This Week In Video-Game History witnesses examples of two of the industry's most important trends: the release of Final Fantasy games and Nintendo suing other companies. With the anniversaries of two classic titles and the birthday of the hippest developer, we have a week-long party ahead of us.
May 16
2002 -- Final Fantasy 11 launches in Japan. The first MMO entry in the Final Fantasy series, the game had a very strange global roll out. Initially released on the PlayStation 2 in Japan, it came out months later for Windows-based PCs. It would take 18 months for Square Enix to release it for PCs in North America and nearly two years for the game to hit North American PS2s...and somewhere in the middle of all that, it came out in Europe. These timelines are a testament to the difficulties in localizing an MMO.
2005 -- Sony reveals the PlayStation 3. In a fit of hyperbole, then CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Ken Kutaragi called it "a supercomputer for computer entertainment." Thankfully, we never saw the batarang PS3 controller. Just what was that thing?
May 17
1989 -- Tengen releases its version of Tetris, which is often cited as the best version of the game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. What makes this release interesting was that Tengen, a part of Atari, was not officially licensed to publish titles for the console. Understandably, the unlicensed product upset Nintendo, and the two companies ended up in court. The courts decided in Nintendo's favor and forced retailers to haul Tetris by Tengen from store shelves.
May 18
1973 -- Brothers Yuji and Hiroshi Kudo incorporate Hudson Soft in Japan. The company isn't a major player these days, but it is one of the most influential developers in video-game history. Hudson was instrumental in the development and release of the Turbo Grafix-16, but it has developed games for just about every system you can think of.
May 19
2001 -- Square Enix releases Final Fantasy 10 for the PlayStation 2 in Japan. The increased power of the console allowed new innovations in gender-ambivalent protagonists.
May 20
2008 -- Epic Games acquires Chair Entertainment. The company developed Shadow Complex, which might be considered the best example of the "Metroid-vania" style of game on modern consoles. The game also showed the flexibility of the Unreal Engine, which is commonly used for twitchy first-person shooters, not 2D adventure platformers.
May 21
1992 -- Where Nintendo took it to Tengen, Galoob took it to Nintendo. Galoob distributed the Game Genie, a "middle man" piece of hardware that allowed players to alter the code of their favorite games to incredibly fun and bizarre results. This act, Nintendo claimed, created derivative works which were a form copyright infringement. "Not so," said the courts on May 21, 1992, allowing Galoob to distribute this very cool piece of hardware. I will note that the patent for the Game Genie expires on May 30. That's a retro revival I would support, not that I have any idea how it would work with disc-based media.
May 22
1965 -- Happy birthday, Tetsuya Mizuguchi! In an industry where image is so important, this former Sega Employee and founder of Q Entertainment has the knack for creating some of the coolest video games. It's hard to describe particular video games as "effortlessly stylish," but it's a term that seems to fit any game Mizuguchi works on. Is it weird that Rez and Lumines make me want to spend too much money on trendy clothes?
1980 -- Pac-Man hits arcades in Japan. While the yellow circle with a mouth is one of video games' greatest icons, the game wasn't an immediate hit in the East. The game didn't become a phenomenon until it hit North American arcades. Lets all have a game of the very excellent Pac-Man: Championship Edition to celebrate.
1998 -- Epic Games releases Unreal. It was a 3D first-person shooter that would spawn an entire franchise. It also lends its name to Epic Games' developer tool set, Unreal Engine, which is now in its third generation.
Question of the Week: Which was your favorite Final Fantasy?
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