Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned is a cancelled action-adventure role-playing video game that was being developed by Propaganda Games for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows platforms. Originally set to be published by Disney Interactive Studios, it was the first attempt to create an open world game based on the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. The project was cancelled in October 2010, soon before the closure of Propaganda Games.

Set before events of The Curse of the Black Pearl, the game was to follow James Sterling, a pirate captain whose main mission was to travel across the Caribbean Sea to make a reputation for himself. Although little was unveiled about the story, it was intended to be independent from the films' main arc and include new characters. Gameplay was to have emphasized role-playing elements, including real-time combat and weapon customization. ( Full article...)

Tidus ( Japanese: ティーダ, Hepburn: Tīda) is a fictional character in Square Enix's Final Fantasy series and the main protagonist of the 2001 role-playing video game Final Fantasy X. Tidus is a 17-year-old from the city of Zanarkand who is transported to the world of Spira following an attack by the creature Sin. Shortly after his arrival he meets and joins Yuna, a mage and her guardians in a pilgrimage to kill Sin after learning that he is actually his missing abusive father Jecht. He has appeared in other video games, including the Final Fantasy X sequel Final Fantasy X-2, the Kingdom Hearts series, and several Square Enix crossover games.

Tidus was designed by Tetsuya Nomura with a cheerful appearance, in contrast to previous Final Fantasy protagonists. Scenario writer Kazushige Nojima wanted to expand the relationship between player and character with monologues describing the game's setting. While the narrative was initially focused the romance between Tidus and Yuna, Square provided a major focus on his misrelationship with Jecht in order to provide a major impact in the setting,. Tidus is voiced primarily by Masakazu Morita in Japanese and James Arnold Taylor in English. Both actors enjoyed voicing the character, and Morita also performed his motion capture. ( Full article...)

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is an action role-playing video game co-developed by Square Enix and Jupiter, and published by Square Enix in collaboration with Disney Interactive in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance. The game serves as an intermediary between the two larger-scale PlayStation 2 games in the Kingdom Hearts series. It was one of the first GBA games to incorporate full motion video (FMV).

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is the second game in the Kingdom Hearts series. It is a direct sequel to Kingdom Hearts, and its ending is set about a year before Kingdom Hearts II. The game follows Sora and friends, as they explore the mysterious Castle Oblivion while battling the sinister Organization XIII, a group of antagonists new to the series. The game introduces new characters and plotlines that further expand the Kingdom Hearts universe and set up the premise for Kingdom Hearts II. The game features a new card-based battle system, in a departure from its predecessor's real time combat system. ( Full article...)

Burning Rangers is a 1998 action game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Sega Saturn. Burning Rangers is set in a futuristic society in which fire is the remaining danger. Players control one of an elite group of firefighters, the Burning Rangers, who extinguish fires and rescue civilians in burning buildings. Most of the tasks the players complete are centred around collecting energy crystals to transport civilians to safety. In lieu of an in-game map, Burning Rangers features a voice navigation system which directs players through corridors.

Development began shortly after the release of Christmas Nights in November 1996. Producer Yuji Naka wanted to create a game which involved saving people rather than killing them. Sonic Team chose to connect the game with firefighting as they thought it was an effective way of having players identify with heroism. It was released in Japan in February 1998, and later that year in North America in May and in Europe in June. Burning Rangers received mostly positive reviews. Critics unanimously commended the game's soundtrack and audio, with the voice navigation system receiving particular praise. The response to the graphics was mixed, with some critics feeling they were among the best on the Saturn, although it was noted for its poor collision detection and occasional glitching. The game was among the final seven Saturn games released in America. ( Full article...)

The Nintendo DSi is a dual-screen handheld game console released by Nintendo. The console launched in Japan on November 1, 2008, and worldwide beginning in April 2009. It is the third iteration of the Nintendo DS, and its primary market rival is Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP). The fourth iteration, entitled Nintendo DSi XL, is a larger model that launched in Japan on November 21, 2009, and worldwide beginning in March 2010. Development of the DSi began in late 2006, and the handheld was unveiled during an October 2008 Nintendo conference in Tokyo. Consumer demand convinced Nintendo to produce a slimmer handheld with larger screens than the DS Lite. Consequently, Nintendo removed the Game Boy Advance (GBA) cartridge slot to improve portability without sacrificing durability.

