Games in the series have been praised as some of the best action games of all time. The series has received numerous awards, including several Game of the Year recognitions for the 2005 and 2018 installments. Some games have also been remastered for newer PlayStation platforms. As of November 2023, the franchise has sold an estimated 66+ million games worldwide, and is PlayStation's most profitable first-party brand. Strong sales and support of the series led to the franchise's expansion into other media, such as three comic book series and three novels. A film adaptation of the original installment had been in development but was ultimately canceled; however, a television series adaptation of the Norse era is in development for Amazon Prime Video. Merchandise includes artwork, clothing, toys, and prop replicas, as well as the games' soundtracks, including a heavy metal album, Blood & Metal (2010), featuring original music by various bands, who were inspired by the series. (Full article...)
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God of War: Ghost of Sparta is an action-adventurehack and slashvideo game developed by Ready at Dawn and published by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It was first released for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld console on November 2, 2010. The game is the sixth installment in the God of War series and the fourth chronologically. Loosely based on Greek mythology, Ghost of Sparta is set in ancient Greece with vengeance as its central motif. The player controls the protagonist Kratos, the God of War. Kratos is still haunted by the visions of his mortal past and decides to explore his origins. In Atlantis, he finds his mother Callisto, who claims that his brother Deimos is still alive. Kratos journeys to the Domain of Death to rescue his brother. After initial resentment from Deimos, the brothers team up to battle the God of Death, Thanatos, Deimos' captor.
The gameplay is similar to that of the previous installments, and focuses on combo-based combat, achieved through the player's main weapon—the Blades of Athena—and a secondary weapon acquired later in the game. It features quick time events that require the player to complete various game controller actions in a timed sequence to defeat stronger enemies and bosses. Up to three magical attacks and a power-enhancing ability can be used as alternative combat options. Ghost of Sparta also features puzzles and platforming elements. The combat system was updated with 25 percent more gameplay than its PSP predecessor, God of War: Chains of Olympus.
Ghost of Sparta received positive reviews from critics for its story, scope, and graphical illustration, though criticism was given for the general lack of gameplay innovation from its predecessor, Chains of Olympus. Several critics consider it to be the best-looking game on the PSP. Others have compared the overall game to those on the PlayStation 3 (PS3), and some have said that the graphics are better than those of the PlayStation 2 (PS2). Ghost of Sparta received several awards, including "Best Handheld Game", "Best PSP Game", and "PSP Game of Show" at the 2010Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), "Best Handheld Game" at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, and "Portable Game of the Year" at the 14th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. By June 2012, it had sold almost 1.2 million copies worldwide, making it the nineteenth best-selling PlayStation Portable game of all time. Together with Chains of Olympus, Ghost of Sparta was remastered and released on September 13, 2011, as part of the God of War: Origins Collection and the remastered version was re-released on August 28, 2012, as part of the God of War Saga, both for the PlayStation 3. (Full article...)
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Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure video game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It follows teenage protagonist Dave Miller as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend Sandy Pantz from a mad scientist, whose mind has been enslaved by a sentient meteor. The player uses a point-and-click interface to guide Dave and two of his six playable friends through the scientist's mansion while solving puzzles and avoiding dangers. Gameplay is non-linear, and the game must be completed in different ways based on the player's choice of characters. Initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II, Maniac Mansion was Lucasfilm Games' first self-published product.
The game was conceived in 1985 by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, who sought to tell a comedic story based on horror film and B-movie clichés. They mapped out the project as a paper-and-pencil game before coding commenced. While earlier adventure titles had relied on command lines, Gilbert disliked such systems, and he developed Maniac Mansion's simpler point-and-click interface as a replacement. To speed up production, he created a game engine called SCUMM, which was used in many later LucasArts titles. After its release, Maniac Mansion was ported to several platforms. A port for the Nintendo Entertainment System had to be reworked heavily, in response to Nintendo of America's concerns that the game was inappropriate for children.
Maniac Mansion was critically acclaimed: reviewers lauded its graphics, cutscenes, animation, and humor. Writer Orson Scott Card praised it as a step toward "computer games [becoming] a valid storytelling art". It influenced numerous graphic adventure titles, and its point-and-click interface became a standard feature in the genre. The game's success solidified Lucasfilm as a serious rival to adventure game studios such as Sierra On-Line. In 1990, Maniac Mansion was adapted into a three-season television series of the same name, written by Eugene Levy and starring Joe Flaherty. A sequel to the game, Day of the Tentacle, was released in 1993. (Full article...)
