This book details the captivating story of the scandalous game series "Grand Theft Auto". Over 300 pages, the author tells us about the most epic moments of this saga: humble beginnings as a small arcade game made in Scotland by DMA Design; hiring Max Clifford to use media scandal as a marketing campaign; the hijacking of the series leadership by the Houser brothers and their studio Rockstar during the creation of GTA III; the first legal actions against the game series and the ri
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Keywords : grand theft auto, history, dma design, rockstar, jack thompson, sam houser, david jones, esrb
On the french version of this blog , I posted an in-depth critic of a (french-written) book about the history of Mario. Far from being a simple "illustrated books for fans" filled with nostalgia, l'Histoire de Mario by William Audureau and published by Pix N'Love is one on the most interesting books about the genesis of Mario. It's not an history book, it's an analytical book that tries to answer one simple question : "Why Mario?". After all, when Nintendo picked a masc
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Keywords : mario, history, nintendo, analysis
In this paper a strategy is presented for the dissemination of traditional stories via an interaction between the real world and the virtual world. In our game the player will not be isolated in front of the monitor and will have to call upon others to be successful. The game is a stimulus for players to discover a country’s history having legends as a starting point. Our focus is on the particular case of Enchanted Moors that are part of Iberian mythology. The user study showed that, afte
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Keywords : Legend, Cultural Heritage, Casual Game
This 200 pages book presents a selection 80 good games on the Super NES. Most of the chosen games are classical titles: Super Mario, Zelda, Starfox, Super Metroid, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Megaman X, etc. Hopefully, the authors also highlight some obscure gems: Robotrek, Radical Dreamers, Shiren The Wanderer, Drakken, etc. Each games is presented over one page of text and one page of beautifully laid-out images. Last but not least, several 3-4 pages articles focuses on the key points of
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Keywords : super nes, history, games, encyclopedia
This chapters tackles the historical origins of Serious Games: "The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the historical origins of Serious Games to try to understand where the current wave of "Serious Games" comes from. We first review the origins of the "Serious Games" oxymoron. We will then analyse digital games designed for serious purposes before the 2000's. Such games can be traced back to the beginning of the history of video games. We will use all these elem
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Keywords : serious games, history
This book presents a personal selection by the author of 1001 noteworthy videogames, coming from every period of the videogames history. Each games is introduced by a small text alongside one or several screenshots.This book is a french translation of an English-written book first published in 2010 and titled "1001 video games you must play before you die." This original English version was updated and republished in 2013 under the same title.
Keywords : encyclopedia, history
This bible is dedicated to the Nintendo NES home console (also known as Famicom). The first part of the book tells you the history of this console through a quite detailed chapter featuring a lot of pictures. The second and main part of the book is dedicated to a list of every game ever released for this console, featuring all games using cartridge or disk (Famicom Disk System) formats. Each one of the 1900 games is presented through a couple of screenshots alongside with a small text
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Keywords : history, nintendo, nes, famicom, nintendo entertainment system, bible
An excellent book featuring a deep analysis of the experiences offered to players by videogames. Being at the same time a gamer and a scholar, the author provides us with his very thoughtful and stimulating ideas on this topic. The first three chapters are tackling the issue of defining games, video games, and the relation between games and movies / storytelling. As they are full of concepts and references, these chapters are a bit harder to read than the others. The three following chapters are
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Keywords : history, philosophy, sociology, experience, critical, gamification
Without a doubt, this book is the most interesting story about the birth of Mario available! Written in the spirit of a PhD thesis (analysis of references in order to build and prove an hypothesis) while remaining easy to read, this book finally answers to a fundamental question: why Mario? In other words, this book will tell you how and why this character became the icon of Nintendo instead of a then more popular character: Donkey Kong. A book that any Mario fan should read as they will discove
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Keywords : history, mario, donkey kong
Over a series of 7 books, Florent Gorges wrote the most complete history of Nintendo. The texts are easy to read and full of unique information, and are illustrated with many pictures of all the games and toys created by the company. This third book in the series is focused on the most famous home console built by Nintendo: the NES / Famicom, and reveals much details about the birth of this machine and its impact in Japan, US and France. An absolutely recommended book to read.
Keywords : history, nintendo, famicom, nes