While the DSi's design is similar to that of the DS Lite, it features two digital cameras, supports internal and external content storage, and connects to an online store called the Nintendo DSi Shop. Nintendo stated that families often share DS and DS Lite consoles. Its new functionality was intended to facilitate personalization, so as to encourage each member of a household to purchase a DSi. The handheld supports exclusive physical media in addition to DS games with DSi-specific features and standard DS titles. The only exception to its backward compatibility are earlier DS games that required the GBA slot. Nintendo had sold over 41 million DSi and DSi XL units combined. They were succeeded by the Nintendo 3DS. ( Full article...)

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a 2009 action-adventure game developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Eidos Interactive in conjunction with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Based on the DC Comics superhero Batman and written by veteran Batman writer Paul Dini, Arkham Asylum was inspired by the long-running comic book mythos. In the game's main storyline, Batman battles his archenemy, the Joker, who instigates an elaborate plot to seize control of Arkham Asylum, trap Batman inside with many of his incarcerated foes, and threaten Gotham City with hidden bombs. Most of the game's leading characters are voiced by actors who have appeared in other media based on the DC Animated Universe; Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin reprised their roles as Batman, the Joker, and his sidekick Harley Quinn respectively.

The game is presented from the third-person perspective with a primary focus on Batman's combat and stealth abilities, detective skills, and gadgets that can be used in combat and exploration. Batman can freely move around the Arkham Asylum facility, interacting with characters and undertaking missions, and unlocking new areas by progressing through the main story or obtaining new equipment. The player is able to complete side missions away from the main story to unlock additional content and collectible items. Combat focuses on chaining attacks together against numerous foes while avoiding damage, while stealth allows Batman to conceal himself around an area, using gadgets and the environment to silently eliminate enemies. ( Full article...)

Flight Unlimited is a 1995 aerobatic flight simulator video game developed and published by LookingGlass Technologies. It allows players to pilot reproductions of real-world aircraft and to perform aerobatic maneuvers. They may fly freely, race through floating rings against a timer or take lessons from a virtual flight instructor. The instructor teaches basic and advanced techniques, ranging from rudder turns to maneuvers such as the tailslide, Lomcovák and Immelmann turn.

Flight Unlimited was the first self-published game released by Looking Glass Technologies. It was intended to establish the company as a video game publisher and to compete with flight simulator franchises such as Microsoft Flight Simulator. Project leader Seamus Blackley, a particle physicist and amateur pilot, conceived the game in 1992. He felt that other flight simulators failed to convey the experience of real flight, and he reacted by coding a simulated atmosphere for Flight Unlimited based on real-time computational fluid dynamics. Aerobatic pilot Michael Goulian endorsed the game and assisted the team in making it more true to life. ( Full article...)

Chrono Trigger is a 1995 role-playing video game developed and published by Square. It was originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System as the first game in the Chrono series. The game's development team included three designers that Square dubbed the "Dream Team": Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Square's Final Fantasy series; Yuji Horii, creator of Enix's Dragon Quest series; and Akira Toriyama, character designer of Dragon Quest and author of the Dragon Ball manga series. In addition, Takashi Tokita co-directed the game and co-wrote the scenario, Kazuhiko Aoki produced the game, Masato Kato wrote most of the story, while composer Yasunori Mitsuda wrote most of the soundtrack before falling ill and deferring the remaining tracks to Final Fantasy series composer Nobuo Uematsu. The game's story follows a group of adventurers who travel through time to prevent a global catastrophe.

Chrono Trigger was a critical and commercial success upon release and is frequently cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Nintendo Power magazine described aspects of the game as revolutionary, including its multiple endings, plot-related side-quests focusing on character development, unique battle system, and detailed graphics. Chrono Trigger was the second best-selling game of 1995 in Japan, and shipped 2.65 million copies worldwide by March 2003. Excluding the PC version, the game had shipped over 3.5 million copies worldwide by February 2018. ( Full article...)

