Nicholas Wolf's Journal Entries

[Venerable_Wolf]

All of the Journal Entries written by Nicholas Wolf are all here

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf

Journal Entry #1 (1/15/25)


Name: Cheat / I Doubt It / Bullshit


Author/Studio: Because the game is so simple, it is hard to pinpoint a specific person who could claim responsibility for creating Cheat.


Platform: Card Game (Shedding-Type Party Game)


Original Platform & control mechanism :


The game is played usually on a 52-card pack when playing with 4 or fewer players, however when a group is 5 or more, it is generally accepted to mix two 52-card packs for an enjoyable experience.


Hands are used to manipulate the cards on a table to play the game with a party of people.


Would the experience have been different using the original? How? :


The deck of cards is the original way of playing Cheat and the only games that are similar to Cheat are other card or board games of similar complexity,


Describe gameplay and mechanics: (~ 150 words) :


The game is typically played once the deck has been shuffled and the dealer has split the entire deck equally among the number of players playing, leaving some to have more than others, and some, less than others. After that the players play clockwise from the dealer's position with the dealer calling aces, then twos on the second player, and so on until the table reaches kings (twelve) from which they revert to aces until a person completely uses all of their cards from their hand.


The players during the cycle of the card game can play any card in their deck with the ability to play more than one card during their turn. However other players are allowed at any time during a player's round to call out the player with the name of the game if they believe they put down a false card that is different than what they were supposed to put down during their turn. If the accuser is correct, the person who put down the false card is required to take the whole stack of cards including their own. The game ends after one player has exhausted all of their cards and clears their turn without being called out for it.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design: (~ 150 words) :


The strengths of the art come through the overall design of the cards you decide to use, as you can have as fancy or as simplistic as the player desires for their game. Otherwise, the strengths and weaknesses of the card's art and design cannot be determined as every brand of cards has different designs and themes, making it difficult to have a unified art style and critique it fairly and honestly.


This means that the Player's entire artistic experience with the game would entirely depend on how much money they are willing to spend on a deck of cards at one time. This leads to a lack of visual identity with the player as the cheat is not the only game you can play with a deck of cards, creating a lack of identity with the deck of cards in the game itself. However, this can also be a strength as the lack of a concrete visual identity of the cards in the game provides users with the ability to play a completely different game than cheat and not be hampered as a deck of cards is in itself, an open-source game with extensive user accessibility. This means that the player is not bound to the rules of the game and is allowed to modify the game to suit the time and the place where the game takes place without hampering the players.


What made it fun? (~ 200 words) :


The enjoyment that comes from the game is the ability to truthfully play the game without ever lying, or lying the entire game and never playing by the rules in the first place and having the freedom to do so at the user’s discretion. The user is not limited in how they can achieve a victory, only by what they can come up with to win within the confines of the rules set by the group. Since it is purely up to luck whether or not a player will have the appropriate card for the round, the player will inevitably have to lie in a manner that will not get them caught which makes it a good balance of luck and skill.


Not to mention, the rounds of BS can go very quickly so long as someone is bold enough to get rid of most of their cards in big swathes, making it fun and engaging without any downtime. This is further helped by the fact that it does not take a lot of time to explain the game to others who are ignorant of the game and make them capable of playing the game in a short 5 minutes or less.


The strength of BS is that it relies on a pack of cards, something many people have in their houses. This makes it so that people of many economic backgrounds can play the game without needing to think about the buy-in cost.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games? (~ 200 words) :


BS could be considered influential as it is a game of deceit and honesty as the players could play either way and it would be seen as a viable way to play the game. The influence can be seen in the most recent game ‘Liars Bar’ which is a mix of BS and Russian Roulette which has had its bit of popularity on the internet. In the history of games, Cheat could be seen as an early version of the deception genre alongside other deception-based card games with its own unique mechanics


Cheat is a game with a low barrier for entry allowing people to play the game at a low budget, allowing for a casual playing experience without the need for a high cost of playing. This can be seen as an influence on the free-to-play or low-cost indie games of today, where the game may lack the substance of storytelling and complex game mechanics. It makes up for it in direct player interaction with other people, engaging deception, and deduction gameplay while it will not be a game that a person will sink 500 hours into, the player experience will still be great even while playing only in 30-minute sessions.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good)) :


I would rate the game at a strong 5 stars as it was enjoyable. It was easy to learn and start playing at a decent level with a smooth learning curve. There were no strategies that an experienced player would have over a new player in playing BS, making it beginner-friendly.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf


Journal Entry #2 (1/16/25)


Name of Game - Backgammon

Game author - Unknown

Game Studio - The modern version that I played was from 17th-century England; however, the game's origins date back to around 2000 BC.


Original Platform & control mechanism :


The original version that can be seen as Backgammon's earliest known ancestor is the game of Senet, which originated in 3000 BC. While Senet boards from 1550 BC were recovered, the overall rules of the game were lost to history, meaning that historians could only recreate it based on what came before and what came after the game. Because the Romans were not interested in the game itself, instead they invented the game Tabula to replace Senet, which meant that the ancient rules of Senet were not preserved, though they likely shared similar rules with Tabula, as the game was inspired by Senet.


The control mechanism for Senet was the Senet board, a rectangular grid of 30 squares, arranged in three rows of ten. Some squares were marked with symbols indicating special rules or actions.


Games pieces and throwing sticks were used. The pieces served as tokens, which were to be moved in an “S-shaped” pattern to escape the board and avoid obstacles and opponents.


There were Special Squares indicated on the board by icons indicating safe zones for the player's pawns, and others showing special dangers and requirements for the player's pawns to process safely.


While Senet relies on being played through random rolls to move the pawns and ultimately escape. Players through their strategic decisions can easily overcome luck and succeed in winning the game.


Control mechanism you used and would the experience have been different using the original? How? :


The control mechanism of Backgammon is the dice rolls that each player does with their respective colored dies, where the player can either play the die counts separately or combine them to be used on one piece to move it further.


If a piece, like a checker, is moved on top of a singular enemy piece that is alone in one of the triangles, it will be sent to the “bar,” where the opponent will need to spend their next turn getting it out as required where it will end up in the opposing players home region.


Finally, if one of the players is allowed to get all their pieces into their home region, they can begin “bearing off” checkers by removing them from the board if the die count matches their positions from the exit area. However, if there is no other exact move they can do with the die number, the player is still allowed to ‘bear off’. The player can use any value even if it is not exact so long as it is more than the moves needed to bear off in the first place, and there is not any other piece that can be moved but not ‘born off’ with that value.


There is a die specifically used for betting; however, if no betting is taking place, the die is useless for the duration of the game.


Describe gameplay and mechanics(~ 150 words) :


The gameplay of Backgammon is similar to Senet. The board is similar to the interior of a briefcase, with 24 triangular-sided points, 12 on both of the widest sides. The players play on opposite sides of the wide sides of the board, which is split into four quadrants: the two players' home regions and the two outer board parts that separate the home regions.


The objective of the game is for each player to move their respective colored pieces into their respective home region by rolling the dice and moving counterclockwise according to the dice number until the players begin to move their pieces into their respective home regions.


After every one of the player's pieces are in their home region they can start to ‘Bear off’ their pieces or remove them from the board. If, for any reason, a player’s home region piece is removed from the space and played on the ‘bar’ while a player is bearing off pieces, they must immediately get that piece back into their respective home region since they cannot continue bearing off pieces until all of their respective pieces are in their home region. Each player’s turn consists of this until one player ‘bears off’ all of their pieces, making them the winner of the game.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design(~ 150 words) : ":The Design that I played with:"


The overall design of the game at first glance looks very complicated however, with a quick understanding of the rules and what the things on the board symbolize, the board becomes very simplistic and can be easily compared to a classical game of checkers. The problem with the design is that it could easily scare away new players if they were looking to play the game as compared to other board games on offer. The suitcase does not help the matter as it makes players think of Backgammon as a complex intricate game that has to be played competitively otherwise you are not playing it correctly. Additionally, there are components in the game like the betting cups and the betting die that incentivize the players into betting stuff, which would ward anyone from playing with family as it could lead to conflict.


The Strengths of the Board however are the simply defined colors in the board that do not overbear the eyes, and the creative use of contrast makes it easy for the color blind to play easily with the two contrasting color schemes.


