Encyclopedia > Video game
Video game
A video game is a game played using an electronic device.
Often "video game" is taken in a narrow sense to mean those games played on consoles for television and similar handhelds, with computer games and coin-operated arcade games treated separately. This is because the early games of these three categories were usually very different. However, now there is considerable similarity between them, and the same game may appear on devices in different categories. See history of the video game for more information.
Video games are made by developers, sometimes individuals, but almost always a team consisting of directors, graphic designers, programmers, musicians and other technicians. Many teams easily number into the hundreds on larger projects, such as MMORPG's (for example, EverQuest or Asheron's Call) or complex RPG's (SEGA's Shenmue, Baldur's Gate, NeverWinter Nights[?]). But most are still made up of about a dozen closely working developers. Id Software is a good example of a smaller, more tightly focused developer.
Below is an alphabetized listing of the main genres of video games and some examples of games for each genre. This list is by no means complete or comprehensive. Many of these categories are somewhat overlapping. GTA, for example, is an adventure, a shooter and 2D or 3D depending on version.
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- Adventure
- Colossal Cave Adventure
- Day of the Tentacle
- King's Quest series
- Legend of Zelda series
- Maniac Mansion
- Monkey Island series
- Sam and Max
- Sentimental Graffiti[?] - a graphical adventure
- Tomb Raider series
- Zork series
- Beat 'em ups
- King of Fighters series
- Mortal Kombat series
- Power Stone series
- Street Fighter series
- Super Smash Bros. series
- Tekken series
- Virtua Fighter series
- First-person Shooters (FPS)
- Game-controlled environment
- Area 51
- Duck Hunt
- Time Crisis series
- Virtua Cop[?]
- Player-controlled environment
- Doom series
- Duke Nukem 3D series
- Ethnic Cleansing
- GoldenEye
- Half-Life series
- Hardwar[?]
- Hired Guns
- Hitman[?]
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
- Quake series
- Rainbow Six[?] Series
- Wolfenstein 3D series
- Unreal series
- Game-controlled environment
- Platformers
- Contra/Probotector series
- Crash Bandicoot[?] series
- Donkey Kong
- Kirby series
- Ghouls 'n Ghosts series
- Lionheart[?]
- Lode Runner[?]
- Mega Man series
- Metroid series
- Sonic the Hedgehog series
- Super Mario Brothers series
- Wario Land[?] series
- Racing games[?]
- Simulation style
- Gran Turismo series
- Grand Prix Legends
- Arcade style
- Carmageddon series
- High Octane[?]
- Marble Madness
- Mario Kart series
- Pole Position series
- Sega Rally[?] series
- The Simpsons Road Rage
- Wipeout[?] series
- Simulation style
- Rhythm games
- Role-Playing Games (RPG)
- The Elder Scrolls[?] Series
- Morrowind
- Morrowind: Tribunal[?] Expansion Pack
- Morrowind: Bloodmoon[?] Expansion Pack
- Morrowind
- Alternate Reality Series
- Astonia[?] game online
- Baldur's Gate series
- Bard's Tale[?] Series
- Brg_StaySafe[?]
- Chrono Trigger series
- Diablo series
- Dungeon Master series
- EverQuest
- Final Fantasy series
- Might and Magic series
- Pokemon series
- Radical Dreamers
- Roguelikes: Rogue, Hack, Nethack, Moria, Angband et al.
- Ultima series
- Wasteland
- Xenogears-Terms
- The Elder Scrolls[?] Series
- Sports
- Games that have to do with sports, such as Baseball, Soccer, American football, Boxing, Golf, Basketball, Ice hockey, Tennis, Bowling, Rugby, etc.
- Backyard Sports series
- Knockout Kings series
- NBA Jam series
- Tecmo Super Bowl series
- All Star Baseball 2003
- Strategy
- General Strategy
- Turn-based[?]
- Alpha Centauri
- Battle Isle[?] series
- Chaos,Lords Of Chaos,Rebelstar[?] series
- Civilization series
- Commandos series
- Galactic Civilizations
- Heroes of Might and Magic series
- Master of Orion[?] series
- Stars![?]
- VGA-Planets[?] (for play-by-mail)
- WarLords[?] series
- Worms series
- Real-time (RTS)
- Railroad Tycoon
- Age of Empires series
- Black & White[?]
- Command and Conquer series
- The Corporate Machine[?]
- Dark Reign[?]
- Dune series
- Myth series
- Populous series
- StarCraft series
- Syndicate[?] series
- Warcraft series
- Third Person Shooters (TPS)
- Shigeru Miyamoto -- Donkey Kong, Mario, Legend of Zelda, ... (Nintendo)
- John Carmack -- Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, ... (Id Software)
- Sonic Team -- Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star ... (SEGA)
- Warren Spector[?] -- System Shock series, Thief series, Deus Ex, ... (Origin Games[?], Looking Glass Studios[?], Ion Storm[?])
Most popular board games, card games, and the like have been computerized to some degree or another. For example, more than 600 freeware board games are available written in Zillions.
- Chess, Checkers, Othello (aka Reversi), and Backgammon have world class computer programs.
- Mah-jongg and related games are immensely popular in Japan. I-go is popular in Asia, and there is much more variety in it. And there is no same layout between any two as story goes.
- Magic: The Gathering has had computer versions for a long time. Most noteworthy are Apprentice[?] and Magic: Online[?].
Computer game programs can be worthy opponents and can help you improve your skill at board games.
See also: video game console, MAME,list of NES games, video game developer
- MobyGames - A Game Documentation and Review Project (http://www.mobygames.com/)
- BBCNews, 28 May, 2003, Video games 'good for you'. Keen video gamers now have one more excuse to keep on playing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2943280.stm)
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