Saturday 29 November 2008

Γκρίζα (Grey)

I had been looking for this song for a long time and it was not easy to find. It is based on a poem written by C.P. Cafavy and the recording is from a live performance by Eleutheria Arvanitaki at the Theatre of Herodes Atticus in Athens. The translation is mine.

Enjoy the video!

Friday 28 November 2008

The history of computer games (part 5)

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Part 5:

The Great Crash 1982-1984
(Click here for part 1)

1982
Coleco Releases the Colecovision
Coleco releases the Colecovision, a cartridge-based game console buoyed not only by superior graphics and sound, but also by support from a growing game company: Nintendo. Nintendo licenses Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior to Coleco, which releases excellent translations for the Colecovision and ports reasonable versions to the Atari VCS and Intellivision. Coleco also releases an adapter that lets VCS cartridges be played on the Colecovision. Realizing that Atari has firm support from Namco, creator of Pac-Man, Coleco involves itself heavily with Sega, Konami, and Universal (Mr. Do!).

Magnavox Does It Better
Magnavox releases a game called K.C. Munchkin for the Odyssey2. Atari deems K.C. Munchkin to be very similar to Pac-Man and sues. Atari wins the lawsuit, and Magnavox must remove K.C. Munchkin from the market.

Pac-Man Clone?
Atari releases its highly anticipated 2600 version of Pac-Man, which unfortunately doesn't resemble the arcade game at all. The public quickly becomes disenchanted with the company.

E.T. Goes Home
Atari releases E.T. for the VCS, a game Howard Scott Warshaw programmed in six weeks. Expecting a sellout, Atari reportedly manufacturers more E.T. cartridges than there are 2600 consoles in use. As was the case with Pac-Man, the public is disappointed by the game. Massive numbers of both Pac-Man and E.T. games end up in a huge landfill in New Mexico, along with millions of other unsold and unwanted game cartridges. Original games such as Activision's Pitfall(by David Crane) sell well.

Atari Super System
Atari releases the 5200 game console to compete with the Colecovision, although it had originally been designed to compete with the Intellivision. Based on the graphics and audio chips found in Atari home computers, 5200 games are essentially aesthetically improved rereleases of VCS games (the VCS was renamed 2600). The machine is incompatible with 2600 game cartridges until Atari belatedly introduces an adapter so 2600 games can be used on the 5200. A major strike against the system is its controller, which features a noncentering joystick.

Vectors Come Home
General Consumer Electronics (GCE) releases the Vectrex, the first and only home console based on vector graphics technology. The Vectrex includes a built-in game (Minesweeper, an impressive Asteroids clone) and one four-button analog joystick controller.

Pac-Man Fever
Midway creates Ms Pac-Man in-house. It becomes the biggest arcade game in American history, with more than 115,000 units sold in the United States, but Namco, which is not involved with Ms. Pac-Man, develops the improved, but radically different, Super Pac-Man for Japanese consumers. A number of Pac-Man "enhancement chips" arrive on the market to speed up the original Pac-Man and change its characters and mazes. The most popular enhancement, Pac-Man Plus, replaces the generic fruits and other bonus items in Pac-Man with popular American items such as Coke cans.

Stock Drop
On December 7 (3:04pm Eastern Standard Time), Atari announces that VCS sales did not meet predictions. Warner Communications stock drops 32 percent in a single day.

1983 New Bushnell Company
Nolan Bushnell becomes eligible to enter the video game industry again. He joins Videa and renames the company Sente Games, another Go reference (this time to "checkmate"). Sente forms a partnership with Midway games and releases arcade titles such as the simple but addicting hockey game Hat Trick. Unfortunately, the partnership never finds a niche in the market.

Atari Top Secret
In March, Atari announces a new top-secret project code-named the Falcon Project. The Falcon Project turns out to be a new Atari division called Ataritel, which is Atari's attempt to enter the telecommunications market.

Gaming Computers
The primary gaming computers of the 1980s emerged in 1982: the Commodore 64, Apple II (although the Apple II started in 1977) and ZX Spectrum. The ZX Spectrum was mostly used and known mainly in the UK, whilst the USA had the Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 800. Over the run of 15 years, the Apple II had a total of almost 20,000 programs, making it the 8-bit computer with the most software overall.

1984 Enter the Adventure game
The true modern adventure game would be born with the Sierra King's Quest series in 1984. It featured color graphics and a third person perspective. An on-screen player-controlled character could be moved behind and in front of objects on a 2D background drawn in perspective, creating the illusion of pseudo-3D space. Commands were still entered via text. Lucasarts would do away with this last vestige feature of text adventures when its 1987 adventure Maniac Mansion built with its SCUMM system allowed a point-and-click interface. Sierra and other game companies quickly followed with their own mouse-driven games.