What made it fun?(~ 200 words) :


The fun that I had while playing Backgammon is that it manages to be a more emotionally enriching game than most games due to how easily you can mess up the other player's plans in the game. Rather than most games where the players have to engage with each other in some capacity, in Backgammon, it is a viable strategy to completely disregard your opponent and just rush to get all your pieces into your home region as soon as possible and just fight your opponent on who will get better rolls rather than fighting with strategy.


The only downside is that the game relies a lot on luck for a player to have an easy victory because otherwise, both players are going to be getting bad rolls leading to a much longer game than anticipated along with messing with the other player eventually is going to become infuriating as neither side can begin to bear off or one player is unlucky to not be able to capture any of their opponent's pieces while their opponent constantly captures their pieces though no fault of their own can sour a players opinion of the game and make them not want a rematch.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games? (~ 200 words) :


The game’s influence cannot be understated as you could easily reference many different types of games that had their influence from Backgammon.


The social aspect of Backgammon has allowed it to be reinvented and become a staple in the modern day due to how it is an expressly two-player game meaning you become more emotionally invested in your opponent than if you were playing a game like Uno, where the emotions are more widely spread out among all of the other players. This leads to better social bonds than if you had simply played with a large group where the emotions would be more evenly distributed among the players rather than be focused on one person who you are competing against.


An immediate connection in the modern era to Backgammon would be checkers as the ability to capture a lone piece if it is by itself, but the inability to capture any pieces if there is a second piece helping guard the first one is reminiscent of backgammon in addition to the ability of double capturing two pieces if the situation is right. The color scheme is also seen in checkers with there being many checker sets that mirror the maroon and white color aesthetic to good effect. Additionally, the rule that your pieces can only move forward and not backward is a trait seen in checkers and in Backgammon though both games have completely different objectives as checkers is an elimination-style game while Backgammon is an objective-styled game.

How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good)) :

I would rate Backgammon 3 out of 5 stars. While the game was fun to play, there is a lot of chance involved in how fast both players will get their pieces in their respective home regions. The game can often slow down as pieces captured drastically slow down the match, especially when both players get their pieces captured, which then resets their position, tilting both players until one player eventually surrenders and asks to play a better game like chutes and ladders.


The good parts of the game are the interactions the player has with their opponent as both acts of revenge capture each other's pieces in good fun and the fact that a game of Backgammon can on average take 15 minutes or less to play making a quick game to play with a friend if both are bored and a good time so long as you're both lucky enough to get good dice rolls and did not decide to bet money, you will likely have a good time with this one.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf


Journal Entry #2.5 (1/22/25) (Not an official one though still did it)


Name of Game: ‘International’ Chess


Game author (If known): The author or creator of modern-day chess with its rules was known to have originated in Southern Europe in the late 15th century AD, though the exact person to do so is clouded in mystery.


Game Studio: The ‘Studio’ that made chess is known to have originated in Southern Europe in the late 15th century AD. It was based on the Persian / Iranian game Shatranj, which was then introduced to the Islamic world and Europe through conquest and trade.


Original Platform & control mechanism:


The original platform that chess is assumed to have originated from is the game Shatranj which in itself originated from Chaturanga, an Indian game in the 6th century AD


Chaturanga was played on an 8×8 uncheckered board, called ashtāpada, which is also the name of a game. The board sometimes had special markings, the meaning of which are unknown today. These marks were not related to chaturanga but were drawn on the board only by tradition. These special markings coincide with squares unreachable by any of the four gajas that start on the board due to movement rules.


Raja (King): Moves one square in any direction (like the king in chess).

Mantri (Counselor or Minister): Moves diagonally one square at a time (similar to a weak version of the chess queen).

Ratha (Chariot): Moves horizontally or vertically any number of squares (like the rook).

Gaja (Elephant): Moves two squares diagonally, leaping over the intermediate square (a unique movement, not found in modern chess).

Ashva (Horse): Moves in an L-shape, like the knight in chess.

Padati (Foot Soldier): Moves one square forward and captures diagonally (similar to pawns in chess).


This would allow any avid player of chess to have a good experience playing Chaturanga due to the noticeable similarities between the two games, especially when the board and pieces like nearly identical to the ones used in international Chess.


Control mechanism you used:


Chess is a board game played on an 8 by 8 square tiled board. It has over 16 white pieces and 16 black pieces on opposite sides of the board. The vertical section of the board is typically numbered from 1 to 8, while the horizontal section is labeled alphabetically from A to H.


Of the 16 pieces 8 of them are ‘Pawns’, 2 of them are ‘Rooks’, 2 of them are ‘Knights’, 2 of them are ‘Bishops’, 1 of them is a ‘Queen’, and 1 is a ‘King’ Piece.


Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


The experience would been similar as both the boards and the pieces to an extent are the same except for a couple of minor differences. The piece's movement patterns are the same as well as the board is an 8x8 square that is tiled in black and white. The major difference is that you have to capture the king unlike in chess where the king needs to be put into checkmate.


Describe gameplay and mechanics~ 150 words


The gameplay of chess is a turn-based strategy game where the main focus of the game is to ‘capture’ the enemy king by making it so the king cannot defend itself even on the enemy’s turn. This is mainly done by making it so the king is attackable by a piece and is unable to avoid or block the attack in any way, leading to a ‘Checkmate’.


If the enemy king is directly threatened by a piece, the enemy enters ‘Check’, however, if the King piece is unable to block, dodge, or get rid of the threatening piece, then it becomes ‘Checkmate’ where the player doing the checking wins the game.


Pawn movements consist of being able to move forward one square, or if it is the pawn's first move, it can move forward two squares. When the pawn is capturing the enemy has to be in a tile diagonal to the pawn and in front of it, unless the pawn is doing an En passant move where a pawn captures a pawn that has just moved two squares forward from its starting position by capturing it diagonally like usual. Pawns also have the special power to be promoted or converted into any other chess piece other than the King. Typically players convert their Pawns to be Queens.

Rooks can move any number of squares horizontally or vertically and capture by landing on an enemy piece with their movement.

The Knight's movements consist of moving in an "L" shape up or down, left or right, making them highly maneuverable compared to other pieces. Knights also capture by simply landing on the piece they want to capture.

Bishops can move any number of squares diagonally and similarly capture by simply moving into the square of an opponent's piece. However, because the board is an even 8x8, the bishop is limited to the color tile sequence on which it began the game.

The Queen combines the movements of the rook and bishop making it able to move in any vertical horizontal or diagonal direction as she pleases. Queen pieces simply walk onto and capture pieces as they land on them through movement.

The king is the most important piece in the game, though it can only move one space, it can move in any direction so long as it is not in an enemy’s potential movement or capture patterns.



Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design~ 150 words


While there is not one universal design for chess boards that people typically use, the black-and-white color scheme that is universally used helps differentiate the two groups of pieces. The visually distinctive pieces are easily distinguishable from one another not allowing any confusion over which piece is which.


The weakness of the design is that while chess is not an overly stimulating game, it is also not a stimulating one as most games are done in absolute silence usually a couple of words being exchanged among the two players throughout the game’s duration.


Additionally, the clear-cut colors and the overall community that plays Chess have made the game one that can and will never be played casually and is and forever will be a competitive game, leading to few instances where there have been house rules ever used in chess due to how standardized the game has become over the centuries.


What made it fun?~ 200 words:


The fun part about chess is the high skill ceiling for play yet the game can also be enjoyed in a casual setting with friends and family making it a generally good game to own, especially with the low cost of entry that many sets allow with their affordability.


The game piece's various special movements help make the game special by having so many movement combinations that it creates a unique experience every time the player starts a new game. The piece's various abilities give just enough room for error even if the player is inexperienced they can still have some level of fun while playing the game. While allowing advanced players the ability to learn more and take advantage of all of the abilities and movements to become good.


The best part about chess is the fact that since everybody takes the game very seriously, playing the game in an unorthodox manner tends to lead to fun games, especially if you crack jokes about the situations happening on the board. This can in turn lead to a good game where both players play for victory but it is not a stressful experience for anyone. Or they could become tilted and increasingly agitated and hostile, which is still funny.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games?~ 200 words


Chess and the ancient mind games of the ancient era are all good examples of how humanity in addition to wanting to play fun games, also wanted to play mindfully and have to think out all of their actions and to not just participate in mindless play. Chess could easily be considered the reason that we have many video games in the modern day that include rationality and mindfulness in addition to being fun games.


