Final Fantasy

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Final Fantasy logo 1990
(North America version, Nintendo)

Original name: "Fighting Fantasy"

Name: "Final Fantasy"

Category: Video games

Subcategory: Role-playing

Genre: Fantasy

Final Fantasy logo 1987
(Japan version, Square)

Inventor: Hironobu Sakaguchi

Developer: Square Co., Ltd. - Japan

Released:
--- December 18, 1987 - Japan
--- July 12, 1990 - North America

Publishers:
--- Square Co., Ltd. - Japan
--- Nintendo of America Inc. - NA

Platforms:
--- Family Computer (Famicom)
--- Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

Producer: Masafumi Miyamoto

Designers: Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hiromichi Tanaka, Akitoshi Kawazu, Koichi Ishii, Kiyoshi Yoshii, Ken Narita, Kazuko Shibuya

Programmer: Nasir Gebelli

Graphics: Yoshitaka Amano

Writers: Hironobu Sakaguchi, Kenji Terada, Akitoshi Kawazu

Number of players: Single-player

Background and characters: «An evil shroud covers the world in darkness. You must restore the powers of earth, wind, fire and water to the Four Orbs. Create your own band of 4 Light Warriors from fighters, thieves, martial artists, and magicians. You'll need all their skills to triumph in this massive role-playing adventure. Your treacherous journey takes you to all parts of a strange new world. Explore dangerous castles and dark caverns where deadly perils, and great rewards await at every turn. Hundreds of ferocious monsters block your path. With patience, skill, and cunning you can defeat them. Come, begin your quest. Enter an enchanted new World. Command your warriors! Prepare to face the Final Fantasy! A world shrouded in the darkness of evil. Your mission – to restore the light». (From the North America version, 1990, back cover).

Music by: Nobuo Uematsu

Features: Final Fantasy, known as Final Fantasy I or FF1 in re-releases, was the first role-playing game in Square's Final Fantasy series, created by Hironobu Sakaguchi. For detailed features and game mode refer to the "Explorer's Handbook" below.

Interesting facts: The creator of the Final Fantasy series Hironobu Sakaguchi proposed the role-playing game (RPG) to his employer Square, but the company approved the launch only after the success of the RPG Dragon Quest by Enix. The team of developers wanted a title that had a simple abbreviation in the Latin alphabet (FF) and a four-syllable abbreviated Japanese pronunciation ("efu efu"); the first name proposed for the video game was "Fighting Fantasy", but it was already taken by a tabletop game, so they decided to call it "Final Fantasy". Final Fantasy was first released in 1987 in Japan by Square, and then Nintendo of America translated the game into English and published it in North America in 1990.

Slogan (North America version, 1990, box): «Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.» (front) - «Dragons and broadswords, mystery and adventure. Final Fantasy has them all!» (back)

Property: Square Co., Ltd. - Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Product website: https://www.finalfantasy.com

Final Fantasy box, front cover (Japan version, Square 1987, by illustrator Yoshitaka Amano)

Final Fantasy box, back cover (Japan version, Square 1987)

Final Fantasy box (Japan version, Square 1987)

Final Fantasy cartridge (Japan version, Square 1987)

Final Fantasy advertising (Japan version, Square 1987)

Final Fantasy screenshots (Japan version, Square 1987)

Final Fantasy intro (Japan version, Square 1987)

Final Fantasy gameplay (Japan version, Square 1987)

Final Fantasy box, front cover (North America version, Nintendo 1990)

Final Fantasy box, back cover (North America version, Nintendo 1990)

Final Fantasy cartridge (North America version, Nintendo 1990)

Final Fantasy "Explorer's Handbook" and maps in Pdf (North America version, Nintendo 1990)

Hironobu Sakaguchi (Nov. 25, 1962), video game developer, creator of the Final Fantasy series

Square Enix celebrate Final Fantasy's 30th Anniversary (1987-2017). With 87 titles, the series was awarded the "most prolific RPG series" by the Guinness World Records in 2017.

