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Sure, these days have almost every game sporting the newfangled 3D, but way back when, everyone had to live with plain old 2D. 2D, or two dimensions, limit the game to scrolling backgrounds, but some games even now make use of this basic concept.
In many games there is a ranking system, the players with the highest point value are listed in a "high score" table.
Health is a value that gauges how much damage players can take in a game before they die or pass out. Also known as life in some games. Health is usually represented by a bar or a percentage instead of an exact amount. Found in most non sport games
Games whose titles consist of a single word.
A two-dimensional image or animation overlaid into a scene. The foundation of early 2D games, making up everything from props to the player-controlled character.
Game Over originally appeared in pinball machines, and later, arcade machines. When players lose at a game, it is game over.
A boss fight is a culminating challenge that pits the player against one or more enemies representing a greater threat and/or difficulty than those previously faced. These scenarios typically feature unique antagonists.
The continue is a classic gaming concept, and usually arises when the player "dies" or fails in the game. Usually some loss is tied to a continue, in a form of a "life" or something of other value.
It's arguably the one move that symbolizes the medium to those outside it. The ability to jump, be it onto a building, a platform, or a skull, is one of the all time most important abilities ever put in a video game.
A concept in games with multiple characters, a screen with pictures of all playable characters with the possibility of stat listings.
The concept of purchasing media and having it delivered over the internet. No physical representation of this content is given, and although the content resides on the user's hard drive they are typically granted a license to the product, rather than ownership of it.
Typically found in fighting games, combos are a series of strung-together moves.
The ultimate pressure feature. Players have to complete the task at hand, be it defeating opponents or cutting the right wire, in the allotted time.
Trophies are an incentive-based system for the completion of various objective in PS3, Vita, and PS4 titles.
A sequel (also called a follow-up) is a game that carries forward the gameplay concepts, and often the story, of a previous game to which it is officially linked.
Featured mainly in fighting games, special attacks usually require more than just pressing a button to activate. They are usually unique or at least varied between characters.
A flawless victory is a victory in which the winning player has incurred no loss of health, or in other uses, like Unreal Tournament III or Fury, no points scored against the winning team.
SNK fighting games are notorious for boss fights of ludicrous difficulty. Common symptoms of SNK Boss Syndrome include absurdly high attack priority, overpowered special attacks, and AIs that read button inputs. Though it's most common in SNK games, the syndrome has also appeared in games by other companies.
Primarily found in fighting or sports games, the versus screen typically masks the load time of an upcoming matchup. Sometimes codes may be entered here that will affect the game.
Games that give the player only a limited amount of time to choose whether to continue or not. This concept is most often seen in arcade titles and their home ports.
AI Bots are computer-controlled game characters that substitute for characters that are otherwise typically played by a human, and are most commonly found in multiplayer games.
The concept of lives in video games evolved to let the player get a second chance after failing once. The most recognizable symbol is the heart.
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.
Button Mashing is a term used to describe gameplay where certain skills can be only realized explicitly through mashing buttons, a reckless player trying to get results or when the game rewards the player(s) who bash buttons the fastest. The latter example is common in Party Games.
Vertical scrolling is when the screen scrolls along the y-axis. In a vertical scrolling game the player usually starts from the bottom of the screen and moves up. They are also almost always presented in a top-down perspective.
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.
Who needs 2D when we've got 3D? 3D, or 3 dimensions, is what we're used to seeing in almost every game these days, letting us do all sorts of awesome stuff like run in circles!
The main line of distinction between victory or failure in video games, death is the process of a biological being ceasing to be alive.
Bosses are enemies that fight you at the end of a level or at a significant point in the story.
"Hand to hand. It is the basis of all combat." -Gray Fox
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