Hooked on Books discussion

Ready Player One ~ Game Console
Find a new video game posted below on the 1st and 15th of every month!

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 1: January 1st ~ Pong 👾 🎮 🕹

Pong is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released on November 29, 1972. It was one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work and decided to manufacture the game. Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. In response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.


Pong was the first commercially successful video game, and it helped to establish the video game industry along with the Magnavox Odyssey. Soon after its release, several companies began producing games that closely mimicked its gameplay. Eventually, Atari's competitors released new types of video games that deviated from Pong's original format to varying degrees, and this, in turn, led Atari to encourage its staff to move beyond Pong and produce more innovative games themselves.


Atari released several sequels to Pong that built upon the original's gameplay by adding new features. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a home version of Pong exclusively through Sears retail stores. The home version was also a commercial success and led to numerous clones. The game was remade on numerous home and portable platforms following its release. Pong is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., due to its cultural impact.


Pong is a two-dimensional sports game that simulates table tennis. The player controls an in-game paddle by moving it vertically across the left or right side of the screen. They can compete against another player controlling a second paddle on the opposing side. Players use the paddles to hit a ball back and forth. The goal is for each player to reach eleven points before the opponent; points are earned when one fails to return the ball to the other.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book published in or set during the 1970s.
🕹 Read a book where any type of sport is played.
🕹 Read a book with an MPG of Historical or Historical Fiction.
🕹 Read a book where the letters P-O-N-G are found anywhere in the title.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 2: January 15th ~ Pac-Man 👾 🎮 🕹





Pac-Man, originally called Puck Man in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called "Power Pellets" causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points.


Game development began in early 1979, directed by Toru Iwatani with a nine-man team. Iwatani wanted to create a game that could appeal to women as well as men, because most video games of the time had themes of war or sports. Although the inspiration for the Pac-Man character was the image of a pizza with a slice removed, Iwatani has said he also rounded out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi (Japanese: 口). The in-game characters were made to be cute and colorful to appeal to younger players. The original Japanese title of Puck Man was derived from the Japanese phrase "Paku paku taberu" which refers to gobbling something up; the title was changed to Pac-Man for the North American release.


Pac-Man was a widespread critical and commercial success, leading to several sequels, merchandise, and two television series, as well as a hit single by Buckner & Garcia. The character of Pac-Man has become the official mascot of Bandai Namco Entertainment. The game remains one of the highest-grossing and best-selling games, generating more than $14 billion in revenue (as of 2016) and 43 million units in sales combined, and has an enduring commercial and cultural legacy, commonly listed as one of the greatest video games of all time.


Pac-Man is an action maze chase video game; the player controls the eponymous character through an enclosed maze. The objective of the game is to eat all of the dots placed in the maze while avoiding four colored ghosts—Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (cyan), and Clyde (orange)—who pursue Pac-Man. When Pac-Man eats all of the dots, the player advances to the next level. Levels are indicated by fruit icons at the bottom of the screen. In between levels are short cutscenes featuring Pac-Man and Blinky in humorous, comical situations.


If Pac-Man is caught by a ghost, he loses a life; the game ends when all lives are lost. Each of the four ghosts has its own unique artificial intelligence (A.I.), or "personality": Blinky gives direct chase to Pac-Man; Pinky and Inky try to position themselves in front of Pac-Man, usually by cornering him; and Clyde switches between chasing Pac-Man and fleeing from him.


Placed near the four corners of the maze are large flashing "energizers" or "power pellets." When Pac-Man eats one, the ghosts turn blue with a dizzied expression and to reverse direction. Pac-Man can eat blue ghosts for bonus points; when a ghost is eaten, its eyes make their way back to the center box in the maze, where the ghost "regenerates" and resumes its normal activity. Eating multiple blue ghosts in succession increases their point value. After a certain amount of time, blue-colored ghosts flash white before turning back into their normal forms. Eating a certain number of dots in a level causes a bonus item—usually a fruit—to appear underneath the center box; the item can be eaten for bonus points. To the sides of the maze are two "warp tunnels", which allow Pac-Man and the ghosts to travel to the opposite side of the screen. Ghosts become slower when entering and exiting these tunnels.


The game increases in difficulty as the player progresses: The ghosts become faster, and the energizers' effect decreases in duration, eventually disappearing entirely. An integer overflow causes the 256th level to load improperly, rendering it impossible to complete.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book published in or set during the 1980s.
🕹 Read a book that has been published under two different names.
🕹 Read a book with huge commercial success. {NYT List, Best-Seller, etc.}
🕹 Read a book where a character eats pizza.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 3: February 1st ~ The Legend of Zelda 👾 🎮 🕹





The Legend of Zelda is an action-adventure game franchise created by the Japanese game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. It is primarily developed and published by Nintendo, although some portable installments and re-releases have been outsourced to Flagship, Vanpool, and Grezzo. The gameplay incorporates action-adventure and elements of action RPG games.


The series centers on the various incarnations of Link, a courageous young man of the elf-like Hylian race, and Princess Zelda, a magical princess within the bloodline of the goddess Hylia, as they fight to save the magical land of Hyrule from Ganon, an evil warlord turned demon king, who is the principal antagonist of the series. Ganon wishes to use the Triforce, a sacred relic left behind by the three goddesses that created Hyrule, to remake the world in his own dark image. When gathered together, the power of the Triforce can grant any wish its user desires; however, if someone with a heart that does not possess a balance of the three virtues of Power, Courage, and Wisdom attempts to touch the Triforce, it will split into three triangles and bond with three people whose hearts embody the required virtue.


Although their personalities and backstory differ from game to game, the incarnations of Link and Zelda often have many traits in common, such as Link often being left-handed and clad in green, and Zelda being associated with wisdom, light, and prophesy. While the conflict with Ganon serves as a backbone for the series, some games have featured other settings and antagonists, with Link traveling or being sent to these other lands in their time of need.


Since the original Legend of Zelda was released in 1986, the series has expanded to include 20 entries on all of Nintendo's major game consoles, as well as a number of spin-offs. An American animated TV series based on the games aired in 1989 and individual manga adaptations commissioned by Nintendo have been produced in Japan since 1997. The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo's most successful franchises; several of its entries are considered among the greatest video games of all time.


The Legend of Zelda games feature a mix of puzzles, action, adventure/battle gameplay, and exploration. These elements have remained constant throughout the series, but with refinements and additions featured in each new game. Later games in the series also include stealth gameplay, where the player must avoid enemies while proceeding through a level, as well as racing elements. Although the games can be beaten with a minimal amount of exploration and side quests, the player is frequently rewarded with helpful items or increased abilities for solving puzzles or exploring hidden areas. Some items are consistent and appear many times throughout the series (such as bombs and bomb flowers, which can be used both as weapons and to open blocked or hidden doorways; boomerangs, which can kill or paralyze enemies; keys for locked doors; magic swords, shields, and bows and arrows), while others are unique to a single game. Though the games contain role-playing elements (Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is the only one to include an experience system), they emphasize straightforward hack-and-slash-style combat over the strategic, turn-based or active time combat of series like Final Fantasy. The game's role-playing elements, however, have led to much debate over whether or not the Zelda games should be classified as action role-playing games, a genre on which the series has had a strong influence. Miyamoto himself disagreed with the RPG label, but classified Zelda as "a real-time adventure game"; he said he was "not interested in systems where everything in the game is decided by stats and numbers" but what's "important to me is to preserve as much of that "live" feeling as possible" which he said "action games are better suited in conveying" to players.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book with a subtitle.
🕹 Read a book with two authors.
🕹 Read a book with a female MC whose first initial is found in ZELDA.
🕹 Read a book with a male MC whose first initial is found in LINK.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 4: February 15th ~ Final Fantasy 👾 🎮 🕹





Final Fantasy is a fantasy anthology media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi which is owned and developed and published by Square Enix (formerly Square). The franchise centers on a series of fantasy role-playing video games. The first game in the series was released in 1987, with 16 numbered main entries having been released to date.


The franchise has since branched into other video game genres such as tactical role-playing, action role-playing, massively multiplayer online role-playing, racing, third-person shooter, fighting, and rhythm, as well as branching into other media, including films, anime, manga, and novels.


Final Fantasy is mostly an anthology series with primary installments being stand-alone role-playing games, each with different settings, plots and main characters; however, the franchise is linked by several recurring elements, including game mechanics and recurring character names. Each plot centers on a particular group of heroes who are battling a great evil, but also explores the characters' internal struggles and relationships. Character names are frequently derived from the history, languages, pop culture, and mythologies of cultures worldwide. The mechanics of each game involve similar battle systems and maps.


Final Fantasy has been both critically and commercially successful. Several entries are regarded as some of the greatest video games, with the series selling more than 185 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time. The series is well known for its innovation, visuals, such as the inclusion of full-motion videos, photorealistic character models, and music by Nobuo Uematsu. It has popularized many features now common in role-playing games, also popularizing the genre as a whole in markets outside Japan.


In Final Fantasy games, players command a party of characters as they progress through the game's story by exploring the game world and defeating enemies. Enemies are typically encountered randomly through exploring, a trend which changed in Final Fantasy XI and XII. The player issues combat orders—like "Fight", "Magic", and "Item"—to individual characters via a menu-driven interface while engaging in battles. Throughout the series, the games have used different battle systems. Prior to Final Fantasy XI, battles were turn-based with the protagonists and antagonists on different sides of the battlefield. Final Fantasy IV introduced the "Active Time Battle" (ATB) system that augmented the turn-based nature with a perpetual time-keeping system. Designed by Hiroyuki Ito, it injected urgency and excitement into combat by requiring the player to act before an enemy attacks, and was used until Final Fantasy X, which implemented the "Conditional Turn-Based" (CTB) system. This new system returned to the previous turn-based system, but added nuances to offer players more challenge. Final Fantasy XI adopted a real-time battle system where characters continuously act depending on the issued command. Final Fantasy XII continued this gameplay with the "Active Dimension Battle" system. Final Fantasy XIII's combat system, designed by the same man who worked on X, was meant to have an action-oriented feel, emulating the cinematic battles in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Final Fantasy XV introduces a new "Open Combat" system. Unlike previous battle systems in the franchise, the "Open Combat" system (OCS) allows players to take on a fully active battle scenario, allowing for free range attacks and movement, giving a much more fluid feel of combat. This system also incorporates a "Tactical" Option during battle, which pauses active battle to allow use of items.


