Replay: The History of Video Games (76 page)

Social networking

The explosive growth of social networks after 2005 has been accompanied by a rush of games tied to websites such as Facebook and MySpace that revolve around co-operation between friends.

• Habbo
  (2000, Sulake Corporation, Sampo Karjalainen & Aapo Kyrölä, Finland): A social network for teenagers presented as a hotel, which has a video game look as well as games integrated into it.
  
• Lexulous
  (2007, Lexulous, Rajat Agarwalla & Jayant Agarwalla, Facebook, India): Essentially a remake of the board game
  Scrabble
  . Originally called
  Scrabulous
  until Hasbro’s lawyers objected.
  
• Parking Wars
  (2007, A&E Television Network, area/code, Facebook, USA): Park on other people’s streets and fine those who park on yours. Like the moment in
  Monopoly
  where you hope your opponent won’t notice you landed on their property but on a global scale.
  
• Restaurant City
  (2007, Playfish, Facebook, UK): Build and manage restaurants for people to visit and enlist your friends as employees.
  
• Farmville
  (2009, Zynga, Facebook, USA): Insanely popular crop growing.
  
• Mob Wars
  (2009, PsychoMonkey, David Maestri, Facebook, USA): Team up with your friends to build a mafia empire by beating up rival players.
  

Indie & Doujin-soft

Both the western indie game scene and Japan’s equivalent doujin-soft movement are treasure troves of surprising, confusing, delightful and appalling games that are growing in number at a bewildering rate. This list can only scratch the surface:

• Pencil Whipped
  (2000, ChiselBrain, Lorne Flickinger, PC: Windows, USA): First-person shooter set in a pencil sketch world that looks like a disturbed child’s nightmare.
  
• Uplink
  (2001, Introversion Software, Chris Delay, PC: Windows, UK): Knife-edge hacking game. Introversion went on to make:
  Darwinia
  (2005, Introversion Software, Chris Delay, PC: Windows, UK): Real-time strategy reinvention;
  Defcon
  (2006, Introversion Software, Chris Delay, PC: Windows, UK): An unsettling game of global thermonuclear war.
  
• Cave Story
  (2004, Studio Pixel, Daisuke Amaya, PC: Windows, Japan): A glorious Japanese indie platformer with a RPG heart.
  
• Torus Trooper
  (2004, ABA Games, Kenta Cho, PC: Windows, Japan): Gut-wrenchingly fast fusion of
  Wipeout
  and
  Tempest
  .
  
• Tumiki Fighters
  (2004, ABA Games, Kenta Cho, PC: Windows, Japan): Fly a toy plane through chunky polygon world and use the debris of those you destroy as a shield. Formed the basis for
  Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy
  (2008, Majesco, Budcat Creations, Wii, USA)
  
• Dan! Da! Dan!
  (2005, Omega, PC: Windows, Japan): Vertically scrolling shooter where you blast your way through pastel-coloured blocks to avoid crashing.
  
• I’m O.K. – A Murder Simulator
  (2005, Thompsonsoft, PC: Windows, USA): Side-scrolling shooter retort to the bombastic anti-video game campaigner Jack Thompson, who said he’ll donate $10,000 to charity if
  Grand Theft Auto
  publisher Take-Two released a game about a father of a child killed by a computer gamer who takes revenge by murdering people in the industry.
  
• Passage
  (2007, Jason Rohrer, PC: Windows, USA): A five-minute slice of video game social commentary exploring life, death and marriage.
  
• AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
  (2009, Dejobaan Games, PC: Windows, USA): A game about hurtling to earth after leaping off a skyscraper. An exhilarating rush of out-of-control panic.
  
• Blueberry Garden
  (2009, Erik Svedäng, PC: Windows, Sweden): Eccentric platform game.
  
• Bonsai Barber
  (2009, Zoonami, Wii, UK): A quirky game where you trim the foliage of vegetable customers at your barber’s shop.
  
• Canabalt
  (2009, Adam Atomic, Daniel Baranowsky, Online: Flash, USA): Many indie games champion the ideal of games controlled by one button alone. This is one of the best – a panicked and frantic race over rooftops to escape the monsters that are destroying the city.
  
• Everyday the Same Dream
  (2009, Molleindustria, Paolo Pedercini, Online: Flash, Italy): Stylish agit-prop with an addictive soundtrack.
  
• Machinarium
  (2009, Amanita Design, Jakub Dvorsky, PC: Windows, Czech Republic): Beautifully illustrated indie adventure game.
  
• Zombie Pub Crawl
  (2009, Orange Crane Games, iPhone, USA): Marauding zombies are getting in the way of you and a pint of lager. Time to get out the gun.
  
• Enviro-Bear 2010: Operation: Hibernation
  (2010, Justin Smith, iPhone, Canada): Bear tries to drive car. Cue clumsy driving chaos.
  

Miscellaneous

The square pegs that won’t fit the round holes:

• Scram
  (1980, Atari Program Exchange, Chris Crawford, Atari 800, USA): Nuclear power plant management.
  
• Frogger
  (1981, Sega, Konami, Coin-op, Japan): Traffic-dodging gem that defies categorisation.
  
• Midwinter
  (1989, Rainbird, Maelstrom Games, Atari ST, UK): Organise a guerrilla war to overthrow an evil dictator. Its giant polygon 3D island was a technical marvel at the time although the game’s an unforgiving experience. A few years later the excellent
  Hunter
  (1991, Activision, Paul Holmes, Amiga, UK) offered a similar experience – minus the character recruitment elements – across a large 3D archipelago.
  
• North & South
  (1989, Infogrames, Stéphane Baudet, Atari ST, France): Zany strategy board game with excursions into real-time strategy and platforming.
  
• Storm Master
  (1991, Silmarils, André Rocques & Louis-Marie Rocques, Atari ST, France): Design strange flying machines to wage war on the enemy in action sequences.
  
• Transarctica
  (1993, Silmarils, André Rocques, Amiga, France): Giant war trains battle across the frozen wastes in this unusual fusion of action, strategy and adventure.
  
• Chop Suey
  (1995, 20th Century Fox, Magnet Interactive Studio, Theresa Duncan & Monica Gesue, PC: Windows, USA): Two girls go on a giddy trip through a Midwest town. One of the opening shots of the games for girls movement of the late 1990s.
  
• Barbie Fashion Designer
  (1996, Mattel Media, PC: Windows, USA): Design clothes for Barbie dolls and print them out on special fabric printer paper. The first game aimed at girls to become a big success and ahead of the curve of user-generated content to boot. Create-and-print play was also explored by another girl game:
  Anime Land
  (1995, Casio, Casio Loopy, Japan): Create and decorate manga images and then turn them into stickers by printing them out on the Loopy’s thermal printer.
  
• Snake
  (1997, Nokia, Nokia 6610, Finland): The first mobile phone game to grab people’s attention. Eat dots to grow your tail while avoiding the walls or your tail. Its roots can be found in
  Blockade
  (1976, Gremlin, Coin-op, USA).
  
• Power Shovel / Power Diggerz
  (1999, Taito, Coin-op, Japan): Very silly fun with diggers.
  
• Magic Pengel: The Quest for Colour
  (2003, Taito, Garakuda-Studio, PlayStation 2, Japan):
  Pokémon
  -style creature battling where you draw beasts that the game then brings to life.
  
• Segagaga
  (2001, Sega, Tetsu Okano, Dreamcast, Japan): A tongue-in-cheek state of the industry address.
  
• Jet Set Radio Future
  (2002, Sega, Smilebit, Xbox, Japan): Icily cool inline skating graffiti ’em up where you race around a city-turned-playground while decorating buildings with your spray can.
  
• Wario Ware Inc.: Mega Microgame$! / Wario Ware Inc.: Minigame Mania
  (2003, Nintendo, Game Boy Advance, Japan): Rapid fire bursts of bright, simple and bizarre mini-games that veer from the nostalgic to the wildly inventive.
  
• Katamari Damacy
  (2004, Namco, Keita Takahashi, PlayStation 2, Japan): Roll a sticky ball around a crude-but-charismatic 3D world until you become a messy mass of people, animals, pianos and other everyday objects. Silly but fun. Keita Takahashi followed it up with the how-far-can-you-stretch madness of
  Noby Noby Boy
  (2009, Namco Bandai, Keita Takahashi, PlayStation 3, Japan).
  
• Cooking Mama
  (2006, Taito, Cooking Mama, Nintendo DS, Japan): Cookery themed mini-games. Prompted a protest game from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who objected to the meat-based recipes:
  Cooking Mama – Mama Kills Animals
  (2008, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Online: Flash, USA)
  
• The Simpsons Game
  (2007, Electronic Arts, EA Redwood Shores, PlayStation 3, USA): The game’s simple beat ’em up action is nothing special but its wicked lampooning of the video game industry and game design conventions demands attention, not least Will Wright’s power-crazed cameo.
  
• Fl0w
  (2007, Sony Computer Entertainment, Thatgamecompany, PlayStation 3, USA): Relaxing zooplankton adventures. Drift through the ocean nibbling on other wee beasties to evolve.
  
• Flower
  (2009, Sony Computer Entertainment, Thatgamecompany, PlayStation 3, USA): A dreamy, beautiful, enchanting and, above all, joyous game where you control the wind to create streams of swirling petals that cavort around the country fields bringing them back to life.