But Our Princess Is In Another Castle

Poetry. The color, noise, and often cryptic images of classic video games set the prose poems in B.J. Best's BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE in motion, but the poems soar far beyond their nostalgic springboards. And while Mario, Pac-Man, and pioneer families forsaken on The Oregon Trail populate these pixelated landscapes, this book translates the games and plays them in the real world, so an Asteroid becomes just one more star shot with lost love, Space Invaders might have communist sympathies, and God is just as bad at Tetris as the rest of us. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, the book's levels explore how our past virtual lives can inform our present actual ones. A coming-of-age narrative turned love story turned philosophical journey, BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE deftly combines two mediums into vivid poems as lyrical as they are imaginative.

Princess Misty of Beldora longs for a more exciting life, but gets more than she bargained for when she is captured by Lord Badlug, the ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Grimoire. He intends to marry her and conquer Beldora, leading the land into ruin and chaos. Together with the long-suffering citizens of Grimoire and a certain bumbling prince, Misty must fight to protect her kingdom and free both realms from Badlug’s tyrannical rule. Misty is determined not to be another damsel in distress; she'll discover just what it takes to be the hero of the story.

The story of Nintendo's rise and the beloved icon who made it possible. Nintendo has continually set the standard for video-game innovation in America, starting in 1981 with a plucky hero who jumped over barrels to save a girl from an ape. The saga of Mario, the portly plumber who became the most successful franchise in the history of gaming, has plot twists worthy of a video game. Jeff Ryan shares the story of how this quintessentially Japanese company found success in the American market. Lawsuits, Hollywood, die- hard fans, and face-offs with Sony and Microsoft are all part of the drama. Find out about: *Mario's eccentric yet brilliant creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, who was tapped for the job because was considered expendable. *Minoru Arakawa, the son-in-law of Nintendo's imperious president, who bumbled his way to success. *The unexpected approach that allowed Nintendo to reinvent itself as the gaming system for the non-gamer, especially now with the Wii Even those who can't tell a Koopa from a Goomba will find this a fascinating story of striving, comeuppance, and redemption.

Contemporary game scholarship offers a broad palette of theories and methods inherited from such fields as sociology and communication studies, experimental sciences, literary analysis, educational sciences and cultural critique. At large, this inherently interdisciplinary research aims for a holistic perspective on the 'LUDIC SOCIETY'. With that in mind, this book is organized into four sections that present related and often intertwined ideas and observations about the ways we manifest ourselves in games and play, how games represent us in the present and in the past, how games and play change us, and what it all may mean for contemporary society. This book invites readers to engage with the key challenges of a ludic society, explore new perspectives and initiate fruitful discussions. It is aimed at both passionate game scholars and all those who want to get a first taste of the multifaceted research field of game studies.

iPhone games are hot! Just look at the numbers. Games make up over 25 percent of total apps and over 70 percent of the most popular apps. Surprised? Of course not! Most of us have filled our iPhone or iPod touch with games, and many of us hope to develop the next best-selling, most talked-about game. You've probably already read and mastered Beginning iPhone 3 Development; Exploring the iPhone SDK, the best-selling second edition of Apress's highly acclaimed introduction to the iPhone and iPod touch by developers Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche. This book is the game-specific equivalent, providing you with the same easy-to-follow, step-by-step approach, more deep technical insights, and that familiar friendly style. While games are all about fun, at the same time, they're serious business. With this Beginning iPhone Games Development book, you're going to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with some hardcore coding. While you may have written games before, this book will take you further, immersing you in the following topics: Game graphics and animation with UIKit, Quartz, Core Animation, and OpenGL ES Game audio with OpenAL, MediaPlayer Framework, AV Foundation, and AudioSession Game networking with GameKit, Bonjour, and Internet sharing For those looking for iPad game development coverage and/or iOS 5 SDK specific game coverage, check out the published Beginning iOS 5 Games Development by Lucas Jordan from Apress.

Video games are part of the growing digital entertainment industry for which game localization has become pivotal in serving international markets. As well as addressing the practical needs of the industry to facilitate translator and localizer training, this book seeks to conceptualize game localization in an attempt to locate it in Translation Studies in the context of the technologization of contemporary translation practices. Designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to the topic of game localization the book draws on the literature in Game Studies as well as Translation Studies. The book’s readership is intended to be translation scholars, game localization practitioners and those in Game Studies developing research interest in the international dimensions of the digital entertainment industry. The book aims to provide a road map for the dynamic professional practices of game localization and to help readers visualize the expanding role of translation in one of the 21st century's key global industries.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry—from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles—enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard’s topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new.

A historical, critical, and personal look at the defining video game of the NES era.