Like most RPGs, the Final Fantasy installments use an experience level system for character advancement, in which experience points are accumulated by killing enemies. Character classes, specific jobs that enable unique abilities for characters, are another recurring theme. Introduced in the first game, character classes have been used differently in each game. Some restrict a character to a single job to integrate it into the story, while other games feature dynamic job systems that allow the player to choose from multiple classes and switch throughout the game. Though used heavily in many games, such systems have become less prevalent in favor of characters that are more versatile; characters still match an archetype, but are able to learn skills outside their class.


Magic is another common RPG element in the series. The method by which characters gain magic varies between installments, but is generally divided into classes organized by color: "White magic", which focuses on spells that assist teammates; "Black magic", which focuses on harming enemies; "Red magic", which is a combination of white and black magic, "Blue magic", which mimics enemy attacks; and "Green magic" which focuses on applying status effects to either allies or enemies. Other types of magic frequently appear such as "Time magic", focusing on the themes of time, space, and gravity; and "Summoning magic", which evokes legendary creatures to aid in battle and is a feature that has persisted since Final Fantasy III. Summoned creatures are often referred to by names like "Espers" or "Eidolons" and have been inspired by mythologies from Arabic, Hindu, Norse, and Greek cultures.


Different means of transportation have appeared through the series. The most common is the airship for long range travel, accompanied by chocobos for travelling short distances, but others include sea and land vessels. Following Final Fantasy VII, more modern and futuristic vehicle designs have been included.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book from a series with at least 16 distinct works.
🕹 Read a book with an alliterative title.
🕹 Read a book tagged ANTHOLOGY / ANTHOLOGIES.
🕹 Read a book where the author's first AND last initials are found in HIRONOBU SAKAGUCHI.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 5: March 1st ~ Animal Crossing 👾 🎮 🕹





Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a social simulation game developed and published by Nintendo in 2020 for the Nintendo Switch; it is the fifth main entry in the Animal Crossing series. In New Horizons, the player controls a character who moves to a deserted island after purchasing a getaway package from Tom Nook, accomplishes assigned tasks, and develops the island as they choose. They can gather and craft items, customize the island, and develop it into a community of anthropomorphic animals.


New Horizons began its development in 2012. The game director, Aya Kyogoku, retained old content from previous games to keep fans happy and also ensured that the game was simple enough to appeal to newcomers. With art and graphics, the developers used the concept of "trigger of play" and the "imagination gap", where the former kept the gameplay simplistic and easy to pick up while the latter kept the art style simple for the player to imagine the rest. The game was announced at E3 2019 via a Nintendo Direct and after an extended development period, released worldwide March 20, 2020.


New Horizons received acclaim from critics, who praised its gameplay and customization options and called it the best game in the Animal Crossing series. The game was nominated for over a dozen awards and was a contender for Game of the Year. It was a major commercial success, selling over 43 million copies worldwide and breaking the console game record for most digital units sold in a single month. It is the best-selling game in the Animal Crossing series, the second best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch, the best-selling game of all time in Japan, and the 14th best-selling video game in history. Its commercial success has been attributed in part to its release amid global stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. The game has been used as a substitute for social interactions such as weddings and graduation ceremonies, as well as political campaigning and virtual protests. The game also inspired fan creations, such as a trading website, a talk show, comics and merchandise. It received major updates adding new content until November 5, 2021.


As in previous Animal Crossing games, New Horizons is a life simulation game played in real time. Weather also adjusts to the seasons of the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, depending on the player's real-world location, a first for the Animal Crossing series. The game follows a villager customized by the player, who, after purchasing a getaway package from Tom Nook, moves into a deserted island. After Tom Nook gives the player essentials, such as a tent, the game proceeds in a non-linear fashion, allowing for the player to play the game as they choose with only a small amount of limitations which lessen as the player progresses.


The player is given open access to natural resources such as fruit and wood, which can be collected and crafted into a variety of items and furniture known as D.I.Y. crafting. Alongside this, they can catch bugs and fish, plant and grow trees and flowers, extract natural resources such as rocks, and swim in the ocean. The island gives open space for placing items and decorating as the player chooses. Certain content available, such as organisms, are season-dependant and only appear for a limited time of the year. Doing simple tasks rewards the player with "Nook Miles", which in return can purchase premium rewards in Resident Services. The other currency "Bells", a staple in the Animal Crossing franchise, can be used to purchase other goods and services. Another feature offered early on is the "Dodo Airlines", an airport; through Dodo Airlines, and tickets purchased through Nook Miles, the player can visit other vacant islands to harvest resources and meet other villagers. The player can invite other villagers they meet to their island if they choose.


The player starts with two other random anthropomorphic villagers that also purchase the getaway package. These villagers will live alongside the player and can be interacted with, building relationships. When the player has made sufficient progress in the game, Tom Nook gives more freedom of expanding as a village. Other shop owners will visit and settle on the island; museum-owner Blathers, who will display fish, bugs, sea creatures, fossils, and art captured by the player; sisters Mabel and Sable, who sell clothing and other player-created accessories; and Timmy and Tommy, who run a store that specializes in selling furniture and other quality-of-life items, eventually expanding to sell more items per day. That store is named Nook's Cranny. Eventually, the main area will expand to a Town Hall, run by Tom Nook with the help of Isabelle; other buildings and villagers will populate the community, and old tents and shops will grow into a more permanent structure that can still be moved if the player chooses. From there, the island will be given a star rating out of five, usually starting off at a one-star rating. As the island is further developed, the island's star rating will increase. When a three-star rating is achieved, K.K. Slider, a popular musician, will visit and perform a concert at the island, marking the "end" of the game as the credits roll. However, more options for island customization are given to the player for further community growth, such as the ability to construct and destroy cliffs, bodies of water and paths, colloquially referred to as terraforming.


The game supports one island per Switch system. Animal Crossing: New Horizons supports both local and online co-op gameplay, with up to four players locally and eight players online able to occupy an island at any given time, an option available through the Dodo Airlines. The game supports amiibo cards and figures from the Animal Crossing series, which can be used to invite a villager to the island temporarily that can be convinced to join the island. Nintendo Switch Online cloud saving was added during a late July 2020 update, allowing users to recover game data if their Switch is broken or lost. Additional free content was added every few months, added on every update by downloading the latest update from Nintendo, but major updates ceased with the release of the version 2.0 update on November 3, 2021.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book set on an island.
🕹 Read a book where the MC builds or crafts something.
🕹 Read a book published during the COVID-19 Pandemic {let's go with 2020 - 2023}.
🕹 Read a book where at least two characters are neighbors.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 6: March 15th ~ Asteroids 👾 🎮 🕹





Asteroids is a space-themed multidirectional shooter arcade video game designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a single spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers, while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The game becomes harder as the number of asteroids increases.


Asteroids was conceived during a meeting between Logg and Rains, who decided to use hardware developed by Howard Delman previously used for Lunar Lander. Asteroids was based on an unfinished game titled Cosmos; its physics model, control scheme, and gameplay elements were derived from Spacewar!, Computer Space, and Space Invaders and refined through trial and error. The game is rendered on a vector display in a two-dimensional view that wraps around both screen axes.


Asteroids was one of the first major hits of the golden age of arcade games; the game sold 47,840 upright cabinets and 8,725 cocktail cabinets arcade cabinets and proved both popular with players and influential with developers. In the 1980s it was ported to Atari's home systems, and the Atari VCS version sold over three million copies. The game was widely imitated, and it directly influenced Defender, Gravitar, and many other video games.


The objective of Asteroids is to destroy asteroids and saucers. The player controls a triangular ship that can rotate left and right, fire shots straight forward, and thrust forward. Once the ship begins moving in a direction, it will continue in that direction for a time without player intervention unless the player applies thrust in a different direction. The ship eventually comes to a stop when not thrusting. The player can also send the ship into hyperspace, causing it to disappear and reappear in a random location on the screen, at the risk of self-destructing or appearing on top of an asteroid.


Each level starts with a few large asteroids drifting in various directions on the screen. Objects wrap around screen edges – for instance, an asteroid that drifts off the top edge of the screen reappears at the bottom and continues moving in the same direction. As the player shoots asteroids, they break into smaller asteroids that move faster and are more difficult to hit. Smaller asteroids are also worth more points. Two flying saucers appear periodically on the screen; the "big saucer" shoots randomly and poorly, while the "small saucer" fires frequently at the ship. After reaching a score of 40,000, only the small saucer appears. As the player's score increases, the angle range of the shots from the small saucer diminishes until the saucer fires extremely accurately. Once the screen has been cleared of all asteroids and flying saucers, a new set of large asteroids appears, thus starting the next level. The game gets harder as the number of asteroids increases until after the score reaches a range between 40,000 and 60,000. The player starts with 3–5 lives upon game start and gains an extra life per 10,000 points. Play continues to the last ship lost, which ends the game. The machine "turns over" at 99,990 points, which is the maximum high score that can be achieved.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book with a mostly black cover. {Your discretion.}
🕹 Read a book that has between 40,000 and 60,000 ratings on Goodreads.
🕹 Read a book where the MC's first initial is found in ASTEROIDS.
🕹 Read a book where the characters have a meeting of some kind.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 7: April 1st ~ Grand Theft Auto 👾 🎮 🕹





Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is a series of action-adventure games created by David Jones and Mike Dailly. Later titles were developed under the oversight of brothers Dan and Sam Houser, Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbut. It is primarily developed by British development house Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design), and published by its American parent company, Rockstar Games. The name of the series is a term for motor vehicle theft in the United States.


Gameplay focuses on an open world where the player can complete missions to progress an overall story, as well as engage in various side activities. Most of the gameplay revolves around driving and shooting, with occasional role-playing and stealth elements. The series also has elements of the earlier beat 'em up games from the 16-bit era. The games in the Grand Theft Auto series are set in fictional locales modelled after real-life cities, at various points in time from the early 1960s to the 2010s. The original game's map encompassed three cities—Liberty City (based on New York City), San Andreas (based on San Francisco),[a] and Vice City (based on Miami)—but later titles tend to focus on a single setting and expand upon the original three locales. Each game in the series centres on different respective protagonist who attempts to rise through the criminal underworld due to various motives, often accompanying themes of betrayal. Several film and music veterans have voiced characters in the games, including Ray Liotta, Dennis Hopper, Samuel L. Jackson, William Fichtner, James Woods, Debbie Harry, Axl Rose and Peter Fonda.