IBM PC
The IBM PC compatible computer became a technically competitive gaming platform with IBM’s PC/AT in 1984. The new 16-color EGA display standard allowed its graphics to approach the quality seen in popular home computers like the Commodore 64. The primitive 4-color CGA graphics of previous models had limited the PC’s appeal to the business segment, since its graphics failed to compete with the C64 or Apple II. The sound capabilities of the AT, however, were still limited to the PC speaker, which was substandard compared to the built-in sound chips used in many home computers. Also, the relatively high cost of the PC compatible systems severely limited their popularity in gaming.


Early online gaming
Dialup bulletin board systems were popular in the 1980s, and sometimes used for online game playing. The earliest such systems, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, had a crude plain-text interface, but later systems made use of terminal-control codes (the so-called ANSI art, which included the use of IBM-PC-specific characters not actually part of an ANSI standard) to get a pseudo-graphical interface. Some BBSes offered access to various games which were playable through such an interface, ranging from text adventures to gambling games like blackjack (generally played for "points" rather than real money). On multiuser BBSs (where more than one person could be online at once), there were sometimes games allowing the different users to interact with one another; some such games of the fantasy role-playing variety were known as MUDs, for "multi-user dungeons". These games eventually evolved into what are known today as MMORPG.

Commercial online services also arose during this decade, starting with a plain-text interface similar to BBSs (but operated on large mainframe computers permitting larger numbers of users to be online at once), and moving by the end of the decade to fully-graphical environments using software specific to each personal computer platform. Popular text-based services included CompuServe, The Source, and GEnie, while platform-specific graphical services included Quantum Link for the Commodore 64, AppleLink for the Apple II and Macintosh, and PC Link for the IBM PC, all of which were run by the company which eventually became America Online; and a competing service, Prodigy. Interactive games were a feature of these services, though until 1987 they used text-based displays, not graphics.

(End of part 5)

Thursday 27 November 2008

The history of computer games (part 4)

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Part 4:
The Golden Age 1978-1981
(Click here for part 1)

1978 Bushnell Leaves Atari
Bushnell leaves Atari and signs a lucrative five-year agreement not to compete with the company he started. He buys the rights to Pizza Time Theatre from Atari and begins franchising it. Ray Kassar becomes the CEO of Atari.

Nintendo Releases Arcade Game
In March, Nintendo of Japan releases Computer Othello, a decidedly simplistic arcade cocktail-table game based on the board game Othello.

Trackball Rolls Into Arcades
Atari releases the arcade game Football. The game features a revolutionary new controller called the trackball.

Midway Imports Game to Beat
Midway imports Space Invaders from Taito. Space Invaders gives you a goal by displaying the current high score for you to beat.


Arcade Success Stories
Both Football and Space Invaders break all known sales records with almost equal earnings. However, Football's popularity fades with the end of the pro football season. Space Invaders' popularity continues, causing coin shortages in Japan and school truancy in America.

Atari Enters Computer Market
Atari begins selling its line of 400 and 800 computers to compete against Apple. The public, however, associates Atari with games, and the computers are never taken seriously.

Magnavox Releases Console With Keyboard
Magnavox releases the Odyssey2, a programmable console that has a built-in membrane keyboard.

Vector Game Released
Cinematronics releases Space Wars, a game similar to Bushnell's Computer Space. The game features vector (line-drawn) graphics. Vector graphics are the earliest form of polygon graphics to appear in video game applications, and they lack the flat shading or textures of later graphics.


1979
Holographic Games
Atari develops the Cosmos, a handheld programmable machine that features holograms within the graphics. Because the holograms are only for aesthetics and don't add to the gameplay, the Cosmos is never released.

Atari Vectors
Atari releases Lunar Lander, its first vector graphics game. Lunar Lander Begets Asteroids. Despite Lunar Lander's popularity, Atari halts production of the game and begins releasing Asteroids in the Lunar Lander cabinets. Asteroids is a game that was originally designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg for the Cosmos system. It goes on to become Atari's all-time best-seller. Asteroids introduces a new feature to arcades: High scorers can enter their three-character initials at the end of the game. Nearly 80,000 units are sold in the United States, but the game is less popular in other countries. Sega releases Monaco GP, a driving game with a top-down perspective, which is followed by the similar Pro Monaco GP in 1980 and the realistic 3D racer Super Monaco GP in 1989.

Milton Bradley Releases Programmable Handheld Video Game
Milton Bradley Electronics releases the Microvision, a handheld programmable unit that includes its own built-in LED screen.

