| Empire I: World Builders | |
|---|---|
 Box cover | |
| Developer(s) | Interactive Fantasies |
| Publisher(s) | Edu-Ware Services [1] |
| Designer(s) | David Mullich |
| Series | Empire |
| Platform(s) | Apple II |
| Release | 1981 |
Empire I: World Builders is a 1981 video game published by Edu-Ware Services Inc. It is the first game in the Empire trilogy, followed by Empire II: Interstellar Sharks (1982) and Empire III: Armageddon (1983). [2]
Set during the initial colonization period of a galactic Imperial civilization, the player chooses one of three classes (miner, missionary, or homesteader) and departs from the New York city spaceport to practice their chosen trade on the newly colonized planets. [3]
Rudy Kraft reviewed Empire I: World Builders in The Space Gamer No. 51. [4] Kraft commented that "I cannot recommend buying the game. The general system is interesting, and another game with fewer flaws would be a top-notch product, but World Builders is not." [4]
Zork is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and split the game into three titles—Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master—which were released commercially for a range of personal computers beginning in 1980. In Zork, the player explores the abandoned Great Underground Empire in search of treasure. The player moves between the game's hundreds of locations and interacts with objects by typing commands in natural language that the game interprets. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's commands. It has been described as the most famous piece of interactive fiction.
Space Invaders is a 1978 shoot 'em up arcade game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado. It was manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and licensed to the Midway division of Bally for overseas distribution. Space Invaders was the first fixed shooter and set the template for the shoot 'em up genre. The goal is to defeat wave after wave of descending aliens with a horizontally moving laser to earn as many points as possible.
Zaxxon is an isometric shooter arcade game, developed and released by Sega in 1982, in which the player pilots a ship through heavily defended space fortresses. Japanese electronics company Ikegami Tsushinki is also credited for having worked on the development of the game.
A video game genre is an informal classification of a video game based on how it is played rather than visual or narrative elements. This is independent of setting, unlike works of fiction that are expressed through other media, such as films or books. For example, a shooter game is still a shooter game, regardless of where or when it takes place. A specific game's genre is open to subjective interpretation. An individual game may belong to several genres at once.
Gorf is an arcade video game released in 1981 by Midway Manufacturing, whose name was advertised as an acronym for "Galactic Orbiting Robot Force". It is a fixed shooter with five distinct levels, the first of which is based on Space Invaders and another on Galaxian. The game makes heavy use of synthesized speech for the Gorfian robot which teases the player, powered by the Votrax speech chip. Gorf allows the player to buy 2 additional lives per quarter before starting the game, for a maximum of 7 lives.
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, known as Zoom 909 in Japan, is a pseudo-3D rail shooter video game released in arcades by Sega in 1982. The game is a forward-scrolling rail shooter where the player controls a spaceship in a third-person perspective, adapting the three-dimensional perspective of Sega's earlier racing game Turbo (1981) for the space shoot 'em up genre. It used the Buck Rogers license, referencing the space battles, though Buck himself is never seen.
The golden age of arcade video games was the period of rapid growth, technological development and cultural influence of arcade video games, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The period began with the release of Space Invaders in 1978, which led to a wave of shoot 'em up games such as Galaxian and the vector graphics-based Asteroids in 1979, made possible by new computing technology that had greater power and lower costs. Arcade video games transitioned from black-and-white to color, with titles such as Frogger and Centipede taking advantage of the visual opportunities of bright palettes.
1980 saw the release of a number of games with influential concepts, including Pac-Man, Battlezone, Crazy Climber, Mystery House, Missile Command, Phoenix, Rally-X, Space Panic, Stratovox, Zork, Adventure, and Olympic Decathlon. The year's highest-grossing video game was Namco's arcade game Pac-Man, while the best-selling home system was Nintendo's Game & Watch. The Atari VCS also grew in popularity with a port of Space Invaders and support from new third-party developer Activision.
Computer Bismarck is a computer wargame developed and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) in 1980. The game is based on the last battle of the battleship Bismarck, in which British Armed Forces pursue the German Bismarck in 1941. It is SSI's first game, and features turn-based gameplay and two-dimensional graphics.
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is a scrolling shooter video game written by Rex Bradford for the Atari 2600 and published by Parker Brothers in 1982. It was the first licensed Star Wars video game. An Intellivision version was released in 1983.
Superman is an action adventure game for the Atari Video Computer System designed by John Dunn and published by Atari, Inc. in 1979. It was one of the first single-player games for the system and one of the earliest licensed video games, released to be a tie-in with the 1978 film of the same name. Superman was built using the prototype code for Warren Robinett's Adventure, and ended up being published before Adventure was finished. Retro Gamer credits it among action-adventure games as the "first to utilize multiple screens as playing area".
Portals of Twilight is a supplement for fantasy role-playing games published by Judges Guild in 1981.
Hellfire Warrior is a dungeon crawl video game for the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 published by Automated Simulations in 1980. An Atari 8-bit family port was released in 1982. Hellfire Warrior is the direct sequel to 1979's Temple of Apshai.
Dragon's Eye is a 1981 fantasy role-playing video game published by Automated Simulations for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, and Commodore PET.
Adventure in Time is a text adventure for the Apple II published in 1981 by Phoenix Software. An Atari 8-bit family version was released in 1983.
Neutrons is a 1981 video game published by Level-10.
Empire II: Interstellar Sharks is a 1982 video game published by Edu-Ware Services Inc. It is the second game in the Empire trilogy, preceded by Empire I: World Builders (1981) and followed by Empire III: Armageddon (1983).
Empire III: Armageddon is a 1983 video game published by Edu-Ware Services Inc. It is the third game in the Empire trilogy, preceded by Empire I: World Builders (1981) and Empire II: Interstellar Sharks (1982).
The Final Conflict is a strategy game written by Thomas G. Cleaver for the Apple II and published by Hayden Software in 1982. An Atari 8-bit family version followed in 1983. In The Final Conflict, the human race has met its demise. What remains are the ruins of dead civilizations and two robot armies, loyal to the whims of their expired human creators.
How to Master the Video Games is a paperback book written by Tom Hirschfeld and published by Bantam Books in 1981. It is a guide to the 30 most popular coin-operated arcade games of its time. Hisrchfeld divides the included games into broad categories in the table of contents: Space Invaders-type, Asteroids-type, maze, reflex, and miscellaneous. Space Invaders-type corresponds to the modern genre of fixed shooter, while Asteroids-type is now called multidirectional shooter.