Russell Ginns | |
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Alma mater | University of Michigan |
Occupation(s) | Writer, game designer, composer, producer |
Website | russellginns |
Russell Ginns is a game designer, [1] [2] [3] writer, [4] [5] and composer, primarily known for children's fiction, puzzles, and educational games and songs. He is the author of more than 100 books, including Super Atomic Wombat Girl, Puzzlooies, 1-2-3 Scream! and the Samantha Spinner series. He has created or contributed to several notable software titles, including Castle Infinity , Hooked on Phonics , Reader Rabbit and Half-Life .
Ginns worked as an editor for Sesame Street Magazine, 3-2-1 Contact , and The Electric Company . He created the Nintendo Adventure Books series. [6] [7] and several dozen puzzle books, choose-your-own-adventure books, and young adult fiction. Titles include Puzzlooney!, [8] [9] [10] Go Figure, Midnight Science!, [11] and The Big Book of Kids' Puzzles. [12] [13] Ginns created more than 100 workbooks for Sylvan Learning, [14] [15] Dr. Seuss, Berenstain Bears, and Hooked on Phonics.
Between 2013 and 2015, Ginns wrote four collections of board books (The Little Box of Love; The Little Box of Laughs; The Little Box of Bedtime; and The Little Box of Classics) for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This series includes Is There a Chance You’ve Seen My Pants?, [16] Bird on My Head, and Monster Love.
In 2017, Random House published the first title in Ginns's book series, Samantha Spinner and the Super-Secret Plans . [17] [18] [19] He wrote My Big Book of Feelings for Rodale Press in 2020, [20] the graphic novel Super Atomic Wombat Girl, and the Puzzlooies, series, a hybrid puzzle-story book format. [21] The initial launch featured twelve titles, including Marooned on the Moon, One of Our Giant Robots Is Missing, and Space Cats to the Rescue. [22] His 2022 title 1-2-3 Scream! is an anthology of humorous horror stories. [23]
Ginns has also been published under the names Clyde Bosco, P. C. Russell Ginns, Jacques Barniarde, Kravis Winewater, Hans Shingle, and R. U. Ginns.
Ginns was the lead designer of [24] Castle Infinity , [25] the first MMORPG for kids. He wrote the original story treatment for Valve's Half-Life , as well as games for Hooked on Phonics , [26] Hasbro, Sesame Street, and Lode Runner .
Ginns has worked as a designer/producer with several independent game publishers, developing titles that include Crop Circles, [27] [28] Pop! The Balloon Dog Puzzle Game , [29] and AlphaNatix., [30] Thud!, Mercury Messenger, and Smart Kart.
His published board games include Wordspot, [31] Schmear, Search Party, and Chess on the Loose.
Mewtwo is a Pokémon, a fictional creature from Nintendo and Game Freak. Created by Ken Sugimori, it debuted in the video games Pokémon Red and Blue, and later appeared in subsequent sequels and spin-off titles, such as Pokken Tournament. In the video games, the player can fight and capture Mewtwo in order to subsequently pit it against other Pokémon. The player first learns of Mewtwo late in Pokémon Red and Blue by reading research documents left in a ruined laboratory on Cinnabar Island. Mewtwo is regarded as one of the series' strongest Pokémon, and was the strongest in the original games in terms of base statistic distribution. It is known as the "Genetic Pokémon" and is a Legendary Pokémon, a special group of Pokémon that are very rare and usually very powerful. Mewtwo has also appeared in various animated adaptations of the franchise.
The Learning Company (TLC) was an educational software company founded in 1980 in Palo Alto, California and headquartered in Fremont, California. The company produced a grade-based line of learning software, edutainment games, and productivity tools. Its titles included the flagship series Reader Rabbit, for preschoolers through second graders, and The ClueFinders, for more advanced students. The company was also known for publishing licensed educational titles featuring characters such as Arthur, Scooby-Doo, Zoboomafoo, and Caillou.
ClueFinders is an educational software series aimed at children aged 8–12 that features a group of mystery-solving teenagers. The series was created by The Learning Company as a counterpart to their Reader Rabbit series for older, elementary-aged students. The series has received praise for its balance of education and entertainment, resulting in numerous awards.
Balloon Fight is an action video game developed by Nintendo and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. The original arcade version was released for the Nintendo VS. System internationally as Vs. Balloon Fight, while its Nintendo Entertainment System counterpart was released in Japan in 1985 and internationally in 1986.
Hooked on Phonics is a commercial brand of educational materials, originally designed for reading education through phonetics. First marketed in 1987, it used systematic phonics and scaffolded stories to teach letter–sound correlations (phonics) as part of children's literacy. The program has since expanded to encompass a wide variety of media, including books, computer games, music, videos, and flash cards in addition to books in its materials, as well as to include other subject areas. The target audience for this brand is primarily individuals and home school parents. The product was advertised extensively on television and radio throughout the 1990s.