Ōkami ( Japanese: 大神, lit. "great god" or "great spirit") is an action-adventure video game developed by Clover Studio and published by Capcom. It was released for PlayStation 2 in 2006 in Japan and North America, and in 2007 in Europe and Australia. After the closure of Clover Studio a few months after the release, a port for Wii was developed by Ready at Dawn, Tose, and Capcom, and released in 2008.

Set in classical Japan, Ōkami combines Japanese mythology and folklore to tell the story of how the land was saved from darkness by the Shinto sun goddess, named Amaterasu, who took the form of a white wolf. It features a sumi-e-inspired cel-shaded visual style and the Celestial Brush, a gesture-system to perform miracles. The game was planned to use more traditional realistic rendering, but this had put a strain on the graphics processing of the PlayStation 2. Clover Studio switched to a cel-shaded style to reduce the processing, which led to the Celestial Brush concept. The gameplay is modeled on The Legend of Zelda, one of director Hideki Kamiya's favorite series. The game's name is a pun, as "ōkami" can mean either "great god" (大神) or "wolf" (狼) in Japanese. ( Full article...)

Final Fantasy XI, also known as Final Fantasy XI Online, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), originally developed and published by Squaresoft and then published by Square Enix as the eleventh main installment of the Final Fantasy series. Designed and produced by Hiromichi Tanaka, it was released in Japan on May 16, 2002, for PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows-based personal computers in November of that year. The game was the first MMORPG to offer cross-platform play between PlayStation 2 and PC. It was later released for the Xbox 360 in April 2006. All versions of the game require a monthly subscription to play.

The story is set in the fantasy world of Vana'diel, where player-created avatars can both compete and cooperate in a variety of objectives to develop an assortment of jobs, skills, and earn in-game item rewards. Players can undertake an array of quests and progress through the in-game hierarchy and through the major plot of the game. Since its debut in 2002, five expansion packs have been released along with six add-on scenarios. Each expansion pack and add-on brings a new major storyline to the Final Fantasy XI world, along with numerous areas, quests, events and item rewards. ( Full article...)

The Prince is the name given to a group of fictional characters who act as the main protagonists of the Prince of Persia franchise, originally created by Jordan Mechner and currently owned by Ubisoft. Beginning with the titular original game in 1989, there have been several distinct Prince characters, all sharing general traits. The most prominent version was first featured in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003), who has featured in a large number of games set within that game's continuity. In the 2008 reboot, the Prince is not from a royal family, but was planned to earn his title during the course of his journey. Other versions of the Prince have appeared in related media, most prominently the character Dastan ( Persian: دستان) in the 2010 Prince of Persia film portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal.

Mechner created the Prince for the first Prince of Persia game. His concepts for the character were drawn from Near Eastern mythology such as One Thousand and One Nights and Shahnameh, with his athleticism inspired by the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The character's movements were created by Mechner by capturing footage of his brother and transferring them into the game using rotoscoping. The Prince was redesigned and rewritten for The Sands of Time, with his design maturing with each sequel. The 2008 reboot redesigned him around a concept of a prince in making. ( Full article...)

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is a 2012 adventure game developed by Chunsoft. It is the second installment in the Zero Escape series, and was originally released for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita. The story follows the player character Sigma, who is abducted and forced along with eight other individuals to play the Nonary Game, which puts its participants in a life-or-death situation. As the story progresses, the characters unravel the secrets behind the Nonary Game.

The gameplay alternates between two types of sections: Escape sections, where the player completes puzzles in escape-the-room scenarios; and Novel sections, where the player reads the game's narrative through visual novel segments, and makes decisions that influence the story toward one of twenty-four different endings. The player is given access to a flowchart, which allows them to revisit any previously completed section, and choose a different option to cause the story to proceed in another direction. ( Full article...)