DMA Design began the series in 1997, with the release of the Grand Theft Auto. As of 2020, the series consists of seven standalone titles and four expansion packs. The third main title, Grand Theft Auto III, released in 2001, is considered a landmark game, and brought the series into a three-dimensional environment for the first time. Subsequent titles have followed and built upon the format established by Grand Theft Auto III, receiving significant acclaim. The games influenced other open-world games, and led to the label Grand Theft Auto clone on similar titles.


The series has been critically acclaimed, with all the main 3D entries in the franchise frequently ranked among the greatest and best-selling video games; it has shipped more than 405 million units, making it one of the best-selling video game franchises. In 2006, Grand Theft Auto was featured in a list of British design icons in the Great British Design Quest organized by the BBC and the Design Museum. In 2013, The Telegraph ranked Grand Theft Auto among Britain's most successful exports. The series has also been controversial for its adult nature and violent themes, as well as for cut content.


Each game in this series allows the player to take on the role of a criminal in the big city, typically an individual who plans to rise through the ranks of organised crime through the course of the game. The player is given various missions by kingpins and major idols in the city underworld which must be completed to progress through the storyline. Assassinations and other violent crimes are featured regularly. Occasionally taxi driving, firefighting, street racing, bus driving, or learning to fly helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft are also involved in the game.


In later titles, notably those released after Grand Theft Auto 2, the player is given a more developed storyline in which they are forced to overcome an unfortunate event (e.g., being betrayed and left for dead), which serves as motivation for the character to advance up the criminal ladder and ultimately leads to the triumph of the character by the end of the storyline.


The Grand Theft Auto series belongs to a genre of free-roaming role-playing video games called open world games, and grants a large amount of freedom to the player. Traditional action games are structured as a single track series of levels with linear gameplay, but in Grand Theft Auto the player can determine the missions that they want to undertake, and their relationship with various characters are changed based on these choices. Influenced by the earlier game Turbo Esprit, the cities of the games can be roamed freely at any point in the game, and are examples of open world video game environments which offer accessible buildings with minor missions in addition to the main storyline. There are exceptions: missions follow a linear, overarching plot. These missions are required to complete in order to unlock new areas in the game.


Grand Theft Auto III and subsequent games have more voice acting and radio stations, which simulate driving to music with disc jockeys, radio personalities, commercials, talk radio, pop music, and American culture.


The use of vehicles in an explorable urban environment provides a basic simulation of a working city, complete with pedestrians who generally obey traffic signals. Further details are used to flesh out an open-ended atmosphere that has been used in several other games, such as The Simpsons: Hit & Run, which has less emphasis on crime or violence, and Lego City Undercover, which reverses the roles of police officer and criminal, although the player goes undercover in gangs for a portion of the game.


Criminal activities in Grand Theft Auto games do not go unnoticed by the police. As the player engages in these in-game illegal activities, they may gain a "wanted level", represented by a maximum of five or six stars. A small crime, such as running over a non-player character, may create a one star wanted level situation, while shooting an officer may earn more stars. As the number of stars increase, the amount and strength of the response will increase; a single star might have a few police cars chase after the player, while at 5 or 6 stars, tanks and attack helicopters will chase down the player. Many in-game missions will automatically give the player a wanted level after completing a certain event which they must then get rid of before the mission is complete. Often, trying to keep away from the police while wanted will cause the player to gain even higher wanted levels. The player can remove their character's wanted level by avoiding detection or spending in-game money at specific locations to elude the police (such as a mod shop to repaint their car). Alternatively, if the player-character dies, they will respawn at a hospital and the wanted level will be removed, though the player may lose money, guns, and other benefits they had before being chased. The "wanted level" gameplay concept has become common in similar open world games.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book where a theft occurs.
🕹 Read a book with a character who is in law enforcement.
🕹 Read a book with an adult nature or violent themes.
🕹 Read a book that mentions a well-known rock-n-roll figure or has them as a character.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 8: April 15th ~ Frogger 👾 🎮 🕹





Frogger is a 1981 arcade action game developed by Konami and manufactured by Sega. In North America, it was released by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct five frogs to their homes by dodging traffic on a busy road, then crossing a river by jumping on floating logs and alligators.


Frogger was positively received as one of the greatest video games ever made. It was followed by numerous clones and several home-only sequels. The 1982 Atari 2600 version from Parker Brothers sold 4 million cartridges, making it one of the best-selling Atari 2600 games. By 2005, 20 million copies of its various home video game incarnations had been sold worldwide.


The objective of the game is to guide a frog to each of the empty homes at the top of the screen. The game starts with three, five, or seven frogs, depending on the machine's settings. Losing all frogs is game over. The player uses the 4-direction joystick to hop the frog once. Frogger is either single-player or two players alternating turns.


The frog starts at the bottom of the screen, which contains a horizontal road occupied by speeding vehicles such as race cars, dune buggies, trucks, and bulldozers. The player must guide the frog between opposing lanes of traffic to avoid becoming roadkill and losing a life. After crossing the road, a median strip separates the two major parts of the screen. The upper half consists of a river with logs, alligators, and turtles, all moving horizontally across the screen in opposite directions. By jumping on swiftly moving logs and the backs of alligators and turtles, the player can guide the frog to safety. The player must avoid snakes, otters, and the open mouths of alligators. A brightly colored female frog is sometimes on a log and may be carried for bonus points. The very top of the screen contains five "frog homes", and at least one is always open and available. These sometimes contain bonus insects or deadly alligators.


When all five frogs are in their homes, the game progresses to the next level with increased difficulty. After five levels, the difficulty briefly eases and yet again progressively increases after each level. The timer gives 30 seconds to guide each frog into one of the homes, and resets back to 60 ticks whenever a life is lost or a frog reaches home safely.


In 1982, Softline stated that "Frogger has earned the ominous distinction of being 'the arcade game with the most ways to die'." There are many different ways to lose a life (illustrated by a skull and crossbones symbol where the frog was), including being run over by a road vehicle; jumping into the river; running into snakes, otters, or an alligator's jaws; sinking while on top of a diving turtle; riding a log, alligator, or turtle off the side of the screen; jumping into a home already occupied by a frog or alligator; jumping into the side of a home or the bush; or running out of time.


The opening tune is the first verse of a Japanese children's song called "Inu No Omawarisan" ("The Dog Policeman"). Other Japanese tunes include the themes to the anime series Hana no Ko Lunlun and Rascal the Raccoon. The American release has the same opening song plus "Yankee Doodle".


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book with a vehicle on the cover.
🕹 Read a book where characters die in more than one manner.
🕹 Read a book with a title that starts with a letter in SEGA.
🕹 Read a book with a 5 in the page count.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 9: May 1st ~ Call of Duty 👾 🎮 🕹





Call of Duty is a video game series and media franchise published by Activision, starting in 2003. The games were first developed by Infinity Ward, then by Treyarch and Sledgehammer Games. Several spin-off and handheld games were made by other developers. The most recent title, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, was released on November 10, 2023.


The series originally focused on the World War II setting, with Infinity Ward developing Call of Duty (2003) and Call of Duty 2 (2005) and Treyarch developing Call of Duty 3 (2006). Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) introduced a modern setting, and proved to be the breakthrough title for the series, creating the Modern Warfare sub-series; a Modern Warfare remastered version released in 2016. Two other entries, Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and Modern Warfare 3 (2011), were made. The sub-series received a reboot with Modern Warfare in 2019, Modern Warfare II in 2022, and Modern Warfare III in 2023. Infinity Ward have also developed two games outside of the Modern Warfare sub-series, Ghosts (2013) and Infinite Warfare (2016).


Treyarch made one last World War II-based game, World at War (2008), before releasing Black Ops (2010) and subsequently creating the Black Ops sub-series. Four other entries, Black Ops II (2012), Black Ops III (2015), Black Ops 4 (2018), and Cold War (2020) were made, the latter in conjunction with Raven Software. Sledgehammer Games, who were co-developers for Modern Warfare 3, have also developed three titles, Advanced Warfare (2014), Call of Duty: WWII (2017), and Vanguard (2021). They are also the lead developer for Modern Warfare III (2023), the third entry in the Modern Warfare reboot sub-series.


As of April 2021, Call of Duty has sold over 400 million copies. The series is verified by the Guinness World Records as the best-selling first-person shooter game series. It is also the most successful video game franchise created in the United States and the fourth best-selling video game franchise of all time. Other products in the franchise include a line of action figures designed by Plan B Toys, a card game created by Upper Deck Company, Mega Bloks sets by Mega Brands, and a comic book miniseries published by WildStorm Productions, and a feature film in development.


The Call of Duty Endowment (CODE) is a nonprofit foundation created by Activision Blizzard to help find employment for U.S. military veterans. The first donation, consisting of $125,000, was presented to the Paralyzed Veterans of America.


Co-chairman General James L. Jones is a former U.S. National Security Advisor. Founder Robert Kotick is the CEO of Activision Blizzard. Upon its founding in 2009, the organization announced a commitment to create thousands of career opportunities for veterans, including those returning from the Middle East. Annual awards given by the endowment include the "Seal of Distinction", a $30,000 initial grant given to selected veteran's service organizations. In November 2014, the endowment launched the "Race to 1,000 Jobs" campaign to encourage gamers to donate money to and get involved in organizations that provide veterans with services. As of 2015, the Call of Duty Endowment had provided around $12 million in grants to veterans' organizations in the United States, which has helped find jobs for 14,700 veterans.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book tagged WAR.
🕹 Read a book with a military or veteran character.
🕹 Read a book that is controversial in some way.
🕹 Read a book with the word OF found in the title/subtitle.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 10: May 15th ~ Centipede 👾 🎮 🕹





Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. Designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, it was one of the most commercially successful games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of the first with a significant female player base. The primary objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede that winds down the playing field. An arcade sequel, Millipede, followed in 1982.


Centipede was ported to Atari's own Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, and Atari 8-bit family. Under the Atarisoft label, the game was sold for the Apple II, Commodore 64, ColecoVision, VIC-20, IBM PC (as a self-booting disk), Intellivision, and TI-99/4A. Superior Software published the port for the BBC Micro. Versions for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color were also produced, as well as a version for the short-lived Game.com developed by Handheld Games and published by Tiger Electronics.


