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In many games there is a ranking system, the players with the highest point value are listed in a "high score" table.
Games that can be played with a CGA monitor and graphics card. CGA, Color Graphics Adapter was the first generation of color graphics for the IBM PC.
Instrumental music, often electronic, that does not follow conventional music structures, instead using various sounds to create a mood. Ambient music can evoke many different feelings in the listener, from tranquility to creeping dread.
Games that let you choose the path you take through the story-line.
Bosses are enemies that fight you at the end of a level or at a significant point in the story.
An aesthetic sub-genre of fantasy, focusing on brutal barbarians and arcane wizardly magic.
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, commonly refers to the programmed behaviors of NPCs in a game, whether it's the fact that a soldier takes cover behind a wall in Gears of War, or that townspeople cheer upon your arrival to their village in Fable.
A game based on an anime.
A system in which the player is allowed to control multiple characters. Most commonly seen in role playing games. Can also be used to describe party systems in the MMORPG genre, which brings a group of players together to accomplish various tasks.
A narrative that takes an unexpected turn. Commonly, plot twists come in the form of revealing that the player character is not actually who they thought.
“Indie” or “independently developed” games are video games which are developed by a studio without the support of an external publisher.
The recording of data related to player performance or progress in a game. This feature is commonly found in RPGs or competitive multiplayer games. It does not include statistics in sports games, unless related to player performance.
A game that uses a mixture of 2D & 3D techniques. Commonly used to describe the use of either 3D graphics restricted to a 2D perceptive, or 2D graphics used to fake the appearance of a 3D perceptive.
Puzzles may need to be solved before the player can progress to the next section of the game. Often it may not be clear to players exactly what the puzzle is, or whether the an in-game items needs to be attained before it is even possible to solve it.
Collectibles are items such as coins, rings, gems, packages etc. that can be gathered, usually for some kind of reward, or sometimes to simply beat a level. Often (almost too often) the source of earning achievements and trophies on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Hand-drawn or computer-generated animation.
Side-scrolling games present the world as viewed perpendicular to the direction the characters are facing on screen. With a heavy focus on lateral movement, objectives are often met by moving from one end of a stage to the other.
Dialogue trees are a feature through which the player selects responses from a list of choices, eliciting reactions from NPCs and determining the path of the conversation and story.
An industry game design convention that's appeared in many games over the years. The fetch quest involves sending the player out to collect a certain number of items, and return them to complete the quest. A staple of the RPG and Adventure game genre.
Many games allow you to buy stuff, these are the dudes who help sell it to you. Typically they also engage in light conversation.
Game Over originally appeared in pinball machines, and later, arcade machines. When players lose at a game, it is game over.
8-bit can be a reference to actual computing power, or it can be a retro look for videogames that want to recall a bygone era.
Grid-based movement limits players, and other entities in a game, to moving through the game world in increments of whole squares on a grid. It has been a common staple of turn-based strategy games since the earliest board games of antiquity. It was also used by early RPGs.
Character Creation refers to characters created by players themselves, rather than developers.
Some games portray cutscenes as portraits of characters talking to each other.
The Virtual Console is a platform service that first appeared on Nintendo's Wii and later on the 3DS and Wii U. Games from past consoles are emulated to run on the new hardware with the added benefits of system-level save states and other features.
Gameplay type emphasizing deliberately paced tactical battle where each side politely takes turns moving and attacking one another through varied forms of combat.
A parallel projection technique used in 2D sprite-based games to fake the appearance of 3D depth.
See? The exploiting, soulless people who run the video game industry DO care about their fans!
The political thriller is a story, often action-oriented, that tends to revolve around two or more nations struggling to gain power. Outcomes are usually found through military confrontations, covert wars, and back alley negotiating.
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