Golden Sun's story follows a band of magic-attuned teenagers called Adepts on a mission to protect the world of Weyard from alchemy, a potentially destructive power that was sealed away long ago. During their quest, the Adepts develop new magic abilities called Psynergy, assist others, and learn more about why alchemy was sealed away. Golden Sun is followed by a sequel, The Lost Age, which together form a complete story.
Golden Sun began as a single planned game for the Nintendo 64, but production shifted to the Game Boy Advance over the course of development. After facing hardware constraints, the developers decided to split the game into two. (Full article...)
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Sonic X (Japanese: ソニックX, Hepburn: Sonikku Ekkusu) is a Japanese anime television series based on Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog video game series. Produced by TMS Entertainment under partnership with Sega and Sonic Team, and directed by Hajime Kamegaki, Sonic X initially ran for 52 episodes, broadcasting on TV Tokyo from April 2003 to March 2004. A further 26 episodes aired in North America, Europe, and the Middle East from 2005 to 2006. The American localization and broadcasting were handled by 4Kids Entertainment, which edited it and created new music.
The series follows a group of anthropomorphic animals that accidentally teleport from their home planet to Earth after attempting to save one of their friends from their enemy Doctor Eggman. Separated, Sonic the Hedgehog is saved by a human boy named Chris Thorndyke, who helps him find his friends while repeatedly scuffling with Doctor Eggman and his robots over control of the powerful Chaos Emeralds, and becoming celebrities. The final story arc sees Sonic and his friends return with Chris to their world, where they enter outer space with a newfound plant-like creature named Cosmo and fight an army of aliens called the Metarex.
Sonic X received mixed reviews. Generally, reviewers criticized its American localization and the human characters, but praised its story and animation. The series was popular in the United States and France, though less so in its native Japan. The show's merchandise included an edutainment video game for the Leapster, a trading card game, a comic book series featuring an original storyline, and various toys and other items. (Full article...)
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Bastion is an action role-playing video game developed by independent developerSupergiant Games and originally published in 2011 by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. In the game, the player controls "the Kid" as he moves through floating, fantasy-themed environments and fights enemies of various types. It features a dynamic voiceover from a narrator (Logan Cunningham), and is presented as a two-dimensional game with an isometric camera and a hand-painted, colorful art style. Bastion's story follows the Kid as he collects special shards of rock to power a structure, the Bastion, in the wake of an apocalyptic Calamity.
During 2011, the game sold more than 500,000 copies, 200,000 of which were for the Xbox Live Arcade. It sold over three million copies across all platforms by January 2015. The game was widely praised by reviewers, primarily for its story, art direction, narration, and music. Opinions were mixed on the depth of the gameplay, though the variety of options in the combat system was praised. Bastion has won many nominations and awards since its release, including several for best downloadable game and best music, from review outlets such as IGN and Game Informer as well as from the Spike Video Game Awards, the Game Developers Conference, and the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. (Full article...)
Starting his online career in 2007, Amofah created his main YouTube channel, "EWNetwork" (Etika World Network), in 2012. His fanbase was dubbed the "JOYCONBOYZ" in reference to the Nintendo Switch controller, the Joy-Con. He garnered popularity following the release of Super Smash Bros. 4, primarily stemming from his reaction videos of news surrounding the game. His content consisted of playthroughs of various video games, reaction videos, and pre-recorded material. Across his multiple YouTube channels, he amassed over 1 million subscribers and 146 million views.
Between October 2018 and May 2019, Amofah demonstrated signs of mental distress, threatening to commit suicide on multiple occasions, and was hospitalized several times. During this period, Amofah uploaded pornography to the EWNetwork channel, resulting in its termination; he then posted statements on social media alluding to suicide. After apologizing, Amofah created another channel, "EtikaFRFX", which was terminated for identical reasons. He proceeded to display erratic behavior publicly, including posting cryptic messages online and streaming himself being detained by the police. (Full article...)
For the next game in the Halo trilogy, O'Donnell added new themes as well as bringing back and expanding old ones, some of which had never been recorded with a full orchestra before. The score made extensive use of the piano, an instrument which O'Donnell used frequently for composition but that had not been featured in previous Halo music. In addition to scoring the game, the music was used for promotional advertisements and trailers preceding Halo 3's release. The game's score and its soundtrack were generally well received. The soundtrack reached the Billboard 200 chart, and also broke the top twenty best-selling soundtracks and independent albums listings. The score was nominated for X-Play's "Best of 2007" awards, under best original soundtrack. (Full article...)
