The Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. It is in the fifth generation of video game consoles, and it competed with fourth generation consoles released the same year, including the 16-bit Genesis, the 16-bit Super NES, and the 32-bit 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Jaguar has a Motorola 68000 CPU and two custom 32-bit coprocessors named Tom and Jerry. Atari marketed it as the world's first 64-bit game system, emphasizing its blitter's 64-bit bus; however, none of its three processors have a 64-bit instruction set, as do later 64-bit consoles such as PlayStation 2 or Nintendo 64. The Jaguar launched with Cybermorph as the pack-in game, which received mixed reviews. The system's library ultimately comprises only 50 licensed games.
Doom is a first-person shooter game developed and published by id Software. Released on December 10, 1993, for DOS, it is the first installment in the Doom franchise. The player assumes the role of a space marine, later unofficially referred to as Doomguy, fighting through hordes of undead humans and invading demons. The game begins on the moons of Mars and finishes in hell, with the player traversing each level to find its exit or defeat its final boss. It is an early example of 3D graphics in video games, and has enemies and objects as 2D images, a technique sometimes referred to as 2.5D graphics.
The Compact Disc-Interactive is a digital optical disc data storage format as well as a hardware platform, co-developed and marketed by Dutch company Philips and Japanese company Sony. It was created as an extension of CDDA and CD-ROM and specified in the Green Book specifications, co-developed by Philips and Sony, to combine audio, text and graphics. The two companies initially expected to impact the education/training, point of sale, and home entertainment industries, but the CD-i is largely remembered today for its video games.
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.
Lemmings is a puzzle-strategy video game originally developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis for the Amiga in 1991 and later ported for numerous other platforms. The game was programmed by Russell Kay, Mike Dailly and David Jones, and was inspired by a simple animation that Dailly created while experimenting with Deluxe Paint.
Backyard Sports is a video game series released for consoles, computers, and mobile devices created by Humongous Entertainment. The series is best known for starring a diverse cast of fictional children as well as child versions of famous professional sports athletes, such as Albert Pujols, Paul Pierce, Barry Bonds, Tim Duncan, Clint Mathis, Kevin Garnett, Tom Brady, David Ortiz, Joe Thornton, and Andy Macdonald. The Backyard Sports series was previously licensed by the five major professional American sports leagues: Major League Baseball (MLB), Major League Soccer (MLS), the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Hockey League (NHL), as well as their affiliated players associations. The series has changed ownership and developers several times since Humongous's 2005 closure; it is currently owned by a dedicated company called Backyard Sports LLC, which bought the series' rights in 2021. Playground Productions is the series' current publisher, having rebooted the series in 2024.
Prince of Persia is a 1989 cinematic platform game developed and published by Broderbund for the Apple II. It was designed and implemented by Jordan Mechner. Taking place in medieval Persia, players control an unnamed protagonist who must venture through a series of dungeons to defeat the evil Grand Vizier Jaffar and save an imprisoned princess.
Broderbund Software, Inc. was an American maker of video games, educational software, and productivity tools. Broderbund is best known for the 8-bit video game hits Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka, and Prince of Persia, as well as The Print Shop—originally for printing signs and banners on dot matrix printers—and the Myst and Carmen Sandiego games. The company was founded in Eugene, Oregon, and moved to San Rafael, California, then later to Novato, California. Broderbund was purchased by SoftKey in 1998.
Flashback, released as Flashback: The Quest for Identity in the United States, is a 1992 science fiction cinematic platform game. It was developed by Delphine Software of France and published by U.S. Gold in the United States and Europe, and by Sunsoft in Japan.
Spaceward Ho! is a turn-based science fiction computer strategy game that was written by Peter Commons, designed by Joe Williams and published by Delta Tao Software. The first version was released in 1990, and further upgrades followed regularly; the current version, 5.0.5, was released on July 8, 2003. It has received wide recognition in the Macintosh community, for example being inducted into the Macworld Game Hall of Fame.
The Playroom is an educational video game published in 1989 for MS-DOS, Apple II, and Mac. The game was compatible with the TouchWindow utility. It was ported to the Amiga and FM Towns computers in 1992 and 1994 respectively and then remade for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh in 1995. It was designed for ages 3 to 6 manufactured by Broderbund. A follow-up game titled The Treehouse was released in 1991 and a sequel to this game, called The Backyard in 1993.
Humongous Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Bothell, Washington. Founded in 1992, the company developed multiple edutainment franchises, most prominently Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, Spy Fox, and Backyard Sports, which, combined, sold over 15 million copies and earned more than 400 awards of excellence.
Animal Crossing is a social simulation video game series created and published by Nintendo. The series was conceptualized and created by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami. In Animal Crossing, the player character is a human who lives in a village inhabited by various anthropomorphic animals and can do various activities like fishing, insect catching, and fossil hunting. The series is notable for its open-ended gameplay, chill gameplay, cute dialogue, nice hourly music, and use of the video game console's internal clock and calendar to simulate real passage of time.
The Treehouse is a point-and-click educational video game for MS-DOS and then ported to Mac and the FM Towns, with Windows versions arriving later. Following the success of The Playroom, Broderbund created The Treehouse, which provides more content and furthers the user's ability to explore. First released in 1991, most copies were sold in educational supply stores rather than mainstream stores that sold computer software; it included a sing-along cassette tape. It was re-released in 1996 for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Although the Windows version has the same general activities, the characters, interface, and locations are different.
Japan Studio was a Japanese video game developer of Sony Interactive Entertainment based in Tokyo. It was best known for the Ape Escape, LocoRoco, Patapon, Gravity Rush, and Knack series, the Team Ico games, Bloodborne, The Legend of Dragoon, and Astro's Playroom. In April 2021, Japan Studio was reorganized and merged with Team Asobi and other SIE studios.
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
The PlayStation Camera is a motion sensor and camera accessory for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the successor to the PlayStation Eye for the PlayStation 3, which was released in 2007. It is also the motion sensor used to track the PlayStation VR virtual reality headset.
The Incredible Machine is a puzzle video game released in 1993, and the first release in The Incredible Machine video game series. The objective of the game is to create Rube Goldberg machines by arranging collections of objects in a complex fashion, so as to perform some simple task. The Even More Incredible Machine was an extended version of the original, also released in 1993; it had 160 levels, about twice the number of levels in the original game, and had more parts to use in the contraptions.
Zurk's Learning Safari is an educational adventure game by American studio Soleil Software. It was followed by Zurk's Rainforest Lab and Zurk's Alaskan Trek. They were part of a larger Soleil's Whole World Learning Series.
Team Asobi is a Japanese first-party video game developer for Sony Interactive Entertainment based in Tokyo. A Team Asobi was originally formed in 2012 as part of Japan Studio, but formally spun off into an independent studio within Sony's PlayStation Studios in April 2021. It is best known for the Astro Bot series.
