Game Engine: RAGE

One of my all time favorite games to play are the Grand Theft Auto Series. Though San Andreas is my very favorite of this series I also am a fan of Grand Theft Auto IV. Grand Theft Auto IV is the eleventh title in the Grand Theft Auto series. It was developed by Rockstar North and released by Rockstar Games, in April 2008 for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC consoles. 

Grand Theft Auto IV is set in fictional Liberty City (New York City). The game follows Nick Bellic, a veteran in a unnamed war in Eastern Europe, who comes to the United States in search of the American Dream, but quickly becomes entangled in a world of gangs, crime, and corruption. Like the other games, in the series it is composed of elements from driving, third person shooters, multiplayer modes, and features open world gameplay, in which players can interact with the games features at their own leisure. 

You can steal and drive cars, boats, helicopters, planes, trains, motorcycles, etc. You can also move around freely or follow the games storyline missions. On foot the player can walk, run, jump, climb over obstacles, and swim, as well as us weapons and perform basic hand to hand combat.

Grand Theft Auto IV uses the game Engine RAGE. 

RAGE is short for Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, created by video game developer Rockstar Games. It was previously used in Rockstar Table Tennis in combination with the Euphoria game animation engine. Instead of pre-written animations Euphoria uses procedural animation to control the way the player moves, enabling them to look more realistic. The game also uses middleware from Image Metrics to facilitate facial expressions and ease the process of incorporating lip-synching, Foliage in the game is produced through SpeedTree.   

Music Supervisor Ivan Pavlovich gathered songs for the radio stations featured in the game from contacting over 2,000 people to obtain recording and publishing rights. It has been said that Rockstar paid as much as $5,000 per composition and another $5,000 per master recording per track. Record label owner and record producer Bobby Konders, who host the in-game radio station Massive B Soundsystem 96.9, went through an extra effort of flying to Jamaica to get dancehall artists to re-record tracks to make references to the the boroughs of Liberty City. 

Games Powered by Rage: 

Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis

Grand Theft Auto IV

Midnight Club Los Angeles

Red Dead Redemption

Max Payne 3

Grand Theft Auto V

Post 1990's Game: PaRappa the Rapper

My first experience playing this game was on a Playstation demo disk that included other games like Tomb Raider. Judging by the the cover and name you would assume that there would rapping going on and that the dog on the cover is the main character. Correct!!! Being a big fan of music, just the name invited me to give the game a try. 

PaRappa the Rapper is a rhythm video game for Playstation created by Masaysa Matsuura and his NanaOn-Sha company. PaRappa is a rapping dog that must make his way through each of the games six stages by rapping. To do this PaRappa has a teacher Master Onion who teaches him moves at the kung-fu dojo. To do the moves PaRappa (the player) must press the corresponding buttons on the controller in correct timing with the teachers response. There is a U' Rappin' meter displayed on the side of the screen that lets you know how well you are on beat (Cool, Good, Awful, Bad). When in Cool Mode the player can rap freely and earn large points. 

The game audio is primarily stereo. The soundtrack of the game features crazy sound effects that reflect the moves of PaRappa. The background music is a combination of a hong kong and hip hop theme fused together that allow for the PaRappa's raps to flow respectively. 

All of the characters in the game appear to be flat, two dimensional beings cut from paper while the surroundings are primarily three dimensional. 

PaRappa the Rapper 2 was later released as a sequel to its previous version on Playstation 2 in 2002.

The game was later released on PSP in July 2007. 

Pre 1990's Game: Super Mario Bro's

I have always been a gamer since I was young. I now own all gaming consoles as I have collected them throughout the years. I enjoy playing all types of games with story-line games being at the top of my list. Super Mario Bro's was one of the first games I have played when I was young but I first played it on a Gameboy. 

Super Mario Bros. is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System, as a pseudo-sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. It is the first of the Super Mario series of games. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario and in a two-player game, a second player controls Mario's brother Luigi as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist Bowser.

The player takes on the role of the main protagonist of the series, Mario. Mario's slightly younger fraternal twin brother, Luigi, is only playable by the second player in the game's multiplayer mode, and assumes the same plot role as Mario. The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowser′s forces and save Princess Toadstool. The player moves from the left side of the screen to the right side in order to reach the flag pole at the end of each level.

Each time coins and items that are marked with a "?" are collected there are several sound effects to compliment them. 'With the coins, you hear a coin sound and with the mushrooms while doubling size the sound will with a pitch gain. Players are given a certain number of lives and may gain additional lives. When Mario takes too much damage, falls in a pit, or runs out of time; the game ends when all lives are lost the tempo of the music speeds up and if you die a Mario themed death tune plays. In addition there are warp zones where Mario can transport to usually located in the blue/green tunnels. The audio for this sounds like a warp sound effect. Mario and the fly traps can also shoot out fireballs/seeds and is complimented by short 1 tone sound effects.

Koji Kondo wrote the six-song musical score for Super Mario Bros. Before composition began, a prototype was presented to Kondo for the game, only to see where Mario was, as he ran through a big black area and jumped. Kondo wrote the score with the help of small pianos for an appropriate melody of this scene. After the development of the game showed progress, he realized that his play did not quite fit the storyline, so he changed it a bit by increasing the tempo. He composed his main motive in about synchronization with the control rate, which would require a new player for the game characters. The musical elements were adjusted to the expected reactions of the player.