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Homeworld is a real-time strategy video game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by Sierra Studios on September 28, 1999, for Windows. Set in space, the science fiction game follows the Kushan exiles of the planet Kharak after their home planet is destroyed by the Taiidan Empire in retaliation for developing hyperspace jump technology. The survivors journey with their spacecraft-constructing mothership to reclaim their ancient homeworld of Hiigara from the Taiidan, encountering a variety of pirates, mercenaries, traders, and rebels along the way. In each of the game's levels, the player gathers resources, builds a fleet, and uses it to destroy enemy ships and accomplish mission objectives. The player's fleet carries over between levels and can travel in a fully three-dimensional space within each level rather than being limited to a two-dimensional plane.
Homeworld was created over two years, and was the first game developed by Relic. Studio co-founders Alex Garden and Luke Moloney served as the director and lead programmer. The initial concept for the story is credited to writer David J. Williams, while the script itself was written by Martin Cirulis and the background lore was written by author Arinn Dembo. The music was written by composer Paul Ruskay as the first game from his Studio X Labs, with the exceptions of Samuel Barber's 1936 Adagio for Strings, considered the defining theme of the game, and a licensed track from English rock band Yes, "Homeworld (The Ladder)".
Homeworld is listed by review aggregator Metacritic as the highest-rated computer game of 1999, and the third-highest on any platform for the year. Critics praised the graphics, unique gameplay elements, and multiplayer system, though opinions were divided on the plot and high difficulty. The game sold over 500,000 copies in its first six months, and received several awards and nominations for best strategy game of the year and best game of the year. A release of the source code in 2003 sparked unofficial ports to Mac OS X and Linux, and three more games in the Homeworld series have been produced: Homeworld: Cataclysm (2000), Homeworld 2 (2003), and Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (2016). Gearbox Software purchased the rights to the series from then-owners THQ in 2013, and released a remastered collection of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 in 2015 for Windows and OS X which was also highly regarded. In August 2019, Gearbox announced the fifth game in the series, Homeworld 3; the game was developed by Blackbird Interactive, partially crowdfunded through Fig, and released in 2024. (Full article...)
The majority of the book is divided into four short stories by different writers and artists from the computer game and comic industries. Each story focuses on different aspects of the Halo universe, revealing stories that are tangential to the main plot of the game. Apart from the stories, the book also contains an extensive art gallery compiled of contributions from Bungie, Marvel and independent sources.
Released on July 19, 2006, The Halo Graphic Novel was well-received, with reviewers noting the cohesiveness of the work as a whole, as well as the diversity of the individual material. The success of the novel led to Marvel announcing a new limited comic series, Halo: Uprising, and other future Halo comic books. (Full article...)
... that when Kaz Ayabe pitched his video game Boku no Natsuyasumi to Sony, he said that illustrator Mineko Ueda was interested in the project even though they had never actually met?
... that a reviewer thought that the video game Robbery Bob contained cringeworthy dialogue?
Jordan Mechner (born June 4, 1964) is an American video game designer, graphic novelist, author, screenwriter, filmmaker, and former video game programmer. A major figure in the development of cinematic video games and a pioneer in video game animation, he began his career designing and programming the 1984 martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II while a student at Yale University. The game was a bestseller. He followed it with the platform game Prince of Persia five years later; it was widely ported and became a hit. Both games used rotoscoping, where actors shot on film by Mechner were drawn over to create in-game animation. Prince of Persia has become the basis for a long-running franchise, including a 2010 live-action film released by Walt Disney Pictures and an ongoing series of video games, published by Ubisoft.
Mechner is the recipient of many accolades, including the 2017 GDC Pioneer Award. His works are often included in all-time lists of the game industry's best and most influential titles. (Full article...)
In 2013, he resigned from id Software to work full-time at Oculus VR as their CTO. In 2019, he reduced his role to Consulting CTO so he could allocate more time toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). In 2022, he left Oculus to work on his AGI startup, Keen Technologies. (Full article...)
Mark Edward Fischbach (/ˈfɪʃˌbɑːk/FISH-bahk; born June 28, 1989), known online as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber, actor and filmmaker. One of the most popular YouTubers on the platform, he is known for his "Let's Play" videos of indiehorror games. He was listed by Forbes as the third highest-paid content creator on the platform in 2022, and has won four Streamy Awards and a Golden Joystick Award. He has spun-off his YouTube fame into a media career, venturing into acting and filmmaking.