Chess in and of itself is a game that is so perfect in its design that as previously stated there is no reason to make up house rules since the game itself is pretty well balanced on both sides despite being a turn-based game. Any 4x-styled game can also be seen as a more complex form of Chess as you manage resources instead of pieces and have win conditions concerning the conquest of your enemies. The spin-off games of chess itself only sought to further complicate and exaggerate the complexity of chess by making it even more complex like Donut Chess and 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel.


Even from its humble Indian origins the game also debuted in Persia, the Islamic countries, and finally, Europe proving that even early civilizations of various cultures liked playing intellectual games despite their religious and societal differences.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good))


I would rate this game as 5 stars as Chess is an experience that I think anyone regardless of skill level will enjoy as, even if it is not correct, the player is given the freedom to play however they desire.


Because of its constant patches throughout the eras in the differing iterations of chess, the game overall has become a well-balanced board game that appeals to a wide variety of people to the extent that it is often named international chess due to the various countries that play it.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf


Journal Entry # 3 - 1/27/2025


Name of Game: Ironic Computer Space Simulator - ICSS (1971)


Game author (If known): The two developers of Computer Space were Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, the Founders of Atari


Game Studio: The developers of Computer Space were Syzygy Engineering (Later known as Atari Inc.)


Original Platform & control mechanism:


Funnily enough, Bushnell and Dabney both sought inspiration from Spacewar!, one of the first-ever video games that was developed at MIT. Through SpaceWar! was initially developed as a sort of research project at MIT, Computer Space was developed specifically to be a commercial, arcade game from the getgo with profit in mind due to how revolutionary the concept was and how the developers most likely expected a warm reception to their game.


Spacewar! was a local multiplayer game in which two players played against each other. A gravity well attempted to pull the players in while both players attempted to blast each other out of the air and destroy their opponents. Because of the gravity, well players would need to keep moving as their ship is slowly dragged to their doom, so conflict is inevitable if either player is to secure a victory.


Control mechanism you used. Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


Space Computer was a single-player arcade game where players aimed to shoot down Flying Saucers before they shot you down first. Each round lasts 90 seconds


The movement on a keyboard is A and D for Left and Right Tilting respectively, W for Firing Cannon, and S for Thrust.


The experience was the same; both in controls, and in the setting of the game being in space because of Computer Space’s inspiration being based on Spacewar!. This made both games interchangeably easy to pick up, learn, and begin playing.


Describe gameplay and mechanics ~ 150 words


The gameplay consists of the player ship and two UFOs fighting each other over who can score the most amount of points in 100 seconds. The player can use their thrusters to outperform the UFOs, especially since the 2 UFOs move in a programmed pattern along an instructed path on the screen, while the player is allowed to use thruster momentum to dodge the rockets, while the UFOs cannot, allowing for the player to dominate easily. However the respawn system is odd as instead of resetting your positions after a death on either side, they respawn you in the same position, meaning if you put yourself in a bad position, it will lead to the AI gaining a considerable lead depending on how bad of a position the player puts themselves into.


Either side gains points by hitting and destroying each other's ships within the time frame of 100 seconds, after the clock reaches 100 the game ends and the side with the most amount of kills is the winner. This makes it an incredibly fast game to play as because it's a single player game, it is not too hard to play several games before getting bored and taking a break.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design~ 150 words


For its time, Computer Space pushed boundaries with its vector-style graphics, displaying simple geometric shapes which, especially with groups like the UPA championing function over form. It effectively communicated the concept of a space battle with minimalist visuals. The mixture of the arcade cabinet and the gameplay portray a strong artistic vision reminiscent of the 60’s and 70’s space race romanticism between the USA and the USSR.


The sounds, while simplistic, further sell the space aesthetic further and allow for a level of immersion and enjoyment that would not be possible without the synth-type music enhancing the experience. The sound of the rockets and the brrring’ of the thrusters all help in selling the viceralness of the game, in spite of its graphical limitations.


The only major weakness of the game is the only colors being blue and black which, while a limitation of the technology possible at the time, severely undermines its replayability in the modern era when compared to modern games.



What made it fun?~ 200 words


Computer space was fun in the same way looking at and playing a game demo is fun for me. Sure, I will not have a complete gaming experience, but at the same time, just the idea and where the developers intend to go from here made the game exciting to play to pass the time. The controls of the game are very easy to understand for the average person playing the emulator, but also provided a skill curve as there was a variety of techniques and skills to learn while playing. From realizing you could arc the shots in line with your tilting, allowing for a pseudo homing rocket, to driving by shooting from the momentum you generated being reflected in game and allowing for silly tactics to secure a victory.


I imagine for those during the time of its release, the game was an eye-opener for people who had likely grown up playing board games, and who were now able to play a game in a different way than the bored games they grew up with.


I love space games and navigating the black empty vector space arena while shooting down UFOs was a fun and unique experience for me and would be a fun quick game for me to play while waiting for a download or general downtime for recuperation.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games? ~ 200 words:


Computer Space is considered an influential game because it represents a turning point in the way games would be played as most board games up until this point were meant to be played with multiple people. Video games on more than one occasion were created to be played single-player, meaning that social interaction with another human being was slowly becoming redundant to having a good time. This meant that there was more accessibility to people who were unable to get together with friends and family for time with a board game, if they just wanted to go and play a quick game without the hassle of other people.


Computer Space was the first arcade video game to be sold commercially, marking it to be the birth of the arcade video game industry. It proved that video games could be a viable business and a form of entertainment for the public rather than just being a way of showing off the progress of technology in a lab or college, like what Spacewar! was doing. The viability of Computer Space, even though, because of its lack of intuitiveness, it was not a massive success.


In the evolution of games, Computer Space was the beginning of digital video games and the end of a lot of board games which would be better done through arcade machines and digital products than physical ones.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good))


I rate the game at 4 stars. The game holds up well for the time and in addition to the simple graphics it was a good conversion of a multiplayer game like Spacewar! and turning it into a single-player experience that would be enjoyable for the average arcade goer.


Spacewar! (1962)- A cool game but because it was multiplayer I could not play the game to its full potential. However, if ICSS was not on the list, I would've chosen Spacewar! For the influence it had on the early video game industry.


Pong (1972) is an overrated game. For being the youngest game in this lineup, it somehow manages to look the most dated in graphics and gameplay. I cannot find a valid reason to want to play this game compared to other video games of the 1900s besides nostalgia.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf


Name of Game - Pinball (Space Pinball)


Game author (If known) - The direct author is unknown.

Game Studio - The studio that published Space Pinball was on a website called Toy Theater which seems to develop and publish educational children's games on their site for educational purposes.


Original Platform & control mechanism :

This game would be played on a pinball machine which was a mechanical device with a flapper or two white tongs to keep the ball from falling into the pit and a launcher that would launch a metal ball and put it into play.


The physical pinball machines are to this day more popular than their digital counterparts due to the thrill of physically being there to watch and react to the game rather than look at it through a digital screen.


Control mechanism you used. Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


I played Space Pinball on a PC with a keyboard, meaning that all of my actions were performed with arrow keys, rather than using all of the knobs and buttons that would have come with the Pinball cabinet.


The feeling of the original with your hands and brain working to achieve greatness with a physical machine cannot be beaten, however digital Pinball is allowed to be more creative with their theme’s game mechanics, and overall style than Pinball machines, which are limited to the laws of the real world.


Describe gameplay and mechanics ~ 150 words


The gameplay of Pinball is universal throughout the many iterations and versions of pinball are similar with minor differences. The game starts with 3 ‘Lifes’ in the form of metal balls that are to be used to score as many points as possible before the player loses the ball due to mismanagement. The player uses the flippers or the 2 white flaps to launch the ball throughout the machine to score points, with there usually only one singular ball in play throughout the game at any one point unless the game supports multi-ball escapades.


Usually, when playing the game there are multiple ways of earning points, with the ability to earn lots of points if the player manages to fulfill in-game conditions set by the game like getting a multiplier by shooting the ball through a checkpoint multiple times or hitting a hard trickshot being rewarded with points for the skill needed.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design ~ 150 words


The greatest strength of Space Pinball is that its graphics have a very child-friendly atmosphere with bright colors and sci-fi sounds that make the game appeal to children, which is unlikely to occur since Fortnite exists but that is beside the point. The overall design is reminiscent of many Pinball cabinets of the ’90s, over the top and bombastic in both their sound department and their graphics department and attempting to lure in customers with their flashing lights and the various sounds that are produced when you get a lot of points.


