Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine Issue 67
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The 1995 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles California on May 11-13.
First-Person is a vantage point that attempts to simulate looking through a game character's eyes. It is most commonly found in first-person shooters, racing games, and visual novels, and to a lesser extent in other genres, such as RPGs, 3D platformers, and adventure games.
Games whose titles consist of a single word.
Game Over originally appeared in pinball machines, and later, arcade machines. When players lose at a game, it is game over.
Controller Overlay is a technique developers used to help communicate to the player what each of the buttons on the console's controller did. With today's tech and evolution of gaming, this concept is accomplished by on-screen guidance.
The concept of purchasing media and having it delivered over the internet. No physical representation of this content is given, and although the content resides on the user's hard drive they are typically granted a license to the product, rather than ownership of it.
This concept is for games in which at least one of the main characters is male.
A two-dimensional image or animation overlaid into a scene. The foundation of early 2D games, making up everything from props to the player-controlled character.
Who needs 2D when we've got 3D? 3D, or 3 dimensions, is what we're used to seeing in almost every game these days, letting us do all sorts of awesome stuff like run in circles!
Digitized sprites, popularized in the early 90s, were a form of graphics that used footage of real actors, Stop-motion frames of a figure/clay model or 3D renders of characters that were then made digital and put into the game.
Sure, these days have almost every game sporting the newfangled 3D, but way back when, everyone had to live with plain old 2D. 2D, or two dimensions, limit the game to scrolling backgrounds, but some games even now make use of this basic concept.
Games released coinciding with new hardware.
Puzzles may need to be solved before the player can progress to the next section of the game. Often it may not be clear to players exactly what the puzzle is, or whether the an in-game items needs to be attained before it is even possible to solve it.
Games which have served as the basis of a comic book or vice versa.
Static background images that are not drawn in real time.
Games that are little more than extensive cinematic sequences in which the player has little interaction with what is happening onscreen. This notion of a cinematic game is epitomized by laserdisc arcade classics such as Astron Belt, Dragon's Lair and Bega's Battle.
Quick Time Events show up in all sorts of games as an attempt to make cutscenes interactive. Press the buttons displayed on-screen before time runs out, or else.
Hand-drawn or computer-generated animation.
A non-interactive sequence within a game most often used for plot advancement.
Female characters who are designed with highly idealized figures and proportions, outfits that are revealing and/or form-fitting, and prone to ending up in completely over-the-top poses designed to show off their bodies.
Multiple endings is a term used to describe different outcomes or conclusions to a game based on the previous actions of the player.
A digital distribution service owned by Valve Corporation. Originally created to distribute Valve's own games, Steam has since become the de facto standard for digital distribution of PC games.
The concept of a helpless female character in desperate need of rescuing by the protagonist, in most cases from a villain, or from a form of impending doom.
What lies ahead, and is distant from the present.
A game with fake interactivity will present the player with a choice, but will prevent further progress, such as by repeating the choice, until the player selects a specific answer.
These spooky entities are the spirits of the dead, returned from beyond their graves for generally sinister purposes. There's generally about even odds whether a particular ghost will be helpful or malevolent towards the living, but some ghosts just want to be left alone entirely.
Homebrew software is a slang term for unofficial software and games for consoles and handhelds which don't generally support it, such as the Wii or Nintendo DS.
Why are bad guys on so many game covers? Perhaps the developers secretly think they're cooler than the good guys.
Cutscenes that cannot be interrupted or bypassed through player interaction.
Voice Acting is the art of providing voices for characters in games, television shows, films, radio programs, and other forms of media.
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