After joining YouTube in 2012, Fischbach became popular on the platform with Let's Plays of Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) and the Five Nights at Freddy's series; as of 2024, his channel had over 37 million subscribers. He signed with talent agency William Morris Endeavor in 2016. While with the agency, he released a clothing line, wrote and directed the YouTube Original series A Heist with Markiplier (2019) and In Space with Markiplier (2022), and hosted or co-hosted two podcasts which reached No. 1 on Spotify. (Full article...)
Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over ten million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced on his personal website that he had concluded he "[didn't have the connection to his fans he thought he had]", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. He left Mojang in November of that year, selling his company to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion. The acquisition made Persson a billionaire. (Full article...)
Akira Toriyama (Japanese: 鳥山明, Hepburn: Toriyama Akira, April 5, 1955 – March 1, 2024) was a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his most famous work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama came to be regarded as one of the most important authors in the history of manga with his works highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
He earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen/shōjo manga with Dr. Slump, and it went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into a successful anime series, with a second anime created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended. (Full article...)
A fan of arcade games in his youth, Tajiri wrote for and edited his own video gaming fanzineGame Freak with Ken Sugimori, before evolving it into a development company of the same name. Tajiri claims that the joining of two Game Boys via a link cable inspired him to create a game which embodied the collection and companionship of his childhood hobby, insect collecting. The game, which became Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green, took six years to complete and went on to spark a multibillion-dollar franchise which reinvigorated Nintendo's handheld gaming scene. Tajiri continued to work as director for the Pokémon series until the development of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, when he changed his role to executive producer, which he holds to this day. (Full article...)
After working at Capcom for thirteen years, he left the company to form his own studio, Whoopee Camp. His latest game was Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection for former employer Capcom. He is notorious for making his titles difficult for the average video game player and strict personality among peers. IGN listed Fujiwara at number 13 in its "Top 100 Game Creators of All Time" list. (Full article...)
Jeremy Soule (/soʊl/SOHL; born December 19, 1975) is an American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. He has composed soundtracks for over 60 games and over a dozen other works during his career, including The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Icewind Dale, and the Harry Potter series.
He became an employee of Square in 1994 after several years of private composition studies. After finishing the soundtrack to Secret of Evermore in 1995, he left to join Humongous Entertainment, where he composed for several children's games as well as Total Annihilation, his first award-winning score. In 2000, he left to form his own music production company, Soule Media, later called Artistry Entertainment. In 2005, he founded DirectSong, a record label that published digital versions of his soundtracks as well as those of classical composers. DirectSong remained active until 2019. (Full article...)
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Newell in 2018
Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), also known by his nickname Gaben, is an American businessman who is the president and co-founder of the video game company Valve Corporation.
Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. He and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve, and funded the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington left in 2000. (Full article...)
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Steve Ritchie speaks during the Atari panel at California Extreme 2009
Steven Scott Ritchie (born February 13, 1950) is an American pinball and video game designer. His career began in the 1970s. Ritchie holds the record for best-selling pinball designer in history. He has been called "The Master of Flow" due to the emphasis in his designs on ball speed, loops, and long smooth shots. Ritchie was also the original voice of Shao Kahn in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, serving as the announcer of Mortal Kombat II (1993), Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), and the updates to Mortal Kombat 3. He is the older brother of fellow pinball designer Mark Ritchie. (Full article...)
In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. (Full article...)
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Kjellberg in July 2019
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (/ˈʃɛlbɜːrɡ/SHEL-burg, Swedish:[ˈfěːlɪksˈǎrːvɪdɵlfˈɕɛ̂lːbærj]ⓘ; born 24 October 1989), better known as PewDiePie (/ˈpjuːdiːpaɪ/PEW-dee-py), is a Swedish YouTuber known for his comedic videos. Kjellberg's popularity on YouTube and extensive media coverage has made him one of the most noted online personalities and content creators. He has been portrayed in media as a figurehead for YouTube, especially in the genre of gaming.
