Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. Designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, it was one of the most commercially successful games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of the first with a significant female player base. The primary objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede that winds down the playing field. An arcade sequel, Millipede, followed in 1982.
Ensemble Studios was an American video game developer. It was founded by Tony Goodman in 1994 and incorporated the following year. It borrowed the name of Ensemble Corporation, a consulting firm founded by Goodman in 1990. It was acquired by Microsoft in 2001 and operated as an internal studio until 2009, when its development capabilities were officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo Wars. In addition to game development, Ensemble Studios also made the Genie Game Engine used in Age of Empires, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. The studio sold 20 million games and was worth an estimated $500 million.
Trade Wars is a series of video games dating back to 1984. The video games are inspired by Hunt the Wumpus, the board game Risk, and the original space trader game Star Trader.
Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD) is a text-based online role-playing video game, released in 1989 by Robinson Technologies. LORD is one of the best known door games. The player's goal is to improve their skills in order to defeat the Red Dragon which has been attacking the village. The software is compatible with DOS, Microsoft Windows, and OS/2. The game was sold to and is currently owned by Metropolis Gameport.
A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone, tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.
Robinson Technologies is a Japanese video game developer founded by Seth Robinson. The company produced the BBS door games Legend of the Red Dragon, Planets: The Exploration of Space and Growtopia, an experimental multiplayer creative sandbox created as a collaboration with Hamumu Software, released in 2013 for iOS, Android, Microsoft Windows, and macOS.
X3: Reunion is a single-player space trading and combat video game developed by Egosoft and published by Deep Silver. It is the third installment in the X series and the sequel to X2: The Threat (2003), which in turn followed X: Beyond the Frontier (1999). X3: Reunion was released originally for Windows in 2005. The game was later ported to Mac OS X and Linux.
Mafia Wars is a defunct freemium multiplayer social network game created by Zynga. Players assume the roles of gangsters while building their own Mafia-type organization. The players fight and "rob" other players online - completing jobs, missions, and operations to gain rewards and strength in an endless game.
FarmVille is a series of agriculture-simulation social network games developed and published by Zynga in 2009. It is similar to Happy Farm and Farm Town. Its gameplay involves various aspects of farmland management, such as plowing land, planting, growing, and harvesting crops, harvesting trees and raising livestock. The sequels FarmVille 2 and FarmVille 3 were released in September 2012 and November 2021, respectively.
Space Trader is a strategy game for Palm OS and Windows Mobile PDAs. It was released in 2002 by Pieter Spronck, a scientist at Tilburg University, and was inspired by David J. Webb's PalmPilot game SolarWars and the 1980s classic 3D strategy game Elite. The game is free software under the GNU General Public License. It has since been ported to various other Platforms by other people as well.
Words with Friends is a multiplayer computer word game developed by Newtoy. Players take turns building words crossword-puzzle style in a manner similar to the classic board game Scrabble. The rules of the two games are similar, but Words with Friends is not associated with the Scrabble brand. Up to 40 games can be played simultaneously using push notifications to alert players when it is their turn. Players may look up friends either by username or through Facebook, or be randomly assigned an opponent through "Smart Match". Players can also find potential opponents using Community Match.
Zynga Poker is a social game developed by Zynga as an application for the social-networking website Facebook as well as Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Windows, MySpace, Tagged, and Google+. It was launched in July 2007.
Catan, previously known as The Settlers of Catan or simply Settlers, is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber. It was first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag (Kosmos) as Die Siedler von Catan. Players take on the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring resources. Players gain victory points as their settlements grow and the first to reach a set number of victory points, typically 10, wins. The game and its many expansions are also published by Catan Studio, Filosofia, GP, Inc., 999 Games, Κάισσα (Káissa), and Devir. Upon its release, The Settlers of Catan became one of the first Eurogames to achieve popularity outside Europe. As of 2020, more than 32 million copies in 40 languages had been sold.
Temple Run is an endless runner video game developed and published by Imangi Studios. The player controls an explorer who has obtained an ancient relic and runs from demonic monkey-like creatures chasing him. The game was initially released for iOS devices on August 3, 2011, and later ported to Android systems and Windows Phone 8.
NimbleBit, LLC is an American developer and publisher of iOS and Android mobile apps. It was co-founded by brothers David and Ian Marsh. Their titles include Pocket Frogs, Tiny Tower, Pocket Planes and Disco Zoo.
Bubble Safari is a defunct tile-matching social network game by Zynga. The object is to help a monkey named Bubbles reconnect with his friends. Following its May 2012 release, Bubble Safari became the fastest-growing Facebook game, with 1.9 million active users for the week of July 9. PC Magazine ranked Bubble Safari as no. 5 on its Best Facebook Games list. Arcade game designer Mark Turmell, noted for such games as NBA Jam, received credit for Bubble Safari’s development. Bubble Safari is Zynga’s first arcade game, the first Zynga game released on Zynga.com and Facebook simultaneously, and the first game from Zynga San Diego.
Montopia was a social role-playing game, the first created by Zynga for mobile devices. Players attempted to uncover the truth about Montopia, a lost monster Utopia while collecting and fusing monsters together to strengthen their abilities. The game was shut down on December 21, 2012.
Pacific Rim was a 2013 video game published and developed by Yuke's for Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation 3 via PlayStation Network based on the film Pacific Rim, and was a fighting game where players choose between the film's Jaegers and Kaiju. The game was delisted from both digital stores and platforms in 2016.
Ancient Trader is a turn-based strategy video game developed by the Slovakian studio 4Kids Games. It was released in 2010 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox Live on Xbox 360, and iOS. The player controls a ship, allowing them to explore the world and engage in trading while seeking three artifacts that will help to defeat the game's main antagonist, a sea creature called the Ancient Guardian.
The popularisation of mobile games began as early as 1997 with the introduction of Snake preloaded on Nokia feature phones, demonstrating the practicality of games on these devices. Several mobile device manufacturers included preloaded games in the wake of Snake's success. In 1999, the introduction of the i-mode service in Japan allowed a wide variety of more advanced mobile games to be downloaded onto smartphones, though the service was largely limited to Japan. By the early 2000s, the technical specifications of Western handsets had also matured to the point where downloadable applications could be supported, but mainstream adoption continued to be hampered by market fragmentation between different devices, operating environments, and distributors.