The weakness in the design is that while the sci-fi atmosphere is very well established, the music sometimes comes across as crunchy or extremely grating at the best of times, which could dissuade people from having music in the game in the first place by muting the tab before they lose their minds first. Additionally, the childlike graphics while fun, do not really appeal to children, as most children would rather play anything else than play Pinball, with the only people in the majority playing Pinball being those in Casinos, so not a good decision to make this a kids game.


What made it fun? ~ 200 words


The fun that Space Pinball had was the extensive amount of replayability the game had to offer me since the game did not have an end goal. The only thing keeping me invested is my skill level and the hope of reaching ten thousand points after becoming good enough to achieve that goal. Additionally, because of the low stakes and no expectation for a certain amount to win, it is fully up to the player to set their own expectations for victory that they want to achieve with their game. Whether it is to get as many points as humanly possible, in as little time as possible, or to 100% get every bonus possible in the game, it is the freedom of choice that makes Pinball a low-effort game to get into, but one that rewards diligence and dedication to improvement.


The skill ceiling for the number of points available to be earned in a single life entices the player to try their best to make use of their ball to accumulate as many points as possible. While the points earned cannot be used in-game for anything, they CAN be used to gloat to other Pinballers of your inherent skill above them as you have a bigger number than they do, and thus are inferior to your Pinballing greatness.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games? ~ 200 words


Pinball as a genre is a niche one as while the concept of a metal ball being used to play a game is not new, Pinball has had a great impact on the history of games, even from its early beginnings. Pinball is a showcasing of how both mechanical entertainment and modern video gaming can come together to provide an experience for both the people of the 1900s and those in the 2000s and beyond.


The first introduction that turned Pinball into a Skill based game was the introduction of the flippers into the game which turned the game from a game of luck to a game of skill where the player had a direct connection to their successes and the concept of player agency over their actions in games.


The usage of sound and visual effects on Pinball machines also made it clear that auditory effects had a positive effect on player and audience retention, making it clear that sound was just as, if not more important to the lifespan of a game than story or gameplay.


However in the history of games, over Pinball’s lifespan, it was banned on more than one occasion due to the association between Pinball and gambling. However, as the game began to shift towards one of chance and skill, these bans were less and less applicable to modern renditions of Pinball.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good)):


The game was about 5 stars, and while there was no win-state to be earned, I liked slowly improving and mastering the game to the point that I could earn massive swaths of points with ease and have a fun time.


Games I did not play:


Breakout—Breakout was extremely boring because the levels consisted of a single-player version of Pong. It was made even worse by the metric of having zero points in existing and no competition.


Space Invaders - Camping and shooting behind cover at an endless number of enemies while plinking away at their numbers is only fun in a military simulator like ARMA or Hell Let Loose. Otherwise, I would easily get bored if I did not have a concrete goal to accomplish while playing.


Asteroid - Asteroid is probably the silliest game as it is a nice survival shooter set in space, but I liked Pinball a lot more than this one, even if it was pretty good.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf:







Name of Game - Street Fighter II - The World Warrior


Game author (If known) - While there is not a concrete author per se, Akira Nishitani and Akira Yasuda are the game directors for the game and thus would be the ones with the vision and credit for the game than anyone else.


Game Studio: Street Fighter 2 World Warrior was developed and Published by Capcom


Original Platform & control mechanism:


The original platform for Street Fighter 2 was on an arcade machine with a joystick for movement and 6 buttons for light and heavy variants of Kicking, Punching and Jumping. If you were good enough, you would be able to memorize combos, which you could use to defeat your opponents and stun them. Then it was later ported to consoles which made arcades obsolete in effect.


Control mechanism you used:


I played this game on a PC with a keyboard, which makes playing the game infinitely more difficult as not only do I have to deal with the FPS vastly speeding up the game, making the entire game run extremely fast. This makes it difficult to string together combos, while the CPU is allowed to work at lightspeed to whoop my behind. Though that may be a bug as restarting the game fixes the issues. And additionally if you fiddle too much with other tabs or programs, the sound and game will sound awful. All this really made me want to go order a console just to play SF 2 in its full glory, but I digress.


Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


I think the game would have been a lot easier to play if I had access to a controller or the arcade cabinet as playing the game on a keyboard is not really the optimal way of play as anyone who has played fighting games on a keyboard will tell you.


Additionally playing the game on a keyboard makes the game seem more analog than the experience of playing on an Arcade cabinet, or a console.


Describe gameplay and mechanics

~ 150 words


The gameplay on ‘story mode’ is a pseudo campaign where you play as one of eight separate characters and fight the other eleven fighters over the chance to become the Ultimate fighter. After you defeat the first 7 fighters, which are the other playable characters, the player then faces off against ‘the three winds’ or the elite fighters with their own unique gimmicks, then you face off against M.Bison. The fight against M. Bison is like nothing the player will ever face as he has techniques and moves from all other fighters not to mention his quick moves. It took me several hours of playing just that fight to nail down Bison’s every technique, every move, and every counter for that move to finally beat him as Chun Li and the feeling when that sack of potatoes whent down was euphoric.


I chose to play as Chun Li for the sake of this journal entry due to both her story ending being hilarious and also because I like poking characters that rely on their agility to win the battle. Most of Chun-Li’s attacks relied heavily on kicking your opponent into submission until they perished along with her grappling attacks. Chun-li also had the ability to jump off of the sides of the match due to her unparalleled ability, leaning into her being a good air and ground combatant relying on her speed. Though because of many balance changes it is said that Chun Li in this iteration of SF is the weakest, which made the decision even easier since I like a good challenge even if that challenge makes me want to go hulk smash on my keyboard. Especially when I found out to get the characters individual endings I would need to play at a difficulty rating of 4 or more to get ‘An’ ending, because if you beat the game at a difficulty rating of 3 or lower the game will viciously mock you and tell you to play at a higher difficulty.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design

~ 150 words


The strength of the graphics for the time are so good that even in the modern day they are still gorgeous to look at and neatly embody the game they are in. All of the fighters look and sound as they should and everything in the universe immerses the player into the world of Street Fighter without feeling out of place. All the characters despite their differences and techniques in culture manage to fit right in with everyone else in the series.


The weakness of the game comes down to the lack of a tutorial, which is commonplace in old era video games, and especially in the fact that there is not a combo list available, making it difficult to play at first without looking up a move list first. Not to mention that because it is a fighting game the CPU will have an easier time performing the special moves than a player would and also in many instances cheating to have a fair advantage against the player. There are many instances where the hits would not register or times where some characters were fundamentally built to be hard, A.E Bison and Vega were both direct counters to Chun Li’s fighting style and required nothing but the utmost attention from me to defeat them.


What made it fun?

~ 200 words


The funness of Street fighter comes from the silly characters and the combos being fun to learn and then perform in the heat of a battle while your opponent is bearing down on you. The atmosphere of the fight also helps in immersing the player into putting their all into beating their opponent, regardless of it being another player or the CPU. The intensity of the fight and of the losses that the player will inevitably face allows the player to want to improve themselves and their character to the point of never wanting to lose again. This energy of improvement may even seep into their daily life if used in a healthy manner to increase their drive for excellence.


The euphoria of play that you get from this game can be debilitating when you suffer an agonising defeat or a roar as you defeat those final bosses or players that you just could not beat otherwise. Street Fighter both in design and in concept is a game that you cannot be good at by simply playing through the game without doing a pre-game. As Kevin Hart put it, “You going to learn today” and you better be ready for Street Fighting since the game even in its latest installment barely holds your hand as it proceeds to dropkick you into the ether.


Street fighter, despite being a simple fighting game, has earned itself a very competitive player base that consistently outshines itself and manages to push the casual player base into playing at their very best in spite of their differences in attitudes. While this does make for both casual and competitive play being seen as being too intense for the average player to get into unlike Mortal Kombat or Tekken, Street Fighter can be seen as a combo focused game that does not employ many gimmicks and allows anyone with general knowledge of fighting games to get invested without the high level players having an unfair advantage over the newer players.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games?

~ 200 words


Street Fighter as a series can be seen as one that really has not changed over the course of the years Capcom has been making Street Fighter. It is a fighting game to its core and has influenced both the creation of a competitive scene in video games, and in the Arcades that it can be found in. The meticulousness that is shown in the overall design of combos, hitboxes and the introduction of balancing in Street Fighter has influenced other landmark fighting games into putting near or greater attention into making sure that every character put into the game has had their distinct strengths and weaknesses when being played by a wider audience. This allows for very different playstyles to be done for each character and for archetypes to begin to form among the characters, a first for a game and likely one that many games emulated that would come after as it brought something that every player enjoys, the choice to cater to their needs.