The player controls the small insect-like creature called the Bug Blaster. It is moved around the bottom area of the screen with a trackball and fires small darts at a segmented centipede advancing from the top of the screen through a field of mushrooms. Each segment of the centipede becomes a mushroom when shot; shooting one of the middle segments splits the centipede into two pieces at that point. Each piece then continues independently on its way down the screen, with the rear piece sprouting its own head. If the centipede head is destroyed, the segment behind it becomes the next head. Shooting the head is worth 100 points while the other segments are 10. The centipede starts at the top of the screen, traveling either left or right. When it touches a mushroom or reaches the edge of the screen, it descends one level and reverses direction. The player can destroy mushrooms (a point each) by shooting them, but each takes four shots to destroy. At higher levels, the screen can become increasingly crowded with mushrooms due to player/enemy actions, causing the centipede to descend more rapidly.


Once the centipede reaches the bottom of the screen, it stays within the player area and one-segment "head" centipedes will periodically appear from the side. This continues until the player has eliminated both the original centipede and all heads. When all the centipede's segments are destroyed, another one enters from the top of the screen. The initial centipede is 10 or 12 segments long, including the head; each successive centipede is one segment shorter and accompanied by one detached, faster-moving head. This pattern continues until all segments are separate heads, after which it repeats with a single full-length centipede.


The player also encounters other creatures besides the centipedes. Fleas drop vertically and disappear upon touching the bottom of the screen, occasionally leaving a trail of mushrooms in their path when only a few mushrooms are in the player movement area; they are worth 200 points each and take two shots to destroy. Spiders move across the player area in a zig-zag pattern and eat some of the mushrooms; they are worth 300, 600, or 900 points depending on the range they are shot from. Scorpions move horizontally across the screen, turning every mushroom they touch into poison mushrooms. Scorpions are also worth the most points of all enemies with 1,000 points each. A centipede touching a poison mushroom will attack straight down toward the bottom, then return to normal behavior upon reaching it. This "poisoned" centipede can be both beneficial and detrimental to the player; the player can destroy them rapidly as it descends down, while at the same time, they can be very challenging to avoid, especially if already split into multiple segments.


The Bug Blaster is destroyed when hit by any enemy, after which any poisonous or partially damaged mushrooms revert to normal. Five points are awarded for each regenerated mushroom. An extra life is awarded every 12,000 points.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book where every letter in A-T-A-R-I can be found in the title/subtitle.
🕹 Read a book that has the word FLEA or MUSHROOM in the text.
🕹 Read a book with some type of bug or insect on the cover.
🕹 Read a book by an author who has written more than one series, like Ed Logg has produced more than one video game.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 11: June 1st ~ Super Smash Bros. 👾 🎮 🕹





Super Smash Bros. is a crossover fighting game series published by Nintendo. The series was created by Masahiro Sakurai, who has directed every game in the series. The series is known for its unique gameplay objective which differs from that of traditional fighters, in that the aim is to increase damage counters and knock opponents off the stage instead of depleting life bars.


The original Super Smash Bros. was released in 1999 for the Nintendo 64. The series achieved even greater success with the release of Super Smash Bros. Melee, which was released in 2001 for the GameCube and became the best selling game on that system. A third installment, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, was released in 2008 for the Wii. Although HAL Laboratory had been the developer for the first two games, the third game was developed through the collaboration of several companies. The fourth installment, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, was released in 2014 for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, respectively. The 3DS installment was the first for a handheld platform. A fifth installment, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, was released in 2018 for the Nintendo Switch.


The series primarily features characters from various Nintendo franchises, including Super Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Yoshi, Kirby, Star Fox, and Pokémon, as well as third-party franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter, and Final Fantasy. The original Super Smash Bros. had only 12 playable characters, with the roster count rising for each successive game and later including third-party characters, with Ultimate containing every character playable in the previous games. In Melee, Brawl, and Ultimate, some characters are able to transform into different forms that have different styles of play and sets of moves. Every game in the series has been well received by critics, with much praise given to their multiplayer features, spawning a large competitive community that has been featured in several gaming tournaments.


Gameplay in the Super Smash Bros. series differs from many fighting games. Instead of winning by depleting an opponent's life bar, players seek to launch their opponents off the stage and out of bounds. Characters have a damage total which rises as they take damage, represented by a percentage value that measures up to 999%. As a character's percentage rises, they suffer stronger knockback from enemy attacks. To knock out an opponent, the player must knock that character outside the stage's boundaries in any direction. When a character is launched off the stage, the character can attempt to "recover" by using jumping moves and abilities to return to the stage. Some characters have an easier time recovering onto the stage than others due to their moves and abilities. Additionally, some characters vary in weight, with lighter characters being easier to launch than heavy characters.


Controls are greatly simplified in comparison to other fighting games, with one button used for standard attacks and another used for special attacks. Players can perform different types of moves by holding the directional controls up, down, to the side, or in a neutral position while pressing the attack or special button. As such, each character has four types of ground attacks, mid-air attacks, and special attacks that can be performed. Quickly pressing or tapping a directional input and the attack button together while on the ground allows players to perform a chargeable "Smash Attack", which is generally more powerful than other attacks. When characters are hit by attacks, they receive a hitstun that temporarily disallows any attacks to be made. This allows combos to be performed. A shield button allows players to put up a defensive shield which weakens with repeated use and will leave the player unable to move if broken. Combining the shield button with directional inputs and attack buttons allows the player to also perform dodges, rolls, grabs, and throws. The three basic actions in Super Smash Bros., attacking, grabbing, and shielding, are often described using a rock–paper–scissors analogy: attacking beats grabbing, grabbing beats shielding, and shielding beats attacking. When a player knocks another player off of the main platform, they may perform an action called edge-guarding. At the same time the player that has been knocked off will try to recover by jumping back onto the stage and avoiding the other players' edge-guarding.


Another element in the Super Smash Bros. series is battle items, the abundance of which players can adjust before matches. There are conventional "battering items", with which a player may hit an opponent, such as a home-run bat or a beam sword; throwing items, including Bob-ombs and Koopa shells; and shooting items, either single-shot guns or rapid-fire blasters. Recovery items allow the user to reduce their damage percentage by varying amounts. Poké Balls are special items that release a random Pokémon onto the battlefield to temporarily assist the user. Brawl introduced the Assist Trophy item which serves a similar purpose; instead of releasing Pokémon, it summons a character from another series. Brawl also introduces the Smash Ball, which when broken allows the fighter to perform a character-specific super attack known as a "Final Smash".


The rules that can be used in a match vary depending on the game, but the two most commonly used settings across all games are Time and Stock. Time mode uses a point-based system in which fighters earn points for knocking out their opponents and lose points for being knocked out or self-destructing (i.e. falling out of the stage by themselves). The player with the highest score at the end of the set time limit wins the match. Stock mode, also known as Survival, uses a life-based system in which players are given a set number of lives, known as stock, with each fighter losing a life whenever they are knocked out, becoming eliminated if they run out of lives. The winner is the last fighter standing once all other fighters are eliminated or, if a time limit is applied to the match, the fighter with the most lives remaining once time runs out. In the event of a tie, a Sudden Death match takes place. Here, each of the tied fighters are given a starting damage percentage of 300%, making them easier to launch off the stage, and the last fighter standing will be declared as the winner. In some games this process is repeated if the match ends in another tie.


Gameplay using competitive Super Smash Bros. rules is usually played in Stock mode with a timer. Items are turned off, and the only tournament-legal stages are those that do not feature hazards and other disruptive elements.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book published in the 1990s.
🕹 Read a book with an abbreviation in the title.
🕹 Read a book where the author's first AND last initials are found in NINTENDO.
🕹 Read a book that is a "crossover," meaning it appears as part of more than one series.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 12: June 15th ~ Halo 👾 🎮 🕹





Halo is a military science fiction media franchise, originally created and developed by Bungie and currently managed and developed by 343 Industries, part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios. The series launched in 2001 with the first-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved and its tie-in novel, The Fall of Reach. The latest main game, Halo Infinite, was released in late 2021 as a free to play beta, and then had the campaign release later that year.


Combat Evolved started life as a real-time strategy game, then became a third-person shooter, and finally a first-person shooter releasing as an exclusive on Microsoft's new Xbox video game console after Bungie was acquired by the company. Bungie regained its independence in 2007, releasing additional Halo games through 2010. Microsoft established 343 Industries to direct the franchise going forward, and has produced games itself and in partnership with other studios.


Combat Evolved was a critical and commercial success, serving as the Xbox's "killer app" and cementing Microsoft as a major player in the video game console space. Its sequels expanded the franchise's commercial and critical success, and have sold more than 81 million copies worldwide. With more than $6 billion in franchise grosses, Halo is one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time, spanning novels, graphic novels, comic books, short films, animated films, feature films, and other licensed products.


The Halo franchise includes various types of merchandise and adaptations outside of the video games. This includes bestselling novels, graphic novels, and other licensed products, from action figures to a packaging tie-in with Mountain Dew. Numerous action figures and vehicles based on Halo have been produced. Joyride Studios created Halo and Halo 2 action figures, while Halo 3 poseable and collectible action figures, aimed at collectors, were produced by McFarlane Toys and became some of the top-selling action figures of 2007 and 2008. MEGA Bloks partnered with Microsoft to produce Halo Wars-themed toys.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book with an MPG of SCI-FI / SCIENCE FICTION.
🕹 Read a book where the MC's first initial is NOT found in MICROSOFT.
🕹 Read a book with a one-word title.
🕹 Read a book that has its own line of merchandise, like t-shirts, mugs, etc.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 13: July 1st ~ Sonic the Hedgehog 👾 🎮 🕹





Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game series and media franchise created by the Japanese developers Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima, and Hirokazu Yasuhara for 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.


Naka, Ohshima, and Yasuhara developed the first Sonic game, released in 1991 for the Sega Genesis, to provide Sega with a mascot to compete with Nintendo's 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.


While Sonic games often have unique game mechanics and stories, they feature recurring elements such as the ring-based health system, level locales, and fast-paced gameplay. Games typically feature Sonic setting out to stop Eggman's schemes for world domination, and the player navigates levels that include springs, slopes, bottomless pits, and vertical loops. Later games added a large cast of characters; some, such as Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, and Shadow the Hedgehog, have starred in spin-offs. The franchise has crossed over with other video game franchises in games such as Mario & Sonic, Sega All-Stars, and Super Smash Bros.


Sonic the Hedgehog is Sega's flagship franchise and one of the bestselling video game franchises, selling over 140 million units by 2016 and grossing over $5 billion as of 2014. Series sales and free-to-play mobile game downloads totaled 1.6 billion as of 2023. The Genesis Sonic games have been described as representative of the culture of the 1990s and listed among the greatest of all time. Although later games, notably the 2006 game, received poorer reviews, Sonic is influential in the video game industry and is frequently referenced in popular culture. The franchise is known for its fandom that produces unofficial media, such as fan art and fangames.