Bound High! is an unreleased action- puzzle video game that was in development by Japan System Supply and planned to be published by Nintendo on a scheduled 1996 release date exclusively for the Virtual Boy. In the game, players take control of a transforming robot named Chalvo through a series of levels riddled with hazardous obstacles to avoid across multiple worlds, while destroying or knocking out alien invaders off the area. The project was first conceptualized by designer and programmer Hideyuki Nakanishi, who wrote the idea on paper and placed it within a wall inside the offices of Japan System Supply, with his manager eventually greenlighting its development after seeing it.

Although showcased at various trading shows and completed for release, Bound High! was ultimately shelved due to the failure of the Virtual Boy itself. After its cancellation, a follow-up on the Game Boy titled Chalvo 55 was released in 1997. Despite its cancellation, a ROM image of the complete game was leaked online in 2010 by the hobbyist community at Planet Virtual Boy, allowing for it to be played. ( Full article...)

Micro Machines is a racing video game developed by Codemasters and originally published by Camerica for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991. Themed around Galoob's Micro Machines toys, players race in miniaturised toy vehicles around various environments. The game is the first installment in the Micro Machines video game series.

Micro Machines was developed because Galoob wanted Codemasters to develop a game based on their toy brand, although Galoob and Codemasters encountered legal issues with Nintendo over the game being unlicensed. Micro Machines was ported to several systems, and received remakes for the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube in 2002. A sequel, Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament, was released in 1994, and the series was revived in 2016 with the release of a title for iOS and Android. Micro Machines received critical acclaim, with reviewers praising the originality and two-player mode, although some criticised the sprites on some versions. Retrospectively, it has been considered one of the greatest video games of all time. ( Full article...)

Last Order: Final Fantasy VII (ラストオーダー -ファイナルファンタジーVII-, Rasuto Ōdā -Fainaru Fantajī Sebun-), also abbreviated as Last Order or LO, is a 2005 Japanese anime original video animation produced by Madhouse and released by Square Enix. It was directed by Morio Asaka, and produced by Masao Maruyama, Jungo Maruta and Akio Ofuji. Tetsuya Nomura served as supervising director. The OVA is an alternate rendition of two flashbacks used for the video game Final Fantasy VII. Last Order was released in Japan with Advent Pieces: Limited, a special edition release of the film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and as a bonus feature in the North American "Limited Edition Collector's Set" release.

Last Order is associated with the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, a series of prequels and sequels to the original Final Fantasy VII. Entries include Before Crisis, Crisis Core, Advent Children, and Dirge of Cerberus. Although not an official Compilation installment, the Last Order has nonetheless been included in official guidebooks. The OVA's soundtrack was released with the music of Before Crisis, and select songs were later remixed for Crisis Core. Last Order was created due to the success of promotional commercials for Before Crisis, with production lasting six months. The plot encompasses two events occurring before the events of Final Fantasy VII. One follows Sephiroth destroying a village, and the other follows Zack and Cloud escaping from the Shinra Electric Power Company. These flashbacks are narrated by Turk leader Tseng. Originally meant to focus on Zack, Last Order highlighted Tseng's feelings and position in the Shinra company. Last Order received negative fan response due to differences from the original game's content, and the Crisis Core game designers avoided recreating certain scenes from Last Order. ( Full article...)

Soma Cruz (来須 蒼真, Kurusu Sōma) is a fictional character and the protagonist of Konami's action-adventure games Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, part of Konami's Castlevania video game series. He was designed by Ayami Kojima as part of producer Koji Igarashi's desire to try a "different route" for the Castlevania series. His return in Dawn of Sorrow was due to Igarashi's satisfaction with Soma and the storyline in Aria of Sorrow, and he was redesigned with a new anime appearance.

In Aria of Sorrow, Soma is an 18-year-old transfer student studying in Japan (or simply a Japanese high school student, in the Japanese version), where he finds himself in the castle of Dracula, the principal antagonist of the Castlevania series. Soma discovers his "power of dominance," or his ability to claim the souls and abilities of the monsters he defeats as his own. As the game's story progresses, Soma learns of Dracula's demise, and that he is his reincarnation, and destined to become Dracula again (a position Graham Jones desired for himself before he was killed by Soma). The only reason he did not become the next dark lord immediately was due to the efforts of Alucard, using the pseudonym Genya Arikado. Soma eventually defeats the chaos running through the castle, narrowly missing both his own corruption and his possible death at the hands of Julius Belmont. Dawn of Sorrow features Soma fighting the attempts of a cult to slay him and create a new dark lord when one did not surface during the events of Aria of Sorrow. ( Full article...)