1980
Space Invaders Come Home
Atari releases its exclusive home version of Space Invaders for the VCS. Sales of the VCS skyrocket.


Mattel Intellivision
Mattel Electronics introduces the Intellivision game console. The first serious competition for the VCS, the Intellivision has better graphics and a steeper price--$299. Mattel promises to release an optional peripheral that will upgrade the Intellivision console into a personal computer.

Namco releases Pac-Man
Pac-Man (パックマン Pakku man) is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the US by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular in the United States from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is universally considered as one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games, and an icon of 1980s popular culture. Upon its release, the game became a social phenomenon that sold a bevy of merchandise and also inspired, among other things, an animated TV series and music.

Handheld LCD games
Nintendo’s Game & Watch line began in 1980. The success of these LCD handhelds spurred dozens of other game and toy companies to make their own portable games, many being copies of Game & Watch titles or adaptations of popular arcade games. Improving LCD technology meant the new handhelds could be more reliable and consume less batteries than LED or VFD games, most only needing watch batteries. They could also be made much smaller than most LED handhelds, even small enough to wear on one’s wrist like a watch. Tiger Electronics borrowed this concept of videogaming with cheap, affordable handhelds.

(End of part 4)

Wednesday 26 November 2008

The history of computer games (part 3)

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Part 3:
The Games Begin 1971-1977
(Click here for part 1)

1971
Nutting Releases First Arcade Video Game
Nutting manufactures 1,500 Computer Space machines. The components are packaged with a 13-inch black-and-white TV set in a futuristic-looking cabinet. The first arcade video game is released, but the public finds it too difficult to play.


1972
Magnavox Begins Manufacturing the Odyssey

Magnavox begins manufacturing Baer's TV game system, which it calls the Odyssey. Sanders and Magnavox begin showing it to distributors around the country.

Magnavox Unveils First Home Video Game
Magnavox displays the Odyssey at a convention in Burlingame, California, on May 24. Nutting, believing it's the only company dealing with video games, sends Bushnell to see the machine. Bushnell spends a few hours playing video tennis and other games and later reports back to Nutting that he found the Odyssey uninteresting and in no way any competition for Computer Space.

Bushnell Leaves Nutting
Computer Space does not sell well, and Bushnell comes to the conclusion that it is too difficult to play. He realizes that if he can design a simple game, it might be a major draw. He informs Nutting, who tells him to go ahead and design a new machine. Bushnell decides that since he is the brains behind video games he should get a larger share of the profits. When he demands a third of Nutting Associates and doesn't get it, he leaves the company.


Bushnell Starts Atari
Bushnell and Dabney decide to start their own company to design video games for other companies to distribute. They originally call their company Syzygy (the straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies), but that name is already being used by a roofing company. They then settle on the name Atari, a term from the Japanese game Go, whose meaning is equivalent to "check" in chess.

Pong Is Born
Bushnell hires Al Alcorn to program games. Since Alcorn is inexperienced, Bushnell has him program a simple video tennis game as an exercise. They call the game Pong, for two reasons: first, "pong" is the sound the game makes when the ball hits a paddle or the side of the screen, and second, the name Ping-Pong is already copyrighted.


Pong Breaks Down
Bushnell tries selling Pong to established arcade manufacturers. After finding Bally disinterested, Bushnell decides to market the game himself. Pong is test-marketed in Andy Capps, a local bar. Within two weeks the test unit breaks down because the coin drop is flooded with quarters. Pong is a success.


Magnavox Releases Home Video Game
Magnavox sells the Odyssey exclusively through its own stores. People are led to believe the console will only work with Magnavox televisions. Still, Magnavox manages to sell 100,000 units. Many people buy it because it is the closest thing they can get to a home version of Pong.

1975
Home Pong was not released until 1975 and it quickly became the best-selling item in the Sears catalog (which was a big deal at the time). Atari was pretty much forced to market Home Pong through Sears, since they didn't have the resources to distribute it on their own. However, the national exposure Sears gave Atari helped catapult Bushnell's company to international success.


(End of part 3)

Tuesday 25 November 2008

The history of computer games (part 2)

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Part 2:
Before the Games 1889-1970
(Click here for part 1)


1889
Fusajiro Yamauchi establishes the Marufuku Company to manufacture and distribute Hanafuda, Japanese playing cards. In 1907, Marufuku begins manufacturing Western playing cards. The company changes its name to The Nintendo Playing Card Company in 1951. "Nintendo" means "leave luck to heaven."

1891
Gerard Philips establishes a company in the Netherlands to manufacture incandescent lamps and other electrical products.

1918
Konosuke Matsushita establishes the Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works. During the next 70 years, the company will establish a multitude of companies, including Panasonic.