The Sonic series is characterized by speed-based platforming gameplay. Controlling the player character, the player navigates a series of levels at high speeds while jumping between platforms, fighting enemies and bosses, and avoiding obstacles. The series contains both 2D and 3D games. 2D entries generally feature simple, pinball-like gameplay—with jumping and attacking controlled by a single button—and branching level paths that require memorization to maintain speed. Meanwhile, 3D entries tend to be more linear in design, feature various level objectives, different movesets, and allow players to upgrade and customize the playable character. Games since Sonic Unleashed have blended 2D and 3D gameplay, with the camera shifting between side-scrolling and third-person perspectives.


One distinctive game mechanic of Sonic games are collectible golden rings spread throughout levels, which act as a form of health. Players possessing rings can survive upon sustaining damage, but the rings are scattered and the player has a short amount of time to re-collect some of them before they disappear. Collecting 100 rings usually rewards the player an extra life. Rings have other uses in certain games, such as currency in Sonic '06, restoring health bars in Sonic Unleashed, or improving statistics in Sonic Riders. Levels in Sonic games feature elements such as slopes, bottomless pits, and vertical loops. Springs, springboards, and dash panels are scattered throughout and catapult the player at high speeds in a particular direction. Players' progress in levels is saved through passing checkpoints. Checkpoints serve other uses in various games, such as entering bonus stages. Some settings, most notably Green Hill Zone, recur throughout the series.


The series contains numerous power-ups, which are held in boxes that appear throughout levels. An icon indicates what it contains, and the player releases the item by destroying the box. Common items in boxes include rings, a shield, invincibility, high speed, and extra lives. Sonic Colors introduces the Wisps, a race of extraterrestrial creatures that act as power-ups. Each Wisp has its own special ability corresponding to its color; for instance, yellow Wisps allow players to drill underground and find otherwise inaccessible areas. Since Sonic Rush, most Sonic games have featured "boosting", a mechanic that immediately propels Sonic forward at top speed when activated. While boosting, Sonic can smash through objects, destroy enemies instantly, or access different level paths. This requires players to react to forthcoming obstacles quickly; Sonic Unleashed introduced side-stepping and drifting maneuvers to allow players to maintain speed. Boosting is limited by a gauge that the player can fill with rings or Wisps.


In most Sonic games, the goal is to collect the Chaos Emeralds; the player is required to collect them all to defeat Eggman and achieve the games' good endings. Sonic games that do not feature the Chaos Emeralds, such as Sonic CD, feature different collectibles that otherwise function the same. Players find the Emeralds by entering portals, opening portals using 50 rings, or scouting them within levels themselves. Sometimes, the Emeralds are collected automatically as the story progresses. By collecting the Emeralds, players are rewarded with their characters' "Super" form and can activate it by collecting 50 rings in a stage. The Super transformations grant the player character more speed, a farther jump, and invincibility, but their ring count drains by the second; the transformation lasts until all the rings have been used. Some games require the player to collect all the Chaos Emeralds to reach the final boss.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book set in Japan.
🕹 Read a book where the MC is a scientist.
🕹 Read a book with an animal on the cover.
🕹 Read a book with a title that DOES NOT start with a letter in SONIC.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 14: July 15th ~ Donkey Kong 👾 🎮 🕹





Donkey Kong is a video game series and media franchise created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto for Nintendo. The franchise follows the adventures of Donkey Kong, a large, powerful gorilla. Donkey Kong series include the original arcade game trilogy by Nintendo R&D1; the Donkey Kong Country series by Rare and Retro Studios; and the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series by Nintendo Software Technology. Various studios have developed spin-offs in other genres such as racing and rhythm. The franchise also incorporates animation, comics, and merchandise.


Miyamoto designed the original 1981 Donkey Kong to salvage unsold arcade cabinets following the failure of Radar Scope (1980). It was a major success and was followed by the sequels Donkey Kong Jr. (1982) and Donkey Kong 3 (1983). The franchise went on a hiatus as Nintendo shifted its focus to the spin-off Mario franchise. Rare's 1994 reboot, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) game Donkey Kong Country, reestablished Donkey Kong as a major Nintendo franchise. Rare developed Donkey Kong games for the SNES, Game Boy, and Nintendo 64 until they were acquired by Microsoft in 2002; subsequent games have been developed by Nintendo, Retro Studios, Namco and Paon.


The main Donkey Kong games are platformers in which the player must reach the end of a level. Donkey Kong was initially the antagonist, but became the protagonist starting with Country. The original games featured a small cast of characters, including Donkey Kong, Mario, Pauline, and Donkey Kong Jr. Rare's games expanded the cast with friendly Kongs, such as Diddy, Cranky, Funky and Dixie, and the Kremlings, an army of antagonistic crocodiles led by Donkey Kong's nemesis King K. Rool. Mario, the protagonist of the 1981 game, became Nintendo's mascot and the star of the Mario franchise, and Donkey Kong characters appear in Mario games such as Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Mario Tennis. Donkey Kong has also crossed over with other franchises in games such as Mario & Sonic and Super Smash Bros.


Donkey Kong is one of the bestselling video game franchises, selling more than 65 million units by 2021. The original game was Nintendo's first major international success and established it as a prominent force in the video game industry. The franchise has pioneered or popularized concepts such as in-game storytelling and pre-rendered graphics, inspired other games (including clones), and influenced popular culture.


Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. are early examples of the platform game genre. In both games, the player must guide the playable character (Mario in the first game, Donkey Kong Jr. in the second) to scale four levels while avoiding obstacles. The player jumps to dodge incoming obstacles (such as barrels) or cross gaps and climbs ladders or vines to reach the top of the level. In the first game, Mario can destroy obstacles by obtaining a hammer power-up, while in the second, Donkey Kong Jr. can do so by knocking pieces of fruit down from vines. Points are awarded for dodging or destroying obstacles, collecting items, and completing stages quickly. The player begins each game with three lives, which they lose if they touch an obstacle or fall from a distance.


Donkey Kong 3 departs from this gameplay: it is a shooter game in which the player controls Stanley, an exterminator who must prevent Donkey Kong from stirring up insects in his greenhouse. The player fires bug spray at Donkey Kong and enemy insects that attempt to steal Stanley's flowers. They complete levels by spraying Donkey Kong enough to force him to the top of the screen or by killing all the insects.


The 1994 Game Boy game begins with the four stages from the original Donkey Kong, but after completing the fourth, the player is presented with over 100 additional stages that introduce puzzle-platform gameplay in which Mario must scout each level within a time limit to locate a key. Mario can pick up and throw objects and enemies, similar to Super Mario Bros. 2, and perform acrobatics to reach otherwise inaccessible areas of the levels. This gameplay would serve as the basis for Mario vs. Donkey Kong, which introduces stages in which Mario must guide six Mini-Mario toys to a toy box while protecting them from hazards. Mario vs. Donkey Kong's sequels make guiding the Mini-Mario toys the focus, with each stage requiring the player to do so with touchscreen controls. This gameplay has been frequently compared to the strategy video game Lemmings (1991).


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book where you know the MC's first and last name.
🕹 Read a book with a character who has a son, like Donkey Kong, Jr.
🕹 Read a book where the MC runs into obstacles, physically or metaphorically.
🕹 Read a book with an animal character.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 15: August 1st ~ The Sims 👾 🎮 🕹





The Sims is a series of life simulation video games developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and it is one of the best-selling video game series of all time.


The games in the Sims series are largely sandbox games, in that they lack any defined goals (except for some later expansion packs and console versions which introduced this gameplay style). The player creates virtual people called "Sims", places them in houses, and helps direct their moods and satisfy their desires. Players can either place their Sims in pre-constructed homes or build them themselves. Each successive expansion pack and game in the series augmented what the player could do with their Sims.


The Sims series is part of the larger Sim series, started by SimCity in 1989.


Game designer Will Wright was inspired to create a "virtual doll house" after losing his home during the Oakland firestorm of 1991 and subsequently rebuilding his life. Replacing his home and his other possessions made him think about adapting that life experience into a game. When Wright initially took his ideas to the Maxis board of directors, they were skeptical and gave little support or financing for the game. The directors at Electronic Arts, which bought Maxis in 1997, were more receptive—SimCity had been a great success for them, and they foresaw the possibility of building a strong Sim franchise.


Wright has stated that The Sims was meant as a satire of U.S. consumer culture. Wright took ideas from the 1977 architecture and urban design book A Pattern Language, American psychologist Abraham Maslow's 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, and his hierarchy of needs, and Charles Hampden-Turner's Maps of the Mind to develop a model for the game's artificial intelligence.


The Sims was the first game in the series. Developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts, it was released for Microsoft Windows on February 4, 2000. The game used dimetric projection and featured open-ended simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual people ("Sims") in a suburban area near SimCity. Seven expansion packs and two deluxe editions with exclusive content were released. It was repackaged in several different formats, and different versions of it were released on several different platforms. By March 22, 2002, The Sims had sold more than 6.3 million copies worldwide, surpassing Myst as the best-selling PC game in history at the time. The original game, all seven expansion packs, and the two deluxe edition content packs constitute the first generation of the PC release. Maxis developed all PC releases. By February 2005, the game had shipped 16 million copies worldwide


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book published in the 2000s {2000 - 2009}.
🕹 Read a book where something is destroyed by fire.
🕹 Read a book where the MC gets married and/or has a baby.
🕹 Read a book where a character's home is described.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 16: August 15th ~ World of Warcraft 👾 🎮 🕹





World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the Warcraft fantasy universe, World of Warcraft takes place within the world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events of the previous game in the series, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, World of Warcraft has had nine major expansion packs: The Burning Crusade (2007), Wrath of the Lich King (2008), Cataclysm (2010), Mists of Pandaria (2012), Warlords of Draenor (2014), Legion (2016), Battle for Azeroth (2018), Shadowlands (2020), and Dragonflight (2022). Three further expansions, The War Within (planned for 2024), Midnight, and The Last Titan, were announced in 2023.


Similar to other MMORPGs, the game allows players to create a character avatar and explore an open game world in third- or first-person view, exploring the landscape, fighting various monsters, completing quests, and interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) or other players. The game encourages players to work together to complete quests, enter dungeons and engage in player versus player (PvP) combat, however, the game can also be played solo without interacting with others. The game primarily focuses on character progression, in which players earn experience points to level up their character to make them more powerful and buy and sell items using in-game currency to acquire better equipment, among other game systems.


