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 4th, 2000. It was by far the most anticipated video game launch in history. On March 10th, 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 10th, 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.
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