1932
The Connecticut Leather Company is established by a Russian immigrant named Maurice Greenberg to distribute leather products to shoemakers. In the early '50s, Maurice's son Leonard creates a leather-cutting machine, and the company, which soon trades under the acronym COLECO (short for Connecticut Leather Company), begins selling leather craft kits. By the end of the decade, Leonard will have built a plastic-forming machine and the company will have jumped into the plastic-wading-pool industry.

1945
From their garage workshop, Harold Matson and Elliot Handler produce picture frames. They come up with the name "Mattel" by combining letters from their names. Elliot uses the scraps from the picture frames to begin a side business making dollhouse furniture.

1947
Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka set up the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company. After seeing an American-made tape recorder, Morita decides his company should begin making them. In 1952, Ibuka and Morita barely raise the $25,000 fee to become one of the first foreign companies to license the transistor patent from Bell Labs. They then use the transistor to create the world's first pocket-sized battery-powered radio. The transistor radio is a success in Japan, and Ibuka and Morita begin looking at marketing their products in the United States and Europe. Realizing the English translation of their company name is too cumbersome for English-speaking people to remember, they modify the Latin word sonus (sound) and come up with Sony, a word that has no meaning, for their new corporate name.

1951
Ralph Baer, an engineer with Loral, a company that develops and manufactures complex military airborne electronics, is instructed to "build the best TV set in the world." Baer suggests they add some kind of interactive game to the TV set to distinguish it from other companies' TVs, but management ignores the idea.

1954
Former US Korean War veteran David Rosen sees the popularity of mechanical coin-operated games on US military bases in Japan, so he starts Service Games to export these games to Japan. In the 1960s, Rosen decides to make his own coin-operated games, so he purchases a Tokyo jukebox and slot-machine company. The name SEGA, short for "SErvice GAmes," is stamped on the games that Rosen produces, and eventually Rosen adopts it as his company name.

1968
In February 1962 Steve Russell released "SpaceWar!", which is considered to be the first game intended for computers. A few years later, in 1968, SEGA releases Periscope. The first ever arcade shooting game.

(End of part 2)

Monday 24 November 2008

The history of computer games (part 1)

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By Leonard Herman, Jer Horwitz, Steve Kent, and Skyler Miller
Edited by Hooloovoo
Part 1:
In 1949, a young engineer named Ralph Baer was given an assignment to build a television set. He wasn't supposed to build just any television set, but one that would be the absolute best of all televisions. This was not a problem for Baer, but he wanted to go beyond his original assignment and incorporate some kind of game into the set. He didn't know exactly what kind of game he had in mind, but it didn't really matter because his managers nixed the idea. It would take another 18 years for his idea to become a reality, and by that time there would be other people to share in the glory, like Willy Higinbotham, who designed an interactive tennis game played on an oscilloscope (aptly named "tennis for two"), and Steve Russell, who programmed a rudimentary space game on a DEC PDP-1 mainframe computer. And then there was also Nolan Bushnell, who played that space game and dreamed of a time when fairground midways would be filled with games powered by computers.

Today, with interest in classic games gaining steam once again, players of video games are reminded of the rich history of the industry. Crave's Asteroids 64 is a modern version of a game that came out in 1979. And the original Asteroids was merely an updated version of Nolan Bushnell's Computer Space, which was really a jazzed-up copy of Steve Russell's Spacewar. Space Invaders, Centipede, Frogger, and Pong are once again on store shelves, and Pong is but a polished variant of the game Willie Higinbotham displayed on his oscilloscope.

The history of video games is not just about people. It's also about companies and ironies. Atari was an American company with a Japanese name, and the Japanese company Sega was started by an American. Magnavox, the company that started it all, is owned by Phillips, a company that is over a century old, and Nintendo, the company that made video games popular again, is just as old. And who would have ever thought Sony, the company that invented all types of electronics, from transistor radios to video recorders, would release a video game console that would become its top-selling product of all time?

In today's world, where video games are often cited as a source for teenage violence, it's interesting to see that the first home console also had a light rifle as an optional peripheral.

The world of video games continues to evolve. By reading about the past, perhaps you'll also get a glimpse of the future.

(end of part 1)

Sunday 23 November 2008

A smile (Χαμόγελο - Κ.Γ.Κ.)

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This is a recent video I made of the poem "Χαμόγελο"(A Smile) by the Greek poet Κ.Γ. Καρυωτάκης(1896-1928).

Many modern Greek poems have been turned into songs. The music is by Λένα Πλάτωνος and the vocals by Σαβίννα Γιαννάτου (pronounced Lena Platonos and Savina Giannatou respectively).