World of Warcraft was a major critical and commercial success upon its original release in 2004 and quickly became the most popular MMORPG of all time, reaching a peak of 12 million subscribers in 2010. The game had over one hundred million registered accounts by 2014 and by 2017, had grossed over $9.23 billion in revenue, making it one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time. The game has been cited by gaming journalists as the greatest MMORPG of all time and one of the greatest video games of all time and has also been noted for its long lifespan, continuing to receive developer support and expansion packs over 15 years since its initial release. In 2019, a vanilla version of the game titled World of Warcraft Classic was launched, allowing players to experience the base game before any of its expansions launched, with versions of Classic for the first and second expansions being released subsequently, with minor changes. In 2022, Blizzard and NetEase cancelled an unannounced World of Warcraft mobile spin-off game.


As with other MMORPGs, players control a character avatar within a game world in third- or first-person view, exploring the landscape, fighting various monsters, completing quests, and interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) or other players. Also similar to other MMORPGs, World of Warcraft requires the player to pay for a subscription by using a credit or debit card, using prepaid Blizzard game cards or using a WoW Token purchased in-game. Players without a subscription may use a trial account that lets the player character reach up to level 20 but has many features locked.


To enter the game, the player must select a server, referred to in-game as a 'realm'. Each realm acts as an individual copy of the game world and falls into one of two categories. Available realms types are:

Normal – a regular type realm where the gameplay is mostly focused on defeating monsters and completing quests, with player-versus-player fights and any roleplay are optional.
RP (roleplay) – which works the same way as a "Normal" realm, but focuses on players roleplaying in character.


Before the introduction of World of Warcraft's seventh expansion "Battle for Azeroth", both "Normal" and "RP" servers were each divided into two separate categories: PvE servers and PvP servers. This has since been removed after the implementation of the "War Mode" option, which allows any player (of level 20 and higher) on any server to determine whether they want to actively participate in PvP combat or not, by enabling War Mode in two of the game's capital cities. Realms are also categorized by language, with in-game support in the language available.


Players can make new characters on all realms within the region, and it is also possible to move already established characters between realms for a fee.


To create a new character, in keeping with the storyline of previous Warcraft games, players must choose between the opposing factions of the Alliance or the Horde; Pandaren, which were added in Mists of Pandaria, do not commit to a faction until after the starting zone is completed. Characters from the opposing factions can perform rudimentary communication (most often just "emotes"), but only members of the same faction can speak, mail, group and join guilds. The player selects the new character's race, such as orcs or trolls for the Horde, or humans or dwarves for the Alliance. Players must select the class for the character, with choices such as mages, warriors, and priests available. Most classes are limited to particular races.


As characters become more developed, they gain various talents and skills, requiring the player to further define the abilities of that character. Characters can choose two primary professions that can focus on producing items, such as tailoring, blacksmithing or jewelcrafting or on gathering from resource nodes, such as skinning or mining. Characters can learn all three secondary skills: archeology, cooking, and fishing. Characters may form and join guilds, allowing characters within the guild access to the guild's chat channel, the guild name and optionally allowing other features, including a guild tabard, guild bank, guild repairs, and dues.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book where the MC goes on a quest of some kind. {Be creative.}
🕹 Read a book with opposing factions.
🕹 Read a book where a character belongs to a guild, or a group.
🕹 Read a book with an author who has double letters in either name, like Blizzard does.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 17: September 1st ~ Stardew Valley 👾 🎮 🕹





Stardew Valley is a farm life simulation game developed by Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone. Players take the role of a character who inherits their deceased grandfather's dilapidated farm in a place known as Stardew Valley. The game was released for Windows in February 2016 before being ported to other platforms. Stardew Valley is open-ended, allowing players to grow crops, raise livestock, fish, cook, mine, forage, and socialize with the townspeople, including the ability to marry and have children. It allows up to four players to play online together.


Barone developed Stardew Valley by himself over four and a half years. He was heavily inspired by the Story of Seasons series, with additions to address some of the shortcomings of those games. He used it as an exercise to improve his own programming and game design skills. British studio Chucklefish approached Barone midway through development with the offer to publish the game, allowing him to focus more on completing it.


Stardew Valley has been cited as one of the greatest video games of all time, with praise directed towards its music, characters, and relaxing qualities. Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of Story of Seasons, also praised the game for retaining the freedom that later entries of his series had lost. The game was a commercial success, selling over 20 million copies by 2022.


Stardew Valley is a farming simulation game primarily inspired by Story of Seasons, a series by Marvelous and previously known as Harvest Moon. At the start of the game, players create a character, who inherits a plot of land and a small house once owned by their grandfather in a small village called Pelican Town, located in the titular Stardew Valley. Players may select from several different farm types, each with a unique theme and different benefits and drawbacks. The farmland is initially overrun with boulders, trees, stumps, and weeds, and players must work to clear them to restart the farm, tending to crops and livestock to generate revenue and further expand the farm.


Players interact with non-player characters (NPCs) that inhabit the town, including engaging in relationships with them; this can culminate in marriage, which results in the NPC helping the player's character to tend the farm. After marriage, players may have the chance to have or adopt a child with their spouse. Players can also engage in fishing, cooking, crafting, and exploring procedurally-generated caves with materials and ores to mine or creatures to combat. Players can take on various quests to earn additional money or complete specific collections of materials (called "bundles") to restore the town's Community Center or pay certain amounts of money to complete JojaMart bundles. Completing bundles rewards players with various items, including seeds and tools. Completing multiple bundles grants players access to new areas and game mechanics, such as a desert. All of these activities must be metered against the character's current health and exhaustion level, and the game's internal clock. The player can consume food that grants certain buffs that are useful in certain activities and situations. Food is also a source of replenishing health and energy, which allows the player to complete more tasks in a given day. The game uses a simplified calendar, each year having four 28-day months that represent each season, that determines which crops can be grown and which activities can be beneficial. Later in the game, players can restore a greenhouse and access an island that can grow any crop regardless of the season.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book published in the 2010s {2010 - 2019}.
🕹 Read a book where a grandparent dies or more than one season is mentioned.
🕹 Read a book set on a farm or in a small town.
🕹 Read a book where the MC fishes, cooks, crafts, or explores.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 18: September 15th ~ Space Invaders 👾 🎮 🕹





Space Invaders is a 1978 shoot 'em up arcade video game developed and released by Taito in Japan, and licensed to Midway Manufacturing for overseas distribution. Commonly considered as one of the most influential video games of all time, Space Invaders was the first fixed shooter and set the template for the genre. The goal is to defeat wave after wave of descending aliens with a horizontally moving laser to earn as many points as possible.


Designer Tomohiro Nishikado drew inspiration from North American target shooting games like Breakout (1976) and Gun Fight (1975), as well as science fiction narratives such as the novel The War of the Worlds (1897), the anime Space Battleship Yamato (1974), and the film Star Wars (1977). To complete development of the game, he had to design custom hardware and development tools. Upon release, Space Invaders was an immediate commercial success; by 1982, it had grossed $3.8 billion ($13 billion in 2022-adjusted terms), with a net profit of $450 million ($1.6 billion in 2022 terms). This made it the best-selling video game and highest-grossing entertainment product at the time, and the highest-grossing video game of all time.


Space Invaders is considered one of the most influential video games of all time. It ushered in the golden age of arcade video games. It was the inspiration for numerous video games and game designers across different genres, and has been ported and re-released in various forms. The 1980 Atari VCS version quadrupled sales of the VCS, thereby becoming the first killer app for video game consoles. More broadly, the pixelated enemy alien has become a pop culture icon, often representing video games as a whole.


Space Invaders is a fixed shooter in which the player moves a laser cannon horizontally across the bottom of the screen and fires at aliens overhead. The aliens begin as five rows of eleven that move left and right as a group, shifting downward each time they reach a screen edge. The goal is to eliminate all of the aliens by shooting them. While the player has three lives, the game ends immediately if the invaders reach the bottom of the screen. The aliens attempt to destroy the player's cannon by firing projectiles. The laser cannon is partially protected by stationary defense bunkers which are gradually destroyed from the top by the aliens and, if the player fires when beneath one, the bottom gets destroyed.


As aliens are defeated, their movement and the game's music both speed up. Defeating all the aliens brings another wave which starts lower, a loop which can continue endlessly. A special "mystery ship" will occasionally move across the top of the screen and award bonus points if destroyed.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book set in space.
🕹 Read a book that you think is very influential.
🕹 Read a book where a pop culture icon is mentioned.
🕹 Read a book where an invasion takes place.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 19: October 1st ~ Fortnite 👾 🎮 🕹





Fortnite is an online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in six distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: Fortnite Battle Royale, a free-to-play battle royale game in which up to 100 players fight to be the last person standing; Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative hybrid tower defense-shooter and survival game in which up to four players fight off zombie-like creatures and defend objects with traps and fortifications they can build; and Fortnite Creative, in which players are given complete freedom to create worlds and battle arenas, Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival.


Save the World and Battle Royale were released in 2017 as early access titles, while Creative was released on December 6, 2018. While the Save the World and Creative versions have been successful for Epic Games, Fortnite Battle Royale in particular became an overwhelming success and a cultural phenomenon, drawing more than 125 million players in less than a year, earning hundreds of millions of dollars per month. Fortnite as a whole generated $9 billion in gross revenue up until December 2019.


Save the World is available for macOS, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, while Battle Royale and Creative were released for all those platforms, and also for Android and iOS devices and Nintendo Switch. The game also launched with the release of the ninth-generation PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. Furthermore, Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival are releasing on all available platforms.


Fortnite is distributed as six different game modes, using the same engine; each has similar graphics, art assets, and game mechanics.