Born and raised in Gothenburg, Kjellberg registered his YouTube channel "PewDiePie" in 2010, primarily posting Let's Play videos of horror and action video games. His channel gained a substantial following and was one of the fastest growing channels in 2012 and 2013, before becoming the most-subscribed on YouTube on 15 August 2013. From 29 December 2014 to 14 February 2017, Kjellberg's channel was also the most-viewed on the platform. During this period, his content shifted focus from Let's Plays and diversified to include vlogs, comedy shorts, formatted shows, and music videos. (Full article...)
Michael Morhaime (born November 3, 1967) is an American video game developer and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Dreamhaven, located in Irvine, California. Morhaime is best known as the co-founder and the former president of Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc., that was founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse. He served on the Vivendi Games executive committee from January 1999, when Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. became a subsidiary of Vivendi Games, until July 2008. (Full article...)
Hiroshi Yamauchi (山内溥, Yamauchi Hiroshi, 7 November 1927 – 19 September 2013) was a Japanese businessman and the third president of Nintendo, joining the company on 25 April 1949 until stepping down on 24 May 2002, being succeeded by Satoru Iwata. During his 53-year tenure, Yamauchi transformed Nintendo from a hanafuda card-making company that had been active solely in Japan into a multibillion-dollar video game publisher and global conglomerate. He was the great-grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, Nintendo's first president and founder. Hiroshi Yamauchi owned the Seattle Mariners baseball team from 1992 until his death.
In April 2013, Forbes estimated Yamauchi's net worth at $2.1 billion; he was the 13th richest person in Japan and the 491st richest in the world. In 2008, Yamauchi was Japan's wealthiest person with a fortune at that time estimated at $7.8 billion. At the time of his death, Yamauchi was the largest shareholder at Nintendo. (Full article...)
Keiji Inafune (稲船 敬二, Inafune Keiji, born 8 May 1965) is a Japanese video game producer, character designer, game designer, and businessman. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.
Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and illustrator. The first two games he worked on were the original Street Fighter and Mega Man in 1987. He was then a character designer and planner of the Mega Man series during the NES and Super NES era. For Mega Man X, he created and designed the character Zero. (Full article...)
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Kojima in 2018
Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer. He is regarded as one of the first auteurs of video games. He developed a strong passion for film and literature during his childhood and adolescence, which in turn has had a significant influence on his games. In 1986 he joined Konami, for which he directed, designed and wrote Metal Gear (1987) for the MSX2, the game that laid the foundations for the stealth genre and the Metal Gear franchise, his best known and most acclaimed work. At Konami, he also produced the Zone of the Enders series, as well as designing and writing Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994), graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation.
Kojima founded Kojima Productions within Konami in 2005, and he was appointed vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment in 2011. Following his departure from Konami in 2015, he refounded Kojima Productions as an independent studio; his first game outside Konami, Death Stranding, was released in 2019. (Full article...)
Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Garriott flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut, returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second space traveler, and first from the United States, to have a parent who was also a space traveler. During his ISS flight, he filmed a science fiction movie Apogee of Fear. (Full article...)
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Daigo Umehara in 2018
Daigo Umehara (Japanese: 梅原 大吾, Hepburn: Umehara Daigo, born 19 May 1981) is a Japanese esports player and author who competes competitively at fightingvideo games. He specializes in 2D arcade fighting games, mainly those released by Capcom. Known as "Daigo" or "The Beast" in the West and "Umehara" (ウメハラ, written in katakana instead of kanji) or "Ume" in Japan, Daigo is one of the world's most famous Street Fighter players and is often considered its greatest. His longevity is seen as an incredibly rare thing in the world of competitive video games. He currently holds a world record of "the most successful player in major tournaments of Street Fighter" in the Guinness World Records and is a six time Evo Championship Series winner.
Before properly being called a pro gamer from signing a sponsorship deal with Mad Catz, Japanese media usually referred to Daigo as "the god of 2D fighting games" (2D格闘ゲームの神, 2D Kakutō Gēmu no Kami). (Full article...)
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God of War is an action-adventure game franchise created by David Jaffe and developed by Sony's Santa Monica Studio. It began in 2005 on the PlayStation 2 (PS2) video game console and has become a flagship series for PlayStation, consisting of nine installments across multiple platforms. Based on ancient mythologies, the series' plot follows Kratos, a Spartan warrior who becomes the God of War and comes into conflict with various mythological pantheons. The earlier games in the series are based on Greek mythology and see Kratos follow a path of vengeance against the Olympian gods; the later games are based on Norse mythology and see Kratos on a path of redemption while also introducing his son Atreus as a secondary protagonist.
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