History of Nintendo

Nintendo started as a card company in 1889. The business produced and marketed playing cards called Hanafuda (flower cards) and became very popular. With high demand, assistants were hired to mass produce cards. Nintendo continues to manufacture playing cards in Japan and has its own “Nintendo Cup” tournament.

In around 1956, the dominating playing card manufacturer, which was in the US, only had a small office. Nintendo visited and realised the limitations of playing cards and had gained access to Disney characters and put them on cards to boost sales.

During this time the Nintendo Card Co. was renamed to Nintendo Co and the company expanded. Nintendo set up a taxi company, a love hotel chain, TV network, a food company selling instant rice and noodles, and several other things. These all eventually failed though and after 1964 Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales dropped also and Nintendo’s stock prices went down and down.

Nintendo then moved into Japanese toys and had a maintenance engineer become a product developer in the new “Nintendo Games” department.  With success in with toys and focus being shifted to family entertainment, Nintendo started to try and cater for the emerging arcade scene. Nintendo’s new market now became electronics.

Nintendo began to produce hardware for the colour TV. Nintendo launched FamiCom or Family Computer known outside Japan as the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES. This video game console had many popular titles one most importantly being Super Mario Bros, one of the best-selling video games of all time.

After the NES, the Game Boy handheld game console was being developed, and then also came the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or SNES/Super Famicom. The SNES stepped forward from the NES being 8-bit 3^rd generation to 16-bit 4^th generation.

In hand held development from the Game Boy, came a smaller version, the Game Boy Pocket and then Game Boy Color. Game Boy led with strong demand of the different handheld games they released such as the Poke’mon games.

From the SNES, the next home console was the Nintendo 64, featuring many things such as 3D capabilities, multiplayer of 4 players, analog stick controllers, Rumble Pak for vibration feedback to the controller. This device became then to eventually be an industry standard.

Back to handheld, after the Game Boy Color came Game Boy Advanced which had similar specifications to SNES. Then the Game Boy Advance SP with lit up flip screen, introduced rechargeable built-in batteries.

Following the SNES came the GameCube, which was first for Nintendo to utilise optical discs instead of cartridges, then the Nintendo Wii, which uses motion sensing controllers and online capabilities.

The Nintendo DS handheld then had a double screen feature and then with DSi and DSi XL, came with a camera and expanded screen. Next up then in the DS series was the 3DS which had autostereoscopy to produce a stereoscopic three-dimensional effect without the need to wear glasses.

Nintendo now has the handheld audience and in-home entertainment they cater for and is strong in the market against competitors such as Mircosoft and Sony.

Narrative Structure of 2 Films

Worksheet – Narrative Structure of 2 Films

Using the 10 points to list the similarities, i.e., they share the same recipe/structure in making the film.

Movie 1: Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen	Movie 2 : WALL-E
1.     Equilibrium Before the cube sliver projecting onto Sam’s mind, Sam Witwicky the protagonist, is living a routine everyday life and continuing studies.	Before EVE landed, WALL-E led a routine everyday life as a working cleaning robot on an post-apocolyptic earth.
2.     Disturbance A sliver from the cube in the first movie puts information into the protagonist’s mind provoking enemies to pursue him thus breaking his normal everyday life.	Another robot lands on the empty earth and interrupts WALL-E from his everyday clean-up and causes a break from his norm.
3.     Protagonist Sam Witwicky becomes the center target of attention for the characters in the movie as enemies pursue him and allies defend him.	WALL-E sets out on a journey following EVE and we see how WALL-E is affected by her coming to earth.
4.     Plan Sam needs to find out what the symbols in his head mean and why the enemy wants it before they decide to annihilate everyone. He follows clues and has to hide from everyone that may want to turn him in.	WALL-E and EVE become fugitives forcing them to hide and the computer on the mother-ship tries to hide that there is life re-growing on earth. They need to alert the human captain and protect the plant so they can activate the ship’s hyperjump back to earth.
5.     Obstacle The Decepticons and people trying to turn Sam in can stop him from achieving his goal.	The mothership computer and guard robots try to stop EVE and WALL-E from alerting the news about earth and getting there.
6.     Complications -The autobot leader, the good guys, Optimus Prime dies -The Matrix Key they finally find crumbles to dust -Sam comes close to death and goes into limbo during the conflict	-The ship computer has different motives than what the people want -The plant is vital information to authorize getting back to earth -WALL-E gets severally damaged protecting the plant
7.     Timeout -Sam and his girlfriend Mikaela through the battle and almost losing each other come closer as they tell each other they love each other.	-Once WALL-E is damaged, EVE starts to show worry and feelings about him and is upset he isn’t the same once he is repaired
8.     Crisis Autobots and Decepticons battle it out as autobots want to defend the humans and earth where as the Decepticons don’t and want the Sun’s energy.	The ship computer turns against the captain’s orders, starts a mutiny, and attacks WALL-E protecting the plant. EVE and the captain try to stop the computer.
9.     Climax Optimus is resurrected with the reforged key and is upgraded with extra parts to make him capable to defeat the enemy. The Fallen is defeated and the other Decepticons flee.	The captain disables the computer and they head for Earth, that is also the only place EVE knows there is parts to fix WALL-E.
10.   Resolution Earth is safe and the Autobots continue working with the soldiers and Sam returns to his college studies.	Earth is ready to be repopulated and WALL-E and EVE reunite helping the humans and other robots restore Earth’s environment

Munchkin experience

Munchkins is a parody game of Dungeons and Dragons (which I've also never played before) where you use cards and roll dice to fight monsters as a team with others or working against each other to see who becomes the highest level first.

The game seemed a bit complex at first to be done on cards, but it seemed to work out, although we had to do a lot of reading at first to understand what was going on. We played to what we thought was the correct way of playing it and it seemed fun, but in now a days, it looks like a bit of an outdated way of playing games. I think a better similar experience could be achieved digitally much more easily, but as one of the players did say, well it could be a fun game to play drunk or something haha.

Defining Fun..

Fun to me in relation to games is a game that I can really immerse myself in and escape reality and all other thoughts that are clogging my head and just focus on the entertainment that is present before me.

I really enjoy my single-player games, mostly platformers and adventure games. There are single-player games with a great story I can get lost in and anticipate a sequel so strongly just to know what happens next in the story. Single-player games can really give me a fun experience and its like playing in a movie.

I also play MMO's a lot also and I think because when playing with other people and especially friends, it just makes the experience that much more memorable. The longest game I would have played is World of Warcraft, a massive online game with many places to explore and fight and survive whether you adventure alone or with friends. The dungeon content within this game is where groups of up to 5 or 40 players at a time! all come together to strategise, put character strengths together and take down enemy bosses. These dungeons fights could never be done alone and when your in the heat of a battle focusing and co-ordinating with friends and other people online in your group, there is an adrenaline! And once you take out that boss, it is a great victory. That for me is where a lot of fun can be had, and shared! :)