Fortnite: Save the World is a player-versus-environment cooperative game, with four players collaborating towards a common objective on various missions. The game is set after a fluke storm appears across Earth, causing 98% of the population to disappear, and the survivors to be attacked by zombie-like "husks". The players take the role of commanders of home base shelters, collecting resources, saving survivors, and defending equipment that helps to either collect data on the storm or to push back the storm. From missions, players are awarded a number of in-game items, which include hero characters, weapon and trap schematics, and survivors, all of which can be leveled up through gained experience to improve their attributes.
Fortnite Battle Royale is a player-versus-player game for up to 100 players, allowing one to play alone, in a duo, or in a squad (usually consisting of three or four players). Weaponless players airdrop from a "Battle Bus" that crosses the game's map. When they land, they must scavenge for weapons, items, resources, and even vehicles while trying to stay alive and to attack and eliminate other players. Over the course of a round, the safe area of the map shrinks down in size due to an incoming toxic storm; players outside that threshold take damage and can be eliminated if they fail to quickly evacuate. This forces remaining players into tighter spaces and encourages player encounters. The last player, duo, or squad remaining is the winner.
Fortnite Creative is a sandbox game mode, in which players are given complete freedom to spawn any item from the Battle Royale gamemode on a personal island, and can create games such as battle arenas, race courses, platforming challenges, and more. Furthermore, it also supports Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), which allows players to edit worlds using Fortnite assets.
Lego Fortnite is a survival sandbox game, where players play as Lego Minifig versions of characters, as they collect materials, build various buildings, craft various weapons and tools and fight against monsters.
Rocket Racing is a racing game, serving as a spin-off title to Rocket League, which also use cross-game support for cosmetics related to cars.
Fortnite Festival is a rhythm game, where players play hit songs from hit artists, such as Eminem and The Weeknd, as they hit notes to the rhythm in the Main Stage on one of the four unique parts: Lead, Guitar/Bass, Drums and Vocals.[4] It also supports creating jams, using any part of any song in the Jam Stage, as well as Battle Royale and Creative.


Players can use their pickaxe to knock down existing structures on the map to collect basic resources that are wood, brick, and metal. Subsequently, in all modes, the player can use these materials to build fortifications, such as walls, floors, and stairs. Such fortification pieces can be edited to add things like windows or doors. The materials used have different durability properties and can be updated to stronger variants using more materials of the same type. Within Save the World this enables players to create defensive fortifications around an objective or trap-filled tunnels to lure husks through. In Battle Royale, this provides the means to quickly traverse the map, protect oneself from enemy fire, or to delay an advancing foe. Players are encouraged to be very inventive in designing their fortifications in Creative.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book with at least 6 different editions listed on Goodreads.
🕹 Read a book that you would describe as EPIC.
🕹 Read a book published in December of any year.
🕹 Read a book that was an instant success.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 20: October 15th ~ Wii Sports 👾 🎮 🕹





Wii Sports is a 2006 sports simulation video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii video game console. The 1.0 (pre-release) version of the game was released in North America along with the Wii on November 19, 2006, and the 1.1 version was released in Japan, Australia, Europe, and North America over the following months. It was included as a pack-in game with the console in all territories except Japan, making it the first sports game included with the launch of a Nintendo system since Mario's Tennis for the Virtual Boy in 1995. The game is available on its own as part of the Nintendo Selects collection of games.


Wii Sports is a collection of five sports simulations, which have been designed to demonstrate the motion-sensing capabilities of the Wii Remote. The five sports included are tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing. Players use the Wii Remote to mimic actions performed in real-life sports, such as swinging a tennis racket. The rules for each game are simplified to make them more accessible to new players. The game also features training and fitness modes that monitor players' progress in the sports.


Wii Sports was well-received by critics and audiences. It was a huge commercial success, selling 82 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling video game produced by Nintendo in the world. It has been featured on television in Wii commercials, news reports, and other programming. The game has become a popular means for social gatherings and competitions among players of varying ages.


In 2009, a sequel, Wii Sports Resort, was released. A high-definition remake of Wii Sports titled Wii Sports Club was released in 2013 for the Wii U. Another sequel, Nintendo Switch Sports, was released for the Nintendo Switch in 2022.


Wii Sports consists of five separate sports games—tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing—accessed from the main menu. The games use the motion sensor capabilities of the Wii Remote to control the player's dominant arm and/or the appropriate sports equipment it wields. Boxing utilizes both Wii Remote and Nunchuk gestures to control both of the player's arms. The player moves the remote in a similar manner to how the separate games are played in real life; for example, holding and swinging the Wii Remote like a golf club, baseball bat, tennis racket or bowling ball. Some aspects of the gameplay are computer controlled. In tennis, player movement is controlled by the game's AI, while the swinging of the racket is controlled by the player. Baseball consists of batting and pitching, with all of the fielding and base-running handled by the computer. Due to their turn-based nature, golf and bowling support hotseat multiplayer and can be played with just one Wii Remote that can be shared among players.


The in-game Players are taken from the Wii's Mii Channel, which allows the user to create a Mii (a customized avatar) that can be imported into games that support the feature. Wii Sports is the first Wii title to use this feature. Miis saved on the Wii will appear in the crowd during bowling games and as members of human-controlled teams in baseball. The non-player characters in the game were also created using the Mii Channel toolset. Miis created on one Wii can be transferred onto the internal memory of a Wii Remote for use on another Wii with different save data.


After a game, a player is awarded or penalized skill points based on performance relative to the computer's skill level, though some games do not calculate points during multiplayer sessions. The game keeps track of these points by charting them on a graph, as well as increasing the size of the crowd in Tennis and Boxing single-player modes. After obtaining 1000 skill points in a sport, a player is awarded a "pro" level, along with a cosmetic feature for their Mii in Bowling and Boxing. A Mii newly turned pro will receive a message on the Wii Message Board notifying them. Wii Sports also features a fitness test that calculates a player's fitness age (ranging from 20 to 80 years old, 20 being the best possible). The test gauges the player's performance in three randomly chosen challenges in each test from the training mode that have been played at least once, and can only be taken once a day per Mii. Calculating the fitness age takes into account a player's balance, speed, and stamina. Fitness age results are graphed over one, two, or three months, with daily results posted on the Wii Message Board. The challenges from the fitness test are taken from another mode in Wii Sports, the training mode. The training mode allows players to practice three challenges for each sport. In these challenges, players can earn medals by reaching certain scores. Medals range from bronze to platinum, bronze being the easiest, and platinum being the hardest.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book that has a main menu, or Table of Contents.
🕹 Read a book that various ages of readers could enjoy.
🕹 Read a book with AI, or Artificial Intelligence.
🕹 Read a book where a character watches or participates in tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, or boxing.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 21: November 1st ~ Minecraft 👾 🎮 🕹





Minecraft is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios and originally released in 2009. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being fully released in November 2011, with Notch stepping down and Jens "Jeb" Bergensten taking over development. Minecraft has become the best-selling video game in history, with over 300 million copies sold and nearly 140 million monthly active players as of 2023. It has been ported to several platforms.


In Minecraft, players explore a blocky, pixelated procedurally generated, three-dimensional world with virtually infinite terrain. Players can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, and build structures, earthworks, and machines. Depending on their chosen game mode, players can fight hostile mobs, as well as cooperate with or compete against other players in the same world. Game modes include a survival mode (in which players must acquire resources to build in the world and maintain health), creative mode (in which players have unlimited resources and the ability to fly), spectator mode (in which players can fly, go through blocks, and enter the bodies of other players and entities), adventure mode (in which players have to survive without being able to build and place blocks) and hardcore mode (in which the difficulty is set to Hard and dying causes the player to lose their ability to play on that world). The game's large community also offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities.


Minecraft has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited by some as one of the greatest video games ever created. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions played prominent roles in popularizing the game. The game has also been used in educational environments to teach chemistry, computer-aided design, and computer science. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion. Several spin-offs have also been made, including Minecraft: Story Mode (discontinued), Minecraft Earth (discontinued), Minecraft Dungeons (discontinued), and the most recent release, Minecraft Legends.


Minecraft is a 3D sandbox game that has no required goals to accomplish, allowing players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. However, there is an achievement system, known as "advancements" in the Java Edition of the game, "trophies" on the PlayStation ports, and "achievements" in Bedrock Edition and the Xbox ports. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of a third-person perspective. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes and fluids, and commonly called "blocks"—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks (known as 'Logs'), water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a 3D grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can "mine" blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Many commentators have described the game's physics system as unrealistic. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems.


The game world is virtually infinite and procedurally generated as players explore it, using a map seed that is obtained from the system clock at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). There are limits on vertical movement, but Minecraft allows an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane. Due to technical issues when extremely distant locations are reached, however, there is a barrier preventing players from traversing to locations beyond 30 million blocks from the center. The game achieves this by splitting the world data into smaller 16 by 16 sections called "chunks" that are only created or loaded when players are nearby. The world is divided into biomes ranging from deserts to jungles to snowfields; the terrain includes plains, mountains, forests, caves, and bodies of water or lava. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes.


When starting a new world, players must choose one of five game modes, as well as one of four difficulties, ranging from "Peaceful" to "Hard". Increasing the difficulty of the game causes the player to take more damage from mobs (non-player characters), as well as having other difficulty-specific effects. For example, the Peaceful difficulty prevents hostile mobs from spawning, and the Hard difficulty allows players to starve to death if their hunger bar is depleted. Once selected, the difficulty can be changed, but the game mode is locked and can only be changed with cheats.


New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of 9 possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but the option to create custom skins was made available in 2010. Players encounter various mobs, such as animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, can be hunted for food and crafting materials. They spawn in the daytime, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies, skeletons and drowned (underwater versions of zombies), burn under the sun if they have no headgear. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book where the title starts with a letter in MOJANG.
🕹 Read a book that was won more than one award.
🕹 Read a book with either the word HOSTILE or PEACEFUL found in the text.
🕹 Read a book with a character named Steve or Alex.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 22: November 15th ~ Super Mario Bros. 👾 🎮 🕹





Super Mario (also known as Super Mario Bros. and Mario) is a platform game series created by Nintendo starring their mascot, Mario. It is the central series of the greater Mario franchise. At least one Super Mario game has been released for every major Nintendo video game console. However there have also been a number of Super Mario video games released on non-Nintendo gaming platforms. There are more than 20 games in the series.


The Super Mario games are set primarily in the fictional Mushroom Kingdom, typically with Mario as the player character. He is usually joined by his brother, Luigi, and often by other members of the Mario cast. As platform games, they involve the player character running and jumping across platforms and atop enemies in themed levels. The games have simple plots, typically with Mario and Luigi rescuing the kidnapped Princess Peach from the primary antagonist, Bowser. The first game in the series, Super Mario Bros., released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985, established the series' core gameplay concepts and elements. These include a multitude of power-ups and items that give the character special powers such as fireball-throwing and size-changing.