Nintendo gamebooks are novels based on video games created by Nintendo. The gamebooks feature characters and settings from the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda franchises, in two series, Nintendo Adventure Books and You Decide on the Adventure.
M.C. Kids is a 1992 platform video game developed and published by Virgin Interactive. It was initially released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in February 1992 in North America, and by Ocean Software in May 1993 in Europe. As a licensed product for the McDonald's fast food restaurant chain, the game stars two children named Mack and Mick who venture into the fantasy world of McDonaldland in order to return Ronald McDonald's magical bag which has been stolen by the Hamburglar. The game was created by four people in eight months: Darren Bartlett Gregg Iz-Tavares and Dan Chang (programming) and Charles Deenen (audio).
Reader Rabbit is an educational game franchise created in 1984 by The Learning Company. The series is aimed at children from infancy to the age of nine. In 1998, a spiritual successor series called The ClueFinders was released for older students aged seven to twelve.
I Spy is a children's book series with text written by Jean Marzollo, photographs by Walter Wick, and published by Scholastic Press. Each page contains a photo with objects in it, and the riddles accompanying the photo state which objects have to be found.
Kirby is an action-platform video game series developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. The series centers around the adventures of a pink round hero named Kirby as he fights to protect and save his home on the distant Planet Popstar from a variety of threats. The majority of the games in the series are side-scrolling platformers with puzzle-solving and beat 'em up elements. Kirby has the ability to inhale enemies and objects into his mouth, spitting them out as a projectile or eating them. If he inhales certain enemies, he can gain the powers or properties of that enemy manifesting as a new weapon or power-up called a Copy Ability. The series is intended to be easy to pick up and play even for people unfamiliar with action games, while at the same time offering additional challenge and depth for more experienced players to come back to.
Mario is a Japanese multimedia franchise created by Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto for video game company Nintendo which produces and publishes its installments. Starring the titular Italian plumber Mario, it is primarily a video game franchise, but has extended to other forms of media, including television series, comic books, a 1993 feature film, a 2023 animated film and theme park attractions. The series' first installment was 1983's Mario Bros., although Mario had made his first appearance in 1981's arcade game Donkey Kong, and had already been featured in several games of the Donkey Kong and Game & Watch series. The Mario games have been developed by a wide variety of developers including Nintendo, Hudson Soft, and AlphaDream. Mario games have been released almost exclusively for Nintendo's various video game consoles and handhelds, from the third generation onward.
Carmen Sandiego Adventures in Math is a series of five games released in 2011/2012 for the Wii, and is part of the Carmen Sandiego franchise. The style of the games are reminiscent of comic books. The 5-part series were the first English language console games from the Carmen Sandiego franchise since The Secret of the Stolen Drums. These "short, educational detective adventures" were only available as a download through the Nintendo Wii Shop. The games were developed by Gamelion Studios, and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. They could take up to 6 players, and required 600 Wii points. Maths topics included in the games include: Symmetry, Identifying angles, Graphing coordinates on a grid, Logic puzzles, Working with fractions, Solving equations, and Tangrams. The games are designed for elementary learners across grades 3–5.
Madeline is a series of educational point-and-click adventure video games which were developed during the mid-1990s for Windows and Mac systems. The games are an extension of the Madeline series of children's books by Ludwig Bemelmans, which describe the adventures of a young French girl. The video-game series was produced concurrently with a TV series of the same name, with characters and voice actors from the show.
Detective Barbie is a series of three mystery themed point and click adventure games starring the character Barbie. The series consists of Detective Barbie In the Mystery of the Carnival Caper! (1998) Detective Barbie 2: The Vacation Mystery (1999), and Detective Barbie: The Mystery Cruise (2000). The first two games were developed by Gorilla Systems Corporation and published on the PC by Mattel Media/Mattel Interactive. The third game was developed for the PlayStation by Runecraft.
Puzzled is a falling-block puzzle video game developed and published by SNK that was released for Neo Geo arcade hardware in 1990, the Neo Geo home console in 1991, and the Neo Geo CD in 1994. The game was ported to mobile phones in 2005, then was re-published by D4 Enterprise on the Wii Virtual Console in June 2011, and it is also one of the twenty games that came pre-loaded on the Neo Geo X console released in 2012. It was also ported in August 2017 to Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 as part of Hamster Corporation's ACA Neo Geo series.
Samantha Spinner and the Super-Secret Plans is a children's mystery novel centered on an eponymous character, Samantha, an 11-year-old from Seattle. Her uncle Paul disappeared mysteriously and left her siblings expensive gifts. Her brother, Nipper, received the New York Yankees. Her sister, Buffy, received $2,400,000,000. Samantha received only a rusty red umbrella. Eventually, she discovered that the umbrella lining contains maps and diagrams to secret means of traveling around the globe.