The history of video games spans a period of time between the invention of the first electronic games and today, covering many inventions and developments. Video gaming reached mainstream popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since then, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern culture in most parts of the world. The early history of video games, therefore, covers the period of time between the first interactive electronic game with an electronic display in 1947, the first true video games in the early 1950s, and the rise of early arcade video games in the 1970s ( Pong and the beginning of the first generation of video game consoles with the Magnavox Odyssey, both in 1972). During this time there was a wide range of devices and inventions corresponding with large advances in computing technology, and the actual first video game is dependent on the definition of "video game" used.

Following the 1947 invention of the cathode-ray tube amusement device—the earliest known interactive electronic game as well as the first to use an electronic display—the first true video games were created in the early 1950s. Initially created as technology demonstrations, such as the Bertie the Brain and Nimrod computers in 1950 and 1951, video games also became the purview of academic research. A series of games, generally simulating real-world board games, were created at various research institutions to explore programming, human–computer interaction, and computer algorithms. These include OXO and Christopher Strachey's draughts program in 1952, the first software-based games to incorporate a CRT display, and several chess and checkers programs. Possibly the first video game created simply for entertainment was 1958's Tennis for Two, featuring moving graphics on an oscilloscope. As computing technology improved over time, computers became smaller and faster, and the ability to work on them was opened up to university employees and undergraduate students by the end of the 1950s. These new programmers began to create games for non-academic purposes, leading up to the 1962 release of Spacewar! as one of the earliest known digital computer games to be available outside a single research institute. ( Full article...)

Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, originally released in Japan as simply Lunar: Silver Star Story, is a role-playing video game developed by Game Arts and Japan Art Media as a remake of 1992's Lunar: The Silver Star. While the overall plot remains true to the original, accommodations are made to the game's story to allow for a larger, richer cast, as well as additional scenarios.

Initially released on the Sega Saturn in 1996, the game has gone through several variations, beginning with enhanced video support in conjunction with the Saturn's MPEG graphics add-on in 1997, and later being ported to Sony's PlayStation in 1998. The PlayStation version was released in North America by Working Designs, who had also produced the English adaptation of the original game, in May 1999. ( Full article...)

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is a platform-adventure video game developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo and published by Konami for the Game Boy Advance. Part of Konami's Castlevania video game series, it is the second installment of the series on the Game Boy Advance. It was released in Japan in June 2002, in North America in September 2002, and in Europe in October 2002.

Harmony of Dissonance occurs in the fictional universe of the Castlevania series; the premise of the series centers on the eternal conflict between the vampire hunters of the Belmont clan and the immortal vampire Dracula. Set fifty years after Simon Belmont vanquished Dracula's curse, Harmony of Dissonance focuses on his grandson Juste Belmont and his quest to rescue a kidnapped childhood friend. ( Full article...)

Sonic the Hedgehog is a Japanese video game series and media franchise created by Sega. The franchise follows Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battles the evil Doctor Eggman, a mad scientist. The main Sonic the Hedgehog games are platformers mostly developed by Sonic Team; other games, developed by various studios, include spin-offs in the racing, fighting, party and sports genres. The franchise also incorporates printed media, animations, feature films, and merchandise.

Sega developed the first Sonic game, released in 1991 for the Sega Genesis, to compete with Nintendo's mascot Mario. Its success helped Sega become one of the leading video game companies during the fourth generation of video game consoles in the early 1990s. Sega Technical Institute developed the next three Sonic games, plus the spin-off Sonic Spinball (1993). A number of Sonic games were also developed for Sega's 8-bit consoles, the Master System and Game Gear. After a hiatus during the unsuccessful Saturn era, the first major 3D Sonic game, Sonic Adventure, was released in 1998 for the Dreamcast. Sega exited the console market and shifted to third-party development in 2001, continuing the series on Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation systems. ( Full article...)