Tomb Raider

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Tomb Raider logo 1996

Name: "Tomb Raider"

Category: Video games

Subcategory: Puzzle-platform

Genre: Action-adventure

Developer: Core Design - Derby, England, UK

Released:
--- October 25, 1996 - Europe (Sega Saturn)
--- November 14, 1996 - North America (MS-DOS, Sega Saturn, PlayStation)
--- November 22, 1996 - Europe (MS-DOS, PlayStation)
--- January 24, 1997 - Japan (Sega Saturn)
--- February 14, 1997 - Japan (PlayStation)
--- June 1998 - Europe, North America (Microsoft Windows adaption)

Publisher: Eidos Interactive - Wimbledon, London, UK

Platforms: MS-DOS, Sega Saturn, PlayStation (1996) - Microsoft Windows (1998)

Producer: Mike Schmitt

Designer: Toby Gard

Programmers: Paul Douglas, Gavin Rummery, Jason Gosling

Graphics: Toby Gard, Heather Gibson, Neal Boyd

Writer: Vicky Arnold

Number of players: Single-player

Background and characters: Lara Croft, daughter of Lord Henshingly Croft, was raised to be an aristocrat from birth. After attending finishing school at the age of 21, Lara's marriage into wealth has seem assured, but on her way home from a skiing trip her chartered plane had crashed deep in the heart of the Himalayas. The only survivor, Lara learned how to depend on her wits to stay alive in hostile conditions a world away from her sheltered upbringing. Two weeks later, when she walked into the village of Tokakeriby her experience had had a profound effect on her. Unable to stand the claustrophobic suffocating atmosphere of upper-class British society, she realised that she was only truly alive when she was travelling alone. Over the following eight years she acquired an intimate knowledge of ancient civilizations across the globe. Her family soon disowned their prodigal daughter, and she turned to writing to fund her trips. Famed for discovering several ancient sites of profound archaeological interest she made a name for herself by publishing travel books and detailed journals of her exploits.

Music by: Nathan McCree

Features: Tomb Raider follows British archaeologist and explorer Lara Croft as she travels the world to find a mysterious artifact called "the Scion". In this 3D action game with platforming and puzzle-solving elements, the player controls Lara Croft from a third-person perspective. The camera follows Lara as she climbs, jumps, and swims through detailed environs overcoming environmental obstacles and deadly fauna. Moving through levels often involves finding spots where Lara can climb, looking for spots where Lara can use her acrobatic ability, and sliding blocks and pushing levers to solve puzzles and open passageways. Tomb Raider spans 15 levels and includes exotic places such as ancient ruins in south America, Africa and even Atlantis: the first 4 levels are set in Peru, next 5 levels in Greece, 3 in Egypt, and the last 3 in Atlantis. Each level has a number of secrets that the player can find. Lara has two basic stances: one with weapons drawn and one with her hands free. By default she carries two pistols with infinite ammo. Additional weapons include the shotgun, dual magnums and dual Uzis. Regular items to pick up include ammo, and small and large medi-packs. For detailed features refer to the manual in Pdf below.

Interesting facts: Tomb Raider was a highly successful video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive in the autumn of 1996. The original concept was born in 1993, and the game was developed by a team consisted of six people, among them Toby Gard, who is credited with the invention of the character Lara Croft, initially named Lara Cruz. Tomb Raider was one of the first true 3D titles to be undertaken by Core Design, combining for the first time platforming, puzzle solving and action sequences together. It also established the third person perspective that was used in all subsequent games.

Property: Core Design - Eidos Interactive - Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd.

Product website: https://www.tombraider.com

Tomb Raider, early sketches by designer Toby Gard (1995)

Tomb Raider, French pre-launch advertising (1996)

Tomb Raider, original box with CD and instruction manual (release Oct. 25, 1996, Europe, for Sega Saturn Systems)

Tomb Raider box, front cover (release Oct. 25, 1996, Europe, for Sega Saturn Systems)

Tomb Raider box, back cover (release Oct. 25, 1996, Europe, for Sega Saturn Systems)

Tomb Raider, original CD print (release Oct. 25, 1996, Europe, for Sega Saturn Systems)

Tomb Raider US box: front/back cover and manual in Pdf (release Nov. 14, 1996, North America, for Sega Saturn Systems)

Tomb Raider, pre-launch teaser (1995)

Tomb Raider, first TV commercial (France 1996) featuring Natalie Cook, the first official model to represent Lara Croft

Tomb Raider, game intro (1996)