The characters of Street fighter II, though there are not a lot of them, are very culturally and ethnically diverse enough to help represent the people of the world without seeming too stereotypical. This has led to a better variety of people playing Street Fighter all over the world due in part to a kinship with the characters of Street fighter, their story and their journey to become the very best they can be.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good))


5 Stars, I can see why people loved this game as much as they did when it came out. The enduring legacy has led people to still playing and uploading content on the game even decades after the game came out.

---

Pac Man - Packman is a fun game but severely overhyped as the levels do not change meaning its an endurance game, which I do not appreciate playing as they feel like a waste of time after a while.

pacman.live/play.html


Galaga - Same problem as with Invader as I am simply peeking and plinking away at the flying ships, though the gameplay and diversity of play is a definite improvement overall when playing the game.

www.free80sarcade.com/galaga.php


Defender - Loved the flying mechanic and protecting earth from aliens, but there just was not enough content compared to SF 2.

www.free80sarcade.com/defender.php


Centipede - Is that what being on Acid feels like?

games.aarp.org/games/atari-centipede


Donkey Kong - Turns out Jump man, CAN in fact jump, but other than that SF 2 WW is just that good that even when I wanted to get into Donkey Kong, I just could not resist the allure of Chun li and whooping butt in Street Fighter.

www.free80sarcade.com/donkeykong.php

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf


Name of Game - Fairchild Channel F Emulator (Pacman Homebrew)


Game author (If known) - Blackbird and e5frog were the developers of the Pac-Man homebrewed version


Game Studio - These two users were the ones who created the game, and were not backed by a studio per se. They did slap on a Capcom copyright on the start screen, though that was likely more of a not wanting to be sued into the ground than an actual greenlight from Capcom to make this game.


Original Platform & control mechanism :


Originally, Pac-Man was developed in 1980 for arcade machines which included just a joystick and a couple of buttons used to start up the game.


Control mechanism you used :


This homebrewed version of Pac-man was built with the express idea of optimizing the graphics to be as small as humanly possible and went from being 2kb in size to needing 14kb of storage by the final make of the game with all the bells and whistles.


Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


The gaming experience would have been relatively the same with the recreation effectively being a 1 to 1 recreation of the original Pac-Man, though the graphics have been slimmed down to accommodate the size of the Fairchild Console.


Describe gameplay and mechanics

~ 150 words


The gameplay of this Pac-Man played very similarly to the Pac-Man that players would have played in the arcades, however, the game was an extremely optimized and stripped-down version meant to handle the hardware and software limitations that were present in very early console designs.


The Pac-Man ate smaller pellets, which granted him points, and bigger pellets, which granted both more points than the smaller ones but also made all the ghosts temporarily consumable by the player for a set timeframe. Fruits also appeared, which could be consumed for a further point increase. The gameplay loop was collecting all of the small and big pellets before the ghosts caught you, which meant a loss of life, which the player had 4 to start off with. The game would keep going on until you either beat the game by going beyond what was initially planned until the game could no longer go on, or simply by dying and getting the game over, either one would work.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design

~ 150 words


The original Pac-Man already looked and sounded pretty dated by most standards, so the homebrewed version further cutting down the graphics and sounds for storage constraints really did not do the game justice as it made the game look even older than the original Pac-Man, leaving most with just the idea of going and playing Pac-Man instead of playing an inferior version. The sounds also were a lot less robust so the sounds made became unbearable just from the small playtest session that I played. Additionally, the white on blue that the arena makes really grades the eyes in comparison to the black background on a blue arena that the original Pac-Man did.


The strengths of the designs were that a more simplified version of the game made it easier to get into for some, and better to play for those who were not able to find a place to play Pac-Man in the olden days of early consoles.


What made it fun?

~ 200 words


The fun of the homebrewed Pac-Man game was the various easter eggs and love put into it by its developers who made the game as a labor of love for Capcom as they even put Capcom’s name on the starting screen even when they likely had no input on the creative processes. This makes the game more of an art piece to how truly optimized a game can become and still be recognizable by an audience.


The gameplay mirrored the original Pac-Man so I still sucked at the game. However, I could easily play the game in a casual manner rather than in the competitive manner that the original game had as I felt compelled to beat the high scores of those higher than me. Though with the homebrewed version, you absolutely would not be blamed for not taking the game seriously when it is a homebrew of Pac-Man and not the real thing.


Finally, I liked how even though Pac-Man existed, the developers still created this game to likely take something away from it. Whether or not it was an educational experience or made as a sort of team-building exercise is not clear, but the passion and dedication that would have been needed to make this game shine through are clear, and I cannot fault someone no matter how irrelevant a game or topic they are doing.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games?

~ 200 words


The Fairchild Channel F Emulator showcased the initial graphics and idea of console games when they were initially coming out and being played. Sure, they were not good, but they presented a free at-home alternative to playing game after game at the Arcade. Instead, you could play in the comfort of your own home with just a buy-in cost with the initial cost of the console and then individually buy the games themselves. But after that, the game and the machine both belonged to the player and not to the Arcade, meaning that they could play on the console for as long as they wanted without any interruptions from other players who reserved a turn.


The console proved that it had to store a lot in a small package, which forced console developers to get creative with how they would translate some games to the console. It also became a matter of optimizing games where they could so they could bring most games to the console without worrying about overloading it.


The scaled-down Pac-man game while not being a graphical masterpiece with regards to the original release of Pac-Man, the optimization still conveyed the same game mechanics perfectly and was playable as an alternative to the arcade Pac-Man while not being a straight downgrade in overall quality.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good))


I would rate the game 3 out of 5 stars as by many metrics this is just a hard copy of Pac-Man but only worser. The reason the game got a high rating is due to the influence and the ideas that were being presented were new and had good potential.


Games I did not play:


ColecoVision Flashback Game: I Did not own a gamepad so I could not play any of the games and did not want to have to re-map all the controls just to get the game to function, but it still a pretty good amount of cool-looking games.


Odysim: Did not want to touch the site with a ten-foot pole as it not only looks to be locked in the early 2000s era blog posts but that I would need to download files and stuff, which I was not going to do.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Name of Game: ET (1982)

Game author (If known): The main designer was Howard Scott Warshaw by Atari

Game Studio: Designed and published by Atari, Inc.


Original Platform & control mechanism:


The original game was released on the Atari 2600 which is why the graphics kind of suck compared to arcade machine graphics.


Control mechanism you used: Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


I played E.T. on an emulator, though the gameplay was not all that different as there were pretty much only 2 buttons excluding WASD for movement since the original console was effectively just a joystick with a red button on it so there was not much confusion over the controls.


Describe gameplay and mechanics

~ 150 words


The gameplay loop goes through 2 identical levels where the player plays as the titular ET as they attempt to assemble their remote to call in a spaceship to escape the humans. The player must navigate via a seemingly foreign map that not even the player will have a coherent time navigating while avoiding both the local population and the FBI to not get their progress reset when they take ET’s remote parts.


There are certain special places on the map where ET can make his iconic mating call, which can be used to locate ET’s parts. There are also special Easter eggs that are direct links to Howard Warshaw’s previous works with Atari. ET needs to locate the area where they are allowed to call in their ship to pick them up to complete the level. There are also areas where they can call in the boy from the movie to help provide energy to ET to help them complete their mission.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design

~ 150 words


Since the game is made on an early console, the graphics leave a lot to be desired compared to the graphics of arcade games of the same year, which chose the game being a massive flop completely believable if you were a kid or parent who just spent a pretty penny to be playing this thing. ET is not even the right color as the depiction of him in the movie, the whole reason that this game was made in the first place. ET is drenched in a repugnant lime green color as opposed to his grounded earthly brown color that he is shown as in the movie. The music also cannot be ignored as most of the time there is no reason for the music to exist as its soundtrack even at low levels seems to grate heavily on the user to the point of just muting it all together.


The only strength I see is the decent-looking ET picture you get when you boot up the game. This successfully baits you into thinking that you're about to have a feast in the graphics department before you face reality.


What made it fun?

~ 200 words


The fullness of the game is quite limited throughout the game with the slight nods to Howard Warshaw’s other previous game being cute as you progress through the game. There is no real fluff only action which is a nice change of pace from other games which can be seen as having only fluff and little in the way of actual gameplay. The game is also pretty short by most metrics, even if you are not good at the game, as opposed to Street Fighter 2 World Warrior which if you are not good at the game will take around 2 hours to complete if you are constantly failing.


