Learn about Gaming, Games, Action, Adventure, Consoles, Role Playing and More!

Games → The history of games dates to the ancient past. Games are an integral part of all societies. Like work and relationships, they are an expression of some basic part of the human nature. Games are formalized expressions of play which allow people to go beyond immediate imagination and direct physical activity. Games capture the ideas and behaviors of people at one period of time and carry that through time to their descendants. Games like liubo, xiangqi, and go illustrate the thinking of the military leaders who employed them centuries ago. When archaeologists excavate an ancient society they find artefacts related to living, working, family and social activities, games often become an archival record of how individuals and groups played in earlier times.

Role playing → Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the Oxford English Dictionary defines role-playing as "the changing of one's behaviour to fulfill a social role", the term is used more loosely in four senses:

Consoles → A console is a command line interface where the personal computer game's settings and variables can be edited while the game is running. Consoles also usually display a log of warnings, errors, and other messages produced during the program's execution. Typically it can be toggled on or off and appears over the normal game view.

Gaming → Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. Typically, the outcome of the wager is evident within a short period.

Adventure → An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports. The term also broadly refers to any enterprise that is potentially fraught with physical, financial or psychological risk, such as a business venture, a love affair, or other major life undertakings.

Action → Action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse subgenres such as fighting games, shooter games, and platform games, which are widely considered the most important action games, though some real-time strategy games are also considered to be action games.


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WiiWare is a service that allows Wii users to download games and applications specifically designed and developed for the Wii video game console made by Nintendo. These games and applications can only be purchased and downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel under the WiiWare section. Once the user has downloaded the game or application, it will appear in their Wii Menu or SD Card Menu as a new channel. WiiWare is a companion to the Virtual Console, which specializes in emulated games originally developed for other systems instead of original titles.

WiiWare is being promoted as an avenue for developers with small budgets to release innovative, original, and smaller-scale games without the cost and risk of creating a title to be sold at retail (akin to Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Store). The development kit costs around US$2000 and developers need to be licensed with and approved by Nintendo. According to Nintendo, the "remarkable motion controls will give birth to fresh takes on established genres, as well as original ideas that currently exist only in developers' minds". Nintendo will handle all pricing options for the downloadable games.

Like Virtual Console games, WiiWare is purchased using Nintendo Points. However, unlike Virtual Console games, instruction manuals are stored on the Wii Shop Channel itself.

On November 4, 2009, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed in Q& A session that they are planning to test downloadable demos ... Read the rest of this article

Featured Articles on Action...

Arcade Game ... In the 1930s, the earliest coin-operated pinball machines were made. These early amusement devices were distinct from their later electronic cousins in that they were made of wood, did not have plungers or lit-up bonus surfaces on the playing field, and used mechanical instead of electronic scoring readouts...

Role-playing Game ... The original form, sometimes called the tabletop RPG, is conducted through discussion, whereas in live action role-playing games (LARP) players physically perform their characters' actions...

Nintendo DS Accessories ... The Nintendo MP3 player is compatible with any device that can play GBA games, however it is not recommended for the Game Boy Advance or GBA SP due to short battery life. DS Camera The DS Camera is a camera that plugs into the GBA slot of the DS...

Action Role-playing Game ... The following year, ASCII released the Sharp X1 computer game Bokosuka Wars, considered an early example of an action RPG, though it is also considered an early strategy RPG... In Bokosuka Wars, each soldier was able to gain experience and level up through battle, while the action occurred entirely in real-time... Classic action RPGs / hack slash See also: History of Eastern role-playing video games and Hack and slash Early 1980s While Western computer developers continued to explore the possibilities of real-time RPG gameplay to a limited extent, Japanese developers, with their recently aroused interest in the RPG genre, created a new brand of action/RPG, combining the RPG genre with arcade and action-adventure elements...

