LudoScience

Casual Games (Lesson)

An introduction to casual gaming, alongside with a comparative study of arcade games. -= Presentation slides (in french) =- (Flash file - click inside the window to give it the keyboard focus,then use the left and right arrow keys to browse through the slides)   

Keywords : casual games, arcade

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Pix'n Love (Book reference)

Pix'n Love is a journal dedicated to the history of videogames. It uses a format that is half-way between a book and a regular journal. The 128 pages of each issue explores in great details the history of a selection of games and machines, ranging from the highly popular ones (Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Megaman, Rayman, etc.) to the nearly unknown games. Each article is generally written after the interview of the creators, allowing Pix'n Love to provide the reader with a lot of novel and unique i [...]

Keywords : history, interview, novel

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History of Videogames (Lesson)

An historical timeline related videogames evolution from 1952 to 2001. Features more than 150 videos and interactive games to illustrate the history.   

Keywords : history

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Push START - 30 ans de jeux vidéo (Book reference)

An illustration-only book which features screenshots and illustrations from the most famous videogames of the last 30 years. 

Keywords : pictures, history

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Citizen Game (Book reference)

The autobiography of Nicolas Gaume, founder of the french game studio Kalisto, which created some of the finest videogames during the 90's: Pac-in-time, Nightmare Creatures, Ultim@te Race Pro, Dark Earth, etc. Praised for the quality of its creations, this studio unfortunately closed its door in the 2000's, mainly due to the financial crisis caused by the burst of the ".com economy" bubble. This rare book is a detailed legacy of the quick transformation of the AAA videogames industry f [...]

Keywords : biography, nicolas gaume, kalisto, french touch

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On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise And Fall of Commodore (Book reference)

This book details the history of Commode, a company who built legendary computers such as the Commodore PET, theVIC-20, the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. Over more than 550 pages, this book presents the full history of the company, with incredible details and a lot of unique information obtained through interviews with former employees. The story begins in 1976 with Chuck Peddle, an engineer working for MOS Technology, who designed a microprocessor called 6502. It was the first one to be cheap eno [...]

Keywords : commodore, commodore 64, amiga, jack tramiel, computer

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Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution (Book reference)

This book gives a portrayal of several famous video game creators: Cliff Bleszinski (Unreal Tournament, Gears of War), Shigeru Miyamoto (Mario, Zelda...), Will Wright (Sim City, The Sims...), John Romero and John Carmack, alongside with three bonus chapters dedicated to the first video games, to military Serious Games (America's Army) and to MMORPG players (Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies). Overall, the book is very pleasant to read and filled with interesting information. The portraits of c [...]

Keywords : history, cliff bleszinski, will wright, america's army, star wars galaxies, anarchy online

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Confessions of the Game Doctor (Book reference)

Bill Kunkel, usually known as "The Game Doctor", is one of the videogaming press pioneers in the USA. With his lifetime friend Arnie Katz, he started to write down articles about videogames in 1978, for the Video magazine. In 1981, the two pioneers launched Electronic Games, the first magazine dedicated to videogames published in the USA - if not in the world. This autobiographic book gathers numerous trivia and short stories coming from the career of Bill Kunkel: the birth of Electron [...]

Keywords : biography, bill kunkel, video games, press, usa, electronic games, the game doctor

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L'Empire des jeux (Book reference)

A tiny book (140 pages in small format) gathering trivia and funny stories about 50 famous videogames: Pac-Man, Mario, Zelda, GTA... Each game is presented over two pages by several pictures and a short text. While this book reads easily, most of its information is far from being unique. Most of them are now part of the common knowledge of the average videogame player, or can be easily found in Wikipedia and similar sources. Anyway, this book remains a good gift idea for anyone discovering video [...]

Keywords : history, anecdote, simple

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The A-Z of Cool Computer Games (Book reference)

This book is full of nostalgia, as it details games, machines and other elements of the videogame culture (ads, magazines, etc.) coming from a "golden era" of their history, according to the author: from the end of the 70's to the beginning of the 90's. This book gathers about 200 games and memories from the author, who are described with passion over one or two pages each. As the author is British, he was exposed to the European wave of videogames. This book will thus triggers a lot o [...]

Keywords : history, games, machines, europe, culture

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