The whole reason that I’m covering this game in the first place is that ET is somehow so bad that it wraps around to being good as a sort of punishment game for the youth to play so that they can appreciate the game that they get today that are infinitely better than ET at a quarter of the price that most indie game are. This game was such a breath of fresh air as I knew as soon as I was done playing this game I could play something good and made me value my collection of games even more than I previously did with how awful this game was to laugh at.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games?

~ 200 words


The game is not extremely influential on its own, though the time that it came out was the beginning of the video game crash of 1987 as games were being pumped out vigorously to the point that reportedly ET was made in little over 5 weeks by Howard Warshaw as Atari Executives wanted it to be done in time for the Christmas buying season. This is a great foreshadowing of the extent to which companies are willing to go to make a quick buck off of intellectual properties no matter how beloved they are to the general audience or even their own fans. On some occasions like this, no sane person can look at this and say that I was a labor of love or that the team was not squeezed dry of their creative talents or rushed to completion because that is absolutely what happened.


This is not even referring to the 21st-century game industry either, I am referring to the massive laundry list of 80’s and 90’s badly made games that have no soul, no time, and not one passionate game designer who wants to make the game that were made solely to appease corporate interests. This made even average people and gamers well aware of the things that studios will put their designers through just to make a quick buck, especially when these were very small teams, even by today's standards going though the motions to get a finished product shipped out in time for the Christmas season, which even today is often the case.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good))


I would strongly rate this game as a solid 2 or lower depending on my experience of myself and likely the experience of others. The map is made badly, allowing inexperienced players to constantly fall into pit holes as consistency between map travel is seemingly random leading to the player ending up. The lack of any sort of coherent game mechanics makes the game just a boring mess that I did not want to play, but the other two were not that good either so tit for tat.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf (JE# 8)





Name of Game: Oregon Trail (Dysentery Simulator) (The 1990 DOS (IBM) Version)


Game author‘s (If known) : Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, Paul Dillenberger


Game Studio: The game was developed by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) and published by Broderbund, The Learning Company, and Gameloft.





Original Platform & control mechanism


The game was originally released on an Apple II computer in 1971 and would be played through the usage of a keyboard as it was a text-based game that followed numbered input and the arrow keys during the hunting minigame. So there was not really any difference in the way of play.


Control mechanism you use / Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


I also played the game on a computer, and a laptop, which, unfortunately, did not have a keypad. This led to a slightly harder hunting minigame, though otherwise, it played the exact same as if I had played it on a computer.


Describe gameplay and mechanics

~ 150 words


The gameplay of Oregon Trail is a game where the player is tasked in traveling from Independence, Missouri to Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The game objective is for the player to guide their 4 family members throughout the treacherous landscape of the American wilderness while avoiding dying by any means necessary. The game plays a lot like a survival game as you have to manage your funds and supplies accordingly.


The player depending upon their start is given money to purchase supplies from oxen, wagon parts, bullets, clothing, and food to purchase as many as they see fit. The game though reminds them that they do not need to spend all their money in one place as accidents and random events do happen. This means that you could easily lose hundreds of dollars of equipment in a random fire if you are not careful enough with your spending. However, it should also be noted that while you are allowed to spend your money as you please, as you make your way into Oregon, you are going further and further away from civilization, meaning prices are going to be higher as a result.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design

~ 150 words


The many strengths of the Organ Trail come from the accurate and coherent designs of all the major locations in the game that the player stops at throughout their journey. The attention to detail in the way people you talk to proceed to talk about their dreams, the events of the location, and descriptions of the weather all help to immerse the player into the year 1848 and your role in it. This allows the player to play not as themselves by though the mindset of a settler moving out west for a better life for his family and for themselves.


The only weakness is the lack of graphics in all the other locations like the hunting sections and in the overall graphics department as the player travels throughout the world. However, that is more of a nitpick as the game has such strong points of focus on the Points of interest that it is lamentable that it was not shown throughout the rest of the game.




What made it fun?

~ 200 words


The fun parts of the game come from its excellent graphics, music, and natural hardness of the game.


The graphics and music were both the best selling points as all of the landmarks present in the game are well defined and manage to immerse the player in both the period that the game takes place in.


The hunting of various animals also adds a fun minigame which allows the player to also have a moral dilemma as many of the animals in game have tons of meat, however the player is only allowed to take back 100 pounds of meat at a time, meaning that you either have to hunt 2 deers and hope they come across the players gun, or you just shoot a buffalo which has 990 pounds of meat. Sure you cant take the other 890 meat with you, but it instantly fills your quota and allows your family to eat another day. The choice becomes even more clear if the player can feel the minigame nearing its end and the player has not been able to shoot a single animal.


The game rewards preparations and punishes players who are not overly prepared for the trials ahead of them. The game makes players make conscious decisions in terms of inventory and trading with the CPU in the game. However the CPU’s trading prices are steep and often scam the player for what they know they need. Luckly I never needed to trade with those scammers and could subsist on hunting to lead me to the end.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games?

~ 200 words


The Oregon Trail was first shown off and played as a sort of educational entertainment game. This could have led to the sentiment that these games, were originally only supposed to be used as a sort of novelty entertainment. Could instead be used educationally to help immerse children in the era and effectively teach them and inspire them to want to learn history from what they experience in games.


Most children have topics that they do not like in school and subsequently, they dislike even processing and learning the material no matter how easy it would be to learn otherwise if it were someone interested in the subject. Through video games, people would be able to learn more effectively in a more motivated and fun way rather than slog through something that they do not like to learn.


In the evolution of games, Oregon Trail was very story-driven as you had a goal to accomplish with the game and the game ends when you accomplished that goal. Additionally, actions did in fact have consequences because if you were not careful enough, you could easily die of starvation, test your luck, and fail at wading through a river. This kind of thing was rarely seen in gaming as most games were played then forgotten, however Oregon Trail often made the player make decisions like what items to prioritize, what animal to hunt, and deciding where they were going when they came across crossroads. These decisions would affect very little in the way of gameplay and were mainly there for set dressing, but that immersion helped get players into the game despite its graphical limitations.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good))


5 stars easily as the game to this day is a game that most if not all people can play and enjoy the game as it's a very basic game at its core with room to play as the player wants to with a little difficulty to spice things up.


(Benny Boy is Me)

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf (J# 10)


Name of Game: RISK


Game author (If known): Antonie J. Engel and Tone Engel


Game Studio: The studio seems to have been these two men just making an adaptation of RISK.


Original Platform & control mechanism


Originally RISK was a fun and simple board game that could be played with up to 4 people at a time.


Control mechanism you used. Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


The experience was a lot less fun than the original as it was a very analog experience rather than the social experience that the game is meant to have when people play it.


Describe gameplay and mechanics

~ 150 words


The game plays identically to a game of Risk except it is a digital version that somehow manages to be even more analog than the board game and even more confusing than the board game. The game plays with the player playing against 5 AI’s or if the player just wants to see some carnage, they can set all of the characters to be AI’s and observe the terror of how fast the AI takes their turns.


The gameplay of RISK is a race to see who can achieve world domination by defeating the other players and seizing all of their territory through domination. There needed to be at least 2 or more people playing to make an actual game when playing the board game, but because of TECHNOLOGY you can now play by yourself, or play a local game where everyone plays on the same computer, either way works.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design

~ 150 words


The strengths are that the player can play this game on their computer, no friends are required to play if the player does not desire it, and they do not even have to personally play the game, as the AI is also allowed to play independently without player input.


The weakness is the awful-looking graphics that fill the screen, making the game look even worse. The screen is filled with various team textures representing player or CPU control of tiles. The CPU is not the funniest to play against and has no personality to speak of that would replace human-to-human interaction. The more you look at the map, the more messed up the map looks making it an unfortunate experience for anyone who is even the slightest bit has looked at a map of the real world.


This is especially cruel to anyone who lives in one of the deformed or misshapen countries that look like dehydrated versions of what they look like in the real world. The amount of optimization that was performed not only makes this look like it was done on purpose, but it also makes the game not able to be taken seriously by the player, making the experience tamer.


What made it fun?