Tomb Raider, gameplay demo (1996)

Toby Gard (1972 - Chelmsford, Essex), the computer game character designer and consultant who designed the original Tomb Raider video game in 1995 along with the character Lara Croft

Square Enix celebrate Tomb Raider's 25th Anniversary (1996-2021)

DOOM

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DOOM logo 1993

Name: "DOOM"

Category: Video games

Subcategory: FPS First-Person Shooter

Genre: Science-Fiction / Horror

Developer: id Software - Mesquite, Texas, USA

Prerelease versions (1993):
--- 0.2 Alpha (February 4)
--- 0.3 Alpha (February 28)
--- 0.4 Alpha (April 2)
--- 0.5 Alpha (May 22)
--- Press release (October 4)

Released: December 10, 1993 - Doom 0.99 (aka 1.0) shareware, debut at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Publisher: GT Interactive - New York City, USA

Platform: MS-DOS (later adapted for the most common platforms)

Designers: Sandy Petersen, John Romero, Shawn Green, Tom Hall

Programmers: John Carmack, John Romero, Dave Taylor

Graphics: Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Gregor Punchatz

Writer: Tom Hall (author of the "Doom Bible")

Number of players: Single-player, network multiplayer (max. 4)

Background and characters: See images below

Music by: Robert Prince

Features: Doom is a science-fiction/horror first-person shooter where the player, as a nameless space marine, liberate space stations from demon infestation. In Doom, players progress through each level, blasting away enemies while solving puzzles (involving switches, keycards, and skull-shaped key devices), avoiding environmental hazards (such as crushing ceilings, radioactive acid, and burning lava), and collecting weapons, ammo, and other items (including first-aid kits, body armor, suits that protect from radiation, night-vision goggles, computer maps, and supernatural orbs that grant a special bonus to the player). Weapons are: fist, chainsaw, pistol, shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, and BFG 9000, which fires a huge plasma ball. The game's campaign is split up into three episodes (each with eight normal levels and one secret level). The objective of each level is simply to locate the exit room that leads to the next area, marked with an exit sign and/or a special kind of door, while surviving all hazards on the way. "Knee-Deep in the Dead" is the only episode playable in the shareware version. It deals with the marine's journey through the base established on Phobos. In the second episode, "The Shores of Hell", after defeating the two big bruisers guarding the teleportation gateway, the marine passes through into Deimos. As the invasion continues, the base becomes more distorted with hellish architecture. The second episode deals with the marine's liberation of demons from the Deimos base. In the third (and final) episode "Inferno", the marine fights a giant anomaly of flesh and metal known as the Cyberdemon.
The game's engine is known to pioneer new features to the genre, including non-perpendicular walls, complex rooms (known as "sectors") with varying height differences, multiplayer (both co-operatively and competitively, for up to four players at a time) and the concept of packaging the game's content (levels, sounds, and music) into singular files (WAD files) for easier modification and distribution. The original game was distributed via shareware and mail order.

Interesting facts: The development of Doom started in 1992, when John D. Carmack developed a new 3D game engine, the Doom engine, which featured relatively realistic 3D graphics, texture mapping of all surfaces, variable light levels, and floors at varying altitude. Designer Tom Hall wrote an elaborate design document called the Doom Bible, according to which the game would feature a detailed storyline, multiple player characters, and a number of interactive features. However, most of the level design that ended up in the final game is that of John Romero and Sandy Petersen. Doom was widely praised in the gaming press and is broadly considered to be one of the most important and influential titles in gaming history. Although most users did not purchase the registered version, over one million copies have been sold, and the popularity helped the sales of later games in the Doom series that were not released as shareware.

Slogan (1994): «Want to be a Hero? Go to Hell!»

