Microsoft’s $68.7 billion purchase of Activision brings Xbox’s stable of internal game development studios to 30 and gives Microsoft control of billion-dollar franchises like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft in addition to IPs like Minecraft, Halo, and The Elder Scrolls. Here’s a list of everything the company has acquired since 2014.
All PostsGames @ itch.io Jul 8, 2021
The video game console originated as a way to bring arcade experiences (specifically,
Pong) into the home. But the home game took on a life of its own; playing a game in your house that you can play indefinitely is very different than a game that needs to constantly shuffle through new players to get the quarters of each. One early game that understood that difference was 1984’s
Pitfall II. Let’s put on our amateur video game analyst hats and take a look into gaming history.
Pitfall!
Made by David Crane in 1982,
Pitfall! is arguably the first video game that originated on consoles (as opposed to the arcades or computers) to be a real hit. Selling over four million copies on its original Atari 2600 and countless more on successive platforms (like the MSX, pictured above), the flip-screen game created the side-scrolling platformer, creating a large world that extended beyond the bounds of the television.
Just Some Thoughts
How Pitfall Builds its World
Games for the Atari 2600 were quite constrained. When Warren Robinett first pitched the idea that would become
Adventure, a game where you would explore a world with many rooms and pick up items to help you along the way, he was denied because it wasn t thought feasible. And it made sense to do so. This was the late 70s; there had never been a game with multiple screens before. This was in the days of
Space Invaders and
Pac Man, when everything in a game was in front of the player at all times, so the fact that
Frogger Television Series Leaping on to Peacock
Konami s classic arcade game
Frogger will become the basis for a new TV series on NBC s Peacock streaming service. According to Deadline, the series will be a competition show in which contestants travel through obstacle courses meant to evoke
Frogger s gameplay. There will be 12 different courses in total, and they will feature a number of obstacles directly from
Frogger, including gators, hippos, and oncoming traffic. Contestants will attempt to avoid these hazards in order to claim the show s cash prize. NBCUniversal has ordered 13 episodes of the series so far, which will be produced by Eureka Productions alongside Konami Cross Media NY.