Final grades are posted on the grades page.
Final grades are posted on the grades page.
Grades have been updated again.
Grades have been updated!
Extra credit is available to boost your grade. You can read all the details here:
I’ll cover this in class, or feel free to contact me anytime.
Grades have been updated, April 27th at 2pm. If you have any issues or see anything that’s not correct, let me know ASAP.
All late work must be completed and turned in by Saturday May 3 at 3:00 pm (no exceptions). This is the Saturday following our last class.
This class started with a discussion about the 5th generation of consoles (the Saturn, Playstation, a nd N64). This was the first entry into the console market by Sony, and they dominated this era with about 70% of console sales.
We then looked at PC gaming at the same time, and one very important game - Half-Life by Valve Software. This was a very important game for many reasons (technology, gameplay, story, mods, etc) and pushed PC gaming, and gaming in general, forward. We then looked at games that would follow (Counter-Strike, HL2).
After this, we examined the Dreamcast, the Playstation 2, the Gamecube and the original XBOX. The Playstation 2 would again dominate this round, but the XBOX made some important changes - it established MS as a serious player, and helped push game consoles online with XBOX Live.
This class will have a total of 4 assignments, all of which have been given at this point:
I will update grades over the weekend, and add extra credit assignments too, if you want to improve your grade. Contact me with any questions.
In this class we examined the jump to 3D.
During the early 90’s, iD software developed some great shareware games that essentially created the shareware model of software and games - give away the first level, or part of the game, then charge for the rest. Early iD games always pushed technology, and the ones that are most popular pushed gameplay forward via creative use of technology:
All of these games were revolutionary in their own way, and were joined by other great games from other companies (Marathon, Unreal, Duke Nukem 3D). PC gaming has always been at the forefront of technology innovation, and 3D was no exception. The console market would go 3D also, with the release of the Sony Playstation, the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64.
No assignment was given.
This class covered the end of the 8-bit era, and we covered a few games that came to life on the NES and are still going strong today:
We then looked at the following systems from the 16-bit era, from the late 80’s - early 90’s:
During this era, two competing games brought new energy to the arcades, too:
During the early 90s, PC gaming was also picking up, fueled by the easy of development and increasing audio and video capabilities. Some of the standouts from this era:
No assignment was given.
In this class we concluded talking about the start of home computing and home computer gaming. We finished looking at the Apple ][, then looked at the Commodore 64 and the Apple Macintosh. Some interesting links that follow from this conversation:
We then looked at Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto. In 1983, Nintendo had great success in the arcades, and they felt that the home crash in the US was due to a lack of interesting in bad games, not games overall. Nintendo introduced the Famicom in Japan in 1983, and the US version, the NES, in 1985. The game included stellar arcade conversions of popular nintendo games (Donkey Kong, etc), as well as a stellar lineup of original titles (Super Mario Bros, Excitebike, Zelda, and many more). This console was very popular in Japan, and restarted the US market.
The fourth (of five) assignment was given, and is due on April 9:
Assignment 4, Review a classic Apple ][ Game (PDF, 71k)
Please contact me with any questions.