Property: id Software - ZeniMax Media

Product website: http://doom.com

DOOM, box cover art by Don Ivan Punchatz

DOOM, box and content

DOOM, cover for the manual

DOOM, background and characters (images from the manual)

DOOM, Episode 1: "Knee-Deep in the Dead" - Level 1, medium skill gameplay

DOOM magazine preview (Electronic Games, December 1993)

DOOM advertising (1994)

John D. Carmack (August 20, 1970), the American game programmer, aerospace and virtual reality engineer who co-founded id Software and developed the Doom 3D game engine

DOOM in its advanced version: DOOM Eternal (March 20, 2020)

Tetris

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Tetris logo, MS-DOS version 1986

Name: "Tetris"

Category: Video games

Subcategory: Arcade

Genre: Puzzle

Inventor: Alexey Pajitnov

Developers:
--- Alexey Pajitnov
--- Dmitry Pavlovsky
--- Vadim Gerasimov

Invented: June 6, 1984 - Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, USSR

Released: 1984 (USSR), 1986 (EU), 1987 (USA)

Publishers: Mirrorsoft (Europe), Spectrum HoloByte (North America)

Platforms: prototype developed for Elektronika 60 (Russian clone of the PDP-11); first version developed under MS-DOS and released for IBM PC

Number of players: Originally single-player, then multiplayer

Features: Tetris was inspired by the puzzle board game pentominoes (a pentomino is a plane geometric figure formed by joining five equal squares edge to edge), but its inventor Alexey Pajitnov felt that it might have been too complicated with twelve different shape variations, so switched to tetrominoes, of which there are only seven variants. "Tetriminos" are game pieces shaped like tetrominoes, geometric shapes composed of four square blocks each. A random sequence of Tetriminos fall down the playing field (a rectangular vertical shaft, called the "well" or "matrix"). The objective of the game is to manipulate these Tetriminos, by moving each one sideways (if the player feels the need) and rotating it by 90 degree units, with the aim of creating a horizontal line of ten units without gaps. When such a line is created, it disappears, and any block above the deleted line will fall. Points are awarded for each Tetrimino successfully dropped into place. When a certain number of lines are cleared, the game enters a new level. As the game progresses, each level causes the Tetriminos to fall faster, and the game ends when the stack of Tetriminos reaches the top of the playing field and no new Tetriminos are able to enter. The prototype, programmed in Pascal on an Elektronika 60 - a Soviet clone of a Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-11 computer - features monochrome graphics, and the blocks in the tetrominos are represented by a pair of delete/rubout characters (character code 177); a later revision was made where the blocks are represented by a pair of square brackets instead.

Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov
(Moscow, March 14, 1956)
video game developer and
creator of the puzzle game Tetris

Interesting facts: Tetris was created in June 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov, an artificial intelligence researcher working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences at their Computer Center in Moscow. Pajitnov chose the name "Tetris" after "tetra", the Greek word for four, and tennis, his favorite sport. The game proved popular with his colleagues. Academy of Sciences co-workers Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov ported the game to the IBM PC. From there, the PC game exploded into popularity, and began spreading all around Moscow. In 1986 Mirrorsoft, a British-based company, signed a deal to produce the game in the United Kingdom. In 1987 Spectrum HoloByte company released its IBM PC version of Tetris in the United States, where the game's popularity was tremendous. Tetris was the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US. Because the idea of intellectual property rights did not exist in Soviet Russia, as anything Pajitnov had made belonged to the state, he did not receive even a bonus for his work. In 1996, the rights to the game reverted from the Russian state to Pajitnov himself: The Tetris Company was founded, claiming to hold copyright registrations and taking out trademark registrations for Tetris in almost every country in the world.

Quote (Alexey Pajitnov): «I never imagined Tetris was going to be this successful. But the simple, yet addicting nature of Tetris still has me playing it a few times every week».

Property: The Tetris Company

Product website: http://tetris.com

Tetris prototype, screenshot and gameplay (1984)

Tetris, first version screenshot (1984)

Tetris, English version screenshots (1984). Since March 2013, this version is hosted in a permanent exhibit in New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Tetris, MS-DOS version screenshots and gameplay (1986)

Tetris by Atari, advertising (1988)

Tetris, arcade version cabinet and gameplay by Atari (1988). Single-player or competitive mode. The music was composed by Brad Fuller: some Traditional Russian tunes are used including Kalinka, Troika, and Katyusha. About the music introduced by Atari in the game, Tetris inventor Alexey Pajitnov said: «It was very embarrassing for me: when kids of the world hear these pieces of music, they start screaming: "Tetris! Tetris!" That's not very good for Russian culture».

Tetris designer Alexey Pajitnov and son holding early copies of Tetris (1989)

Tetris celebrates 30th Anniversary (1984-2014)