is fiction, but it has the feeling of a documentary. It gives the people that are watching a lot of information about the war and how the soldiers live. It gives a feeling of what life is like in Iraq. You will not only just be watching a  movie if you watch “Green Zone”, but you will be watching a documentary.

“My own response to “Green Zone” is almost exactly the opposite: it’s about time.”

Scott is saying that a lot of people might think that the movie came out a little too late, but according to him it was the right time. It was about time that somebody started to show what was really going on in Iraq.  If you want to understand how and why things went like they did in Iraq, then I would suggest you watch this movie.