The Super Mario series is part of the greater Mario franchise, which includes other video game genres and media such as film, television, printed media, and merchandise. More than 380 million copies of Super Mario games have been sold worldwide, making it the fifth-bestselling video game series, behind the larger Mario franchise, the puzzle series Tetris, the series Pokémon video games, and first-person shooter series Call of Duty.


The objective of the game is to progress through levels by defeating enemies, collecting items and solving puzzles without dying. Power-up use is integral to the series. The series has installments featuring both two and three-dimensional gameplay. In the 2D games, the player character (usually Mario) jumps on platforms and enemies while avoiding their attacks and moving to the right of the scrolling screen. 2D Super Mario game levels have single-exit objectives, which must be reached within a time limit and lead to the next sequential level. Super Mario Bros. 3 introduced the overworld, a map of nonlinear levels that branches according to the player's choice. Super Mario World introduced levels with multiple exits.


3D installments in the series have had two subgenres: open world exploration based games and more linear 3D games with a predetermined path. Levels in the open world games, 64, Sunshine and Odyssey, allow the player to freely explore multiple enclosed environments in 360-degree movement. As the game progresses, more environments become accessible. The linear 3D games, Galaxy, Galaxy 2, 3D Land and 3D World, feature more fixed camera angles and a predetermined path to a single goal.


The series often features the option to play as characters other than Mario, usually Luigi. Earlier games have offered an alternating multiplayer mode in which the second player controls Luigi on their turn. Luigi is often only playable by player one in a second, more challenging iteration of the base game, such as in The Lost Levels, Galaxy 2, New Super Luigi U and the special worlds in 3D Land; these feature lower gravity and reduced friction for Luigi. Later games allow four player simultaneous play. Playable characters other than Mario and Luigi have included Toads, Peach, Yoshi, Wario, Rosalina, Miis, Toadette, Nabbit, Daisy, and Bowser Jr. Characters are sometimes differentiated by special abilities. Super Mario Maker (though not Super Mario Maker 2) includes costumes that depict many more characters.


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book that features brothers, like Mario and Luigi.
🕹 Read a book where a character is rescued, like Princess Peach.
🕹 Read a book set in a fictional place, like Mushroom Kingdom.
🕹 Read a book with alternating points of view, like when there's a Player Two.

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 23: December 1st ~ Pitfall! 👾 🎮 🕹





Pitfall! is a video game developed by David Crane for the Atari Video Computer System (later renamed Atari 2600) and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls Pitfall Harry, who has a time limit of 20 minutes to seek treasure in a jungle. The game world is populated by enemies and hazards that variously cause the player to lose lives or points.


Crane had made several games for both Atari, Inc. and Activision before working on Pitfall! in 1982. He started with creating a new realistic-style walking animation for a person on the Atari 2600 hardware. After completing it, he fashioned a game around it. He used a jungle setting with items to collect and enemies to avoid, and the result became Pitfall!


Pitfall! received mostly positive reviews at the time of its release praising both its gameplay and graphics. The game was influential in the platform game genre and various publications have considered it one of the greatest video games of all time. It is also one of the best-selling Atari 2600 video games. The game was ported to several contemporary video game systems. It has been included in various Activision compilation games and was included as a secret extra in later Activision published titles.


Pitfall! is a video game set in a jungle where the player controls Pitfall Harry, a fortune hunter and explorer. Pitfall! has been characterized as a platformer by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, the authors of Racing the Beam. Similar to Superman (1979) and Adventure (1980), the game does not feature side-scrolling and instead loads one screen at a time, with a new screen appearing when the player character, Pitfall Harry, moves to the edge of the screen. The goal is to get Harry as many points as possible within a twenty-minute time limit. The player starts the game with 2,000 points and can collect a total of 32 treasure hidden among 255 scenes to increase their total, ranging from a money bag worth 2,000 points to a diamond ring worth 5,000 points.


Pitfall Harry moves left and right and can jump over and onto objects, swing from vines, and climb up and down ladders to seek treasure and avoid danger. The player can lose points from hazards, such as falling down a hole or colliding with rolling logs. The player starts with three lives and loses one if they sink into quicksand, swamps or tar pits or are hit by a scorpion, cobra rattler, or crocodile.


Pitfall! was developed by David Crane for Activision. Crane had worked at Atari, Inc. in the late 1970s, developing games for the Atari Video Computer System. The system became known as the Atari 2600 after the release of the Atari 5200 in 1982. After discovering the high profits Atari had made off games he developed, including Outlaw, Canyon Bomber and Slot Machine, he asked the president of Atari, Ray Kassar, for recognition on these titles and a better pay. When he was turned down, Crane and other Atari programmers left the company to form Activision in 1979. Crane was the senior designer at Activision and created Dragster, Fishing Derby, Laser Blast, Freeway and Grand Prix for the company prior to the release of Pitfall!


Crane stated his game design philosophy involved making the Atari 2600 do new and unexpected things. Crane said he "used this technique to lead me in a new direction of game design, and some of the tricks were to me as much as an accomplishment as solving the Rubik's Cube the first time." Early development of Pitfall! started with Crane trying to create realistically animated graphics on the Atari 2600. This led to developing a moving man (which became the basis of Pitfall Harry) and, later, the scorpions and snake obstacles. For three years, Crane experimented using the running-man character in different scenarios, such as a cops and robbers game, but could not find a proper situation for it. Crane began implementing it into a game in 1982. Crane stated having the running man animation led to putting him on a path, which led to placing the path in a jungle and giving the man a reason to run in order to hunt treasures and avoid enemies. The jungle setting of the game was influenced by the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark.


Other influences came from Heckle and Jeckle cartoons, where two magpies outwit their enemies, including having the magpies run across the heads of crocodiles and just escaping their snapping jaws. This led to the ability of Pitfall Harry being able to cross ponds infested with crocodiles if their jaws were closed. Initially, to jump from one alligator head to another, the player had to move the joystick and jump at exactly the same time which Crane described as being "almost impossible to play. So I changed the code to allow you to direct Harry’s jump to the side, if you moved the joystick within a small instant from the time you pressed the button to jump. From a programming standpoint this was a tiny change, but it changed the gameplay from nearly impossible to an easily learned skill." Crane tried to make the sprite artwork for obstacles and the environment recognizable to players, despite the limitations of the Atari 2600. The process involved what Crane said was "a lot of trial-and-error." When asked if the arcade game Donkey Kong (1981) had inspired his game, Crane responded he did not draw any parallels to Pitfall! at the time and had already developed elements in his game that were present in both games, such as a human character, paths, and ladders.


Crane commented that "The entire [game design] process took about 10 minutes. About 1000 hours of programming later the game was complete." Much of Crane's time was spent optimizing and compressing the code so that it would fit into a four-kilobyte ROM cartridge. Unlike Haunted House (1982) or Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982), where the environments were hard-coded into the game, Pitfall! was generated constantly by code. The game generates each screen based on a counter that could run either backwards or forwards depending which direction the player moved from screen to screen. Each number in the counter used 8 bits to load certain details such as the background, trees, ground and object patterns, allowing 255 screens to occupy fewer than 50 bytes of ROM. Activision had created design centers for their games, which were small, close-knit teams of four to five people. These teams encouraged peer reviews and shared prototypes of games. In Pitfall!, Crane's team changed the initial number of lives in the game from one to three during the final week of development. Crane said that "my buddies practically tied me to my chair until I put in extra lives and I'm glad they did."


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book at least partially set in a jungle.
🕹 Read a book that was based on or influenced by a movie.
🕹 Read a book with a simple design on the cover. {Your discretion.}
🕹 Read a book that quickly became your favorite, since Pitfall! is my favorite game of all time!

🕹 🎮 👾 Game 24: December 15th ~ Tetris 👾 🎮 🕹





Tetris (Russian: Тетрис[a]) is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. It has been published by several companies for multiple platforms, most prominently during a dispute over the appropriation of the rights in the late 1980s. After a significant period of publication by Nintendo, the rights reverted to Pajitnov in 1996, who co-founded the Tetris Company with Henk Rogers to manage licensing.


In Tetris, players complete lines by moving differently shaped pieces (tetrominoes), which descend onto the playing field. The completed lines disappear and grant the player points, and the player can proceed to fill the vacated spaces. The game ends when the uncleared lines reach the top of the playing field. The longer the player can delay this outcome, the higher their score will be. In multiplayer games, players must last longer than their opponents; in certain versions, players can inflict penalties on opponents by completing a significant number of lines. Some versions add variations on the rules, such as three-dimensional displays or a system for reserving pieces.


Built on simple rules, Tetris established itself as one of the greatest video games ever made. By December 2011, it had sold 202 million copies – approximately 70 million physical units and 132 million paid mobile game downloads – making it one of the best-selling video game franchises. The Game Boy version is one of the best-selling games of all time, with more than 35 million copies sold. Tetris is available on over 65 platforms, setting a Guinness world record for the most ported video game. Tetris is rooted within popular culture and its popularity extends beyond the sphere of video games; imagery from the game has influenced architecture, music, and cosplay. The game also has been the subject of various research studies that have analyzed its theoretical complexity and have shown its effect on the human brain following a session, in particular the Tetris effect.


Tetris is primarily composed of a field of play in which pieces of different geometric forms, called "tetrominoes", descend from the top of the field. During this descent, the player can move the pieces laterally and rotate them until they touch the bottom of the field or land on a piece that had been placed before it. The player can neither slow down the falling pieces nor stop them, but can accelerate them, in most versions. The objective of the game is to use the pieces to create as many complete horizontal lines of blocks as possible. When a line is completed, it disappears, and the blocks placed above fall one rank. Completing lines grants points, and accumulating a certain number of points or cleared lines moves the player up a level, which increases the number of points granted per completed line.
 

In most versions, the speed of the falling pieces increases with each level, leaving the player with less time to think about the placement. The player can clear multiple lines at once, which can earn bonus points in some versions. It is possible to complete up to four lines simultaneously with the use of the I-shaped tetromino; this move is called a "Tetris", and is the basis of the game's title.


If the player cannot make the blocks disappear quickly enough, the field will start to fill; when the pieces reach the top of the field and prevent the arrival of additional pieces, the game ends. At the end of each game, the player receives a score based on the number of lines that have been completed.  The game never ends with the player's victory. The player can complete only as many lines as possible, before an inevitable loss.


Since 1996, the Tetris Company has internally defined specifications and guidelines to which publishers must adhere to be granted a license to Tetris. The contents of these guidelines establish elements such as the correspondence of buttons and actions, the size of the