~ 200 words


The fun to be had in Risk is usually in the social interactions that are made with the other players you encounter during the game. However, a digital version of the game does not have this so the player will need to make do with what they have and deal with the lifeless CPUs who are always going to be better than you in every aspect. The lack of a way of seeing what you are dice rolling makes the game very much up to luck as you can lose all your troops in the blink of an eye just trying to defeat two troops on an insignificant tile, which is part of the fun that the board game provides too.


I found fun in the naming of all of the Different CPU’s to be the funniest part as the names ‘Felix The Fascist’ and ‘Neil the Nazi’ are just so serious that you cannot take them seriously and just see them as caricatures right next to Boris the Bastard and Amy the Anarchist. The best part is that they all have their unique tile patterns so you know exactly which person owns which piece on the map without needing to consult the overview or map to see who is who.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games?

~ 200 words


This game may not have been the best both in concept and in execution as I do not see a particular reason why someone would want to recreate Risk when the board game is better not only in quality but also in execution. The controls with a mouse somehow feel even clunkier than just playing the Board game with your hands, but the experience was a humbling one as I wanted to play the actual board game more than I wanted to play the game on the computer.


The influence that RISK had on the PC gaming space and the evolution of games is the game proved that video games could provide an experience equal to if not greater than the original board game that it was influenced by if done right and with the AI serving as a worthy opponent to play against without needing to play against actual people. The CPU even in its early stages in video game development was able to play at a high enough level to be a threat to me if I did not play the game seriously, making it easy to see it as an inspiration for its potential in strategy games in future games.


The good part was the accessibility with the game being in black and white meaning that the color blind can play the game and the patterns help differentiate the players and CPU’s land rather than by color, so there is no confusion over who owns what.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good))


3 Star because of the cool adaptation of a risk game, but otherwise an extremely bland and uninspired port of the game. Nothing unique to say and nothing unique that makes it better than just going and buying the board game and enjoying it, unless you have nobody to play the game with.


Games that I did not play:


Wizball: I could not play it but from the videos I watched looks like an interesting game, I wanted to cover RISK the most as it was a game dear to my heart.


Microsoft Decathlon: The game was an interesting game, but had lots of controls that made the game a nightmare to play and even worse to play against the AI.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf (JE #10)


Name of Game: Tetris

Game author (If known): Alexy Pajitnov

Game Studio: Alexy Pajitnov though was published via differing companies and publishing studios as the game was adapted onto different platforms


Original Platform & control mechanism:


The original platform that Tetris was programmed on the Electronika 60 and adapted to the IBM PC with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov. Though it was later ported to the Nintendo’s Gameboy and NES gaming systems, the simplicity of the game made it easy to port over.


Control mechanism you used

Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


I also played Tetris on a PC and the experience was pretty much the same as it was originally a computer game anyway, so no. The emulator was pretty informative about the controls, of which there were only 8 with a majority being movement controls.


Describe gameplay and mechanics

~ 150 words


The gameplay is simply stacking blocks on top of one another while trying to fill out the rows to completion which grants points deletes the completed line and moves all the above blocks down how many rows were deleted. There is no end to the game as the game only gets faster and faster, until eventually, you make a mistake and eventually lose via having the place where the blocks come into the level blocked off, sealing your fate.


Tetris rewards diligence while punishing mistakes harshly to the point where it is understood that you can only survive for so long until you eventually succumb. This makes the game more of a quick puzzle game than anything else due to the quick thinking and the skill involved in making sure every piece goes into its respective space to the best of its ability. However, in many cases the player will simply make a minor mistake that ends their run quickly enough that they can start up a new run without any hard feelings.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design

~ 150 words


The few weaknesses are almost nitpicky at best, like the lack of a coherent theme, the lack of animation when it comes to the completion of a row, and the fact that players spawn point for blocks can become blocked leading to an early loss if the player is not careful enough with their placements. The rigidity of the blocks leads to replays only being better in placement, movement, and strategy rather than introducing new concepts or ways of playing other than the standard format.


The strength of Tetris comes in the form of its minimalist design which given the lack of technological graphical design and the technology to mimic physics or advanced game mechanics, works in the favor of Tetris as it is a pretty straightforward game with minimal changes or hidden variables to worry about in between games. The design of the background being various Tetris tiles also further adds to the minimalist theme that the game has going on.


What made it fun?

~ 200 words


The fun of Tetris comes in that even though the game makes you aware of what your next block due to the difficulty spike. Making it so only the truly experienced players of Tetris are able to make it through the difficulty spike are able to succeed. The endless nature of the game also makes it so that no player feels disheartened by not beating the high score and only feels invigorated to try again. That 10,000-point high score seems easy to achieve until you realize just how far away the score is when compared to how few points you get over the course of the game, making that simple goal all the harder to achieve.


The difficulty curve is a nice addition as you slowly but surely are introduced to faster and faster speeds and your time to decide speeds up as a result. This allows the player to progressively get better with time as they learn the game while playing the game, acting as a great way of putting in a tutorial, without needing to put in a tutorial. This would further condense the game into being just the game with the only pregame knowledge that the player needs to know is how the game works and the controls.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games?

~ 200 words


The influence of the game makes it clear that puzzle games were able to be created in a digital format that could not be replicated in real life. This started the idea that games to be more than just replicating aspects of real life or film and instead be as wacky or unrealistic as they needed to be so long as the game was fun and the audience was grounded enough to be invested in playing Tetris without too much difficulty. This addictive quality is probably why out of all of the games presented, its more modern iterations have not changed one bit in terms of gameplay to the extent of being just better looking and more ironed out in terms of seamless gameplay.


Tetris also proved that puzzle-type video games on the market could be done and most definitely be done well so long as they had a good idea and an excellent execution. It does such a good job of being a puzzle game that you do not even realize you are playing a puzzle game until you really stop and think about what the game as a genre really is. The simplicity of the game also made it immensely transportable across PCs, Consoles, and even Mobile devices when it came down to it making it a very easy cash cow for everyone.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good)):


I would rate the game at 5 stars, as the game seems to be fully realized, and the skill ceiling that is possible is good enough that it makes the game addicting.


Games that I did not play:


Super Mario Bros is cool as a platformer and as an evolution to the gaming industry. The only problem is that I was getting back into Hollow Knight so this game cannot compare, and also I felt Tetris was a unique enough game to warrant a review.


Legend of Zelda is very clunky given its age, but it a game that I liked playing a bit. I could not get over how the game seemed to have aged, given the transitions from map to map, the despawning and respawning of enemies out of thin air, and the difficulty of some enemies, especially the squid.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf (JE#11)





Name of Game: Sonic The Hedgehog


Game author (If known): The Sonic development team consisting of Yuji Naka (Programmer) , Naoto Ohshima(Character Designer) , and Hirokazu Yasuhara (Level designer)


Game Studio: SEGA but developed by the Sonic Team


Original Platform & control mechanism:


Released to be played on the SEGA Genesis, with its three-button controller for simple movement and jumping, which is all the game had. Just move and do not die while jumping into enemies to defeat them.


Control mechanism you used,

Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


The experience was grating at first due to my needing to find out the various controls, but afterward, the experience was pretty straightforward as the movement tech was not too difficult to comprehend and execute decently.


Describe gameplay and mechanics

~ 150 words


The gameplay of Sonic is pretty straightforward as the entire premise is to complete the level in the fastest possible time, with the collection of rings and points earned during play going toward the player's overall score. The objective as a platformer is pretty straightforward as Sonics speed for better or for worse makes the job pretty to get to the exit with the only hindrance being the player's ego to get the highest score for bragging rights and to explore the map.


The momentum-based combat is pretty funny as if Sonic ran into an enemy while running normally, but when he jumps and curls himself into a ball, he suddenly becomes a wrecking ball of doom. The rings being Sonics lifeline before he dies is a cool mechanic as in a boss fight so long as you can keep picking up your lost rings in time you effectively become invincible.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design

~ 150 words


The weakness is that Sonic’s speed at some time should be fast enough to completely obliterate anything standing in his path be they enemies, traps, and even Sonic himself. But the game sort of makes Sonics speed a hindrance more than it makes it a benefit to have as the player if not careful can and will kill themselves by running into pits, monsters, walls, or worse put them into a situation that no amount of protection will save them from death.


The strengths of Sonics graphics is on par with Street Fighter II World Warrior which makes the game a fun experience. The simple yet effective level design makes for an extremely streamlined experience in terms of progression, but the explorer in me wanted to explore, which the level allowed to the fullest extent. The ability to just stop and enjoy the scenery, even though the game encourages speed is a nice contrast to have.




What made it fun?

~ 200 words


The fun that I had with the game was the realization that the unique part of the game is that Sonic’s speed rather than being a benefit, actually increases the difficulty of the game massively as it creates situations where you can easily slam into something at such speeds that you cannot react in time and die no matter how much protection you have. The simplified controls made it a breeze to play allowing me who is on a laptop to play the game just fine with the game 3 controls allowing for an enjoyable experience even on an alternate platform. The secrets that awaited me for diligent exploration made levels feel a lot bigger with a lot less room to work with, making each level worth their weight as a player could have two separate experiences based upon how they played the level and the game overall.


Sonic’s speed is so quick that the objective becomes not if you are fast enough to complete the level or make it in time. The objective becomes how to stop if you come across something that speed cannot solve like a sheer drop into a floor of spikes or lava.


The music was masterclass as all the sounds of the level, of Sonic, and of all the enemies felt relevant and fitting to the world allowing me to immerse myself in the world of Sonic and have a pretty good time while I was at it.


Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games?

~ 200 words


The game is influential not only in its alternative way of displaying a platformer, the game also puts your quick reflexes to the test as the series would not play like a platformer, definitely setting itself apart from the competition. Sonic has also SEGA's effective mascot and flagship title to the point where Sonic and SEGA are effectively synonymous with one another to the point of separation. This created a clear divide between Nintendo Mario and SEGA’s Sonic which drew the line in the sand for the first major video game war/rivalry. The fluid animations of Sonic, Dr. Robotnik, and the common enemy pushed the envelope of character animation in the game.


Sonic also changed the idea of platformers being a methodical movement type play into a fast-paced moment platformer where Sonics ultra-fast speed works against you, and you need to be careful to launch yourself off of the side of the map because of just how fast you are. The side-scrolling nature also allows for free exploration and the idea of being able to move back and forth without being soft-locked and unable to backtrack encouraged the player to explore the level to their heart's content, which is a lot nicer than Super Mario Bros not allowing you to backtrack on their levels.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good))


I’d rate this game a strong 5 stars due to both its sheer influence and the quality the developers put into ensuring the quality of the game.


Games that I did not play:

Gunstar Heroes - I used the flamethrower ability, which made the game trivial to play, and I wanted to play Sonic and had a lot more fun that way.


Fatal Fury - Steet Fighter II WW spoiled me on a good fighting game to the extent that the Fatal Fury lacked graphics and technical prowess.


Comix Zone - A really good fighting game, but I am not usually a big fan of beat-em-up-styled games, especially ones that give you items, which you will never know when you are meant to use in the heat of battle. I also do not like the fact that this game is complicated enough to warrant a tutorial, but for all intents, the game acts like a sandbox where you fight on any map in any order making the game feel like I'm going to miss something.

[Venerable_Wolf]

Nicholas Wolf - JE # 12

Name of Game - Super Metroid

Game author (If known) - Gunpei Yokoi (Producer), Yoshio Sakamoto (Director), Makoto Kano (Designer)

Game Studio - Nintendo


Original Platform & control mechanism:


Super Metroid was originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1994. The original was played with an SNES Controller which included a D-Pad for movement, face buttons for jumping, shooting, and weapon selection, as well as shoulder buttons for aiming diagonally.


Control mechanism you used

Would the experience have been different using the original? How?


I used a Mac Laptop for my gaming experience, which, while not optimal did not really need the usage of a mouse, just the keyboard and arrow keys for movement, directional fighting, and the map and abilities screen, and such. This did not really affect the experience since I am built in an alternate matter than the norm, and also because I have similarly played Hollowknight, so it was not a big problem to adapt.


Describe gameplay and mechanics

~ 150 words


The game itself is extremely non-linear and allows the player to take Samus to any corner of Zebes as she needs to track down John Metroid as he was kidnapped by a pterodactyl. This forces Samus to go and retrieve the alien as it is a danger to the local wildlife in more ways than one.


Unlike the previous game which is pretty much a linear experience though and though, Super Metroid prides itself on being a non-linear experience that slowly unlocks itself as Samus slowly unlocks her abilities which were conveniently lost after the events of the last game. This mechanic encourages backtracking, thus extending playtime to a degree that allows the player to appreciate their environment more closely as they’ll inevitably have to work their way back with the usage of a map to know where they are. The game in addition to cutscenes in-game, the game also makes good use of environmental storytelling to tell us what happened without the need to outright tell us what happened, which instantly boosts my score due to the creators not treating the audience as a bunch of idiots who need to be coddled on what to do, and where to go.


Describe strengths & weaknesses of art & design

~ 150 words


The strengths of Super Metroid come in the form of excellent pixel art which somehow manages to come across as well detailed with the environment and character designs seeing a massive upgrade from the previous game. Super Metroid has improved massively when converting from 8-bit to 12-bit, which led to overall improvements all around as the game benefited in the gameplay, graphics, and controls department as a worthy successor to the first Metroid game.


The weaknesses in the game are the fact that not only are there no real objectives, meaning that you are never pushed in any one direction, which has the consequence of pushing me into encounters where I and at a disadvantage due to not having the equipment that I may need for the fight. Additionally, the need to check every door after gaining an ability, only for that route to still be blocked is an issue that most non-linear platformers have to this day, so it is not a big deal to deal with.


What made it fun?

~ 200 words


The fun that I initially found was the discovery and exploration aspect of the game. Though I criticized the lack of a concrete objective, the sense of accomplishment that I will feel when I complete the game on my own with little to no outside help from others.


Exploration in many games is a core feature and is a part of the experience, though some games use this to stretch out the playtime to inhumane lengths that by the time you make concrete progress in the story, the satisfaction that you receive is barely enough to justify the time sync put in. Luckily Super Metroid does not do this and even has assistors that help me navigate my way to the next story beat in as little time as possible without seeming too easy to get through.


The save points were a welcome surprise as I fully expected this to be a quick in-out game, though from the looks of things as I was researching this game it would take a casual player 8-12 hours to complete the base game, which is a large undertaking that I will likely undertake when I have the time. Save spots are the best if done right in a video game as having in-game save spots where you will restart from that point and is still consistent with the lore is the best, not only do I feel like every adventure from the spawn room has a heightened sense of danger, but also of opportunity to improve.



Now that you’ve played it, Why would this game be considered influential? How does it fit into the evolution of games?

~ 200 words


This game was influential in both the platformer genre, but also in the genre of good female representation in the video game genre.


The platformer Metroid games, even in their early iterations set the golden standard for non-linear type exploration games that would come after it. The environmental storytelling present in Super Metroid is so good that it would rub off on other designers as they made their games as it needed no words to explain the environment. This both showed an implicit trust by the development team that allowed developers to give respect to their audience and not have it feel patronizing. The slow and steady progression as Samus gains newer abilities not only allows for better ways of engaging enemies. These abilities were also used to further explore previously blocked-off inaccessible areas that Samus could not access, leading to the exploration element. These design philosophies and mechanics helped in spite of more modern games of the platformer genre like Hollow Knight, Axiom Verge, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which all in their own way helped grow the platformer ecosystem.


The reveal in the original Metroid that Samus, the expert bounty hunter, was a woman was such a simple and bold concept that challenged the expectation that the only games that would sell needed to feature a male protagonist. Proving that you could have a strong reliable protagonist who was a woman and have her be the face of the franchise with no male lead to speak of. This representation inspired countless female action protagonists like Aloy (Horizon Zero Dawn), Chell (Portal), Jill Valentine (Resident Evil), Chun-li (Street Fighter), Laura Croft (Tomb Raider), Elster (Signals), and more than all have inspired growth both in the industry and the stories that can be told across both genders and still be valid.


How would you rate this game (1-5 Stars (5 stars good))


I would rate the game a strong 5 Stars, the exploration and the adventure that you go on as Samus is fun due to the free nature that the game gives to you to explore and slowly unlock new areas as you gain new abilities


Games I Played but did not want to review:


Super Mario Kart: Cool game but wanted to beat Metroid. For the first-ever Mario cart game, the game holds up surprisingly well. So long as the player is proficient in racing games, there will be no trouble completing the races in the first place!



Star-Fox: It's one of those games that you REALLY need to get immersed into otherwise you are going to have a bad time as the environment, while cool, really draws away from the game as you have graphics of really detailed character portraits then you get the most polygonal characters ever conceived. The environment, which is a huge draw for flight sim-type games feels empty leaving a craving for AceCombat 7.

[Professor Watkins]

Graded to here.