Audio Game ... Audio games originally started out as 'blind accessible'-games and were developed mostly by amateurs and blind programmers. But more and more people are showing interest in audio games, ranging from sound artists, game accessibility researchers, mobile game developers and mainstream video gamers...


Featured Articles on Adventure...

GameKing ... The consoles have above-average sound circuitry capable of multi-channel music and digital sound playback, but a comparably low quality greyscale LCD screen, only supporting four shades of grey and having a very low (48 by 32 pixels) resolution, combined with a slow refresh rate, poor readability and adjustments, compared to the original Game Boy. Games can be compared to some of the earlier built-in cell phone games (pre Java games), while their playing speed (scrolling etc.) and audio is far superior (multi-channel music and digitized samples and voices are quite common in GameKing games)...

MUD ... Traditional MUDs implement a role-playing video game set in a fantasy world populated by fictional races and monsters, with players choosing classes in order to gain specific skills or powers. The object of this sort of game is to slay monsters, explore a fantasy world, complete quests, go on adventures, create a story by roleplaying, and advance the created character...

Adventure ... Similarly, Helen Keller stated that "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." Outdoor adventurous activities are typically undertaken for the purposes of recreation or excitement: examples are adventure racing and adventure tourism... Adventure in mythology Some of the oldest and most widespread stories in the world are stories of adventure such as Homer's The Odyssey... The adventure novel exhibits these "protagonist on adventurous journey" characteristics as do many popular feature films, such as Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark...

List Of WiiWare Games ... Japan (12 titles): Board Warriors, Brain Challenge, Diner Dash, Jinsei Game, Lonpos, Minna no Theater Wii, Nectaris, Out of Galaxy: Gin no Kōshika, Pit Crew Panic, Pop, Princess Ai Monogatari and Shootanto: Kako Hen. North America (11 titles): Bruiser and Scratch, Diner Dash, Evasive Space, Jungle Speed, Lonpos, Neves Plus, Penguins Friends: Hey! That's My Fish!, Pit Crew Panic, Planet Pachinko, Shootanto: Evolutionary Mayhem and The Magic Obelisk...


Featured Articles on Consoles...

Gamate ... History The Gamate appears to be the first of the many handheld consoles released in reaction to the success of Nintendo's Game Boy...

Game Boy Color ... The Game Boy Color also featured an infrared communications port for wireless linking. The feature was only supported in a few games, however, and the infrared port was dropped for the Game Boy Advance and later releases...

North American Video Game Crash Of 1983 ... Plethora of games and consoles At the time of the U.S crash, there were numerous consoles on the market, including the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the Bally Astrocade, the ColecoVision, the Coleco Gemini (a 2600 clone), the Emerson Arcadia 2001, the Fairchild Channel F System II, the Magnavox Odyssey2, the Mattel Intellivision (and its just-released update with several peripherals, the Intellivision II), the Sears Tele-Games systems (which included both 2600 and Intellivision clones), the TandyvisioN (an Intellivision clone for Radio Shack), and the Vectrex... Likewise, many of these same companies announced yet another generation of consoles for 1984, such as the Odyssey3, and Atari 7800...

Virtual Console ... Usually in Linux (see Linux console), the first six virtual consoles provide a text terminal with a login prompt to a Unix shell... (Note that users can redefine these default key combinations.) The need for virtual consoles has lessened now that most applications work in the graphical framework of the X Window System, where each program has a window and the text mode programs can be run in terminal-emulator windows... ) The virtual consoles can be configured in the file /etc/inittab read by init -- typically it starts the text mode login process getty for several virtual consoles...

WonderSwan ... The original WonderSwan was later replaced by the WonderSwan Color; although some WonderSwan Color games are compatible with the original WonderSwan, many are designed exclusively for the WonderSwan Color and show a message such as "This cartridge is for WonderSwan Color only" when run on the original WonderSwan. The WonderSwan are playable both vertically and horizontally, and feature a fairly large library of games, including numerous first-party titles based on licensed anime properties, with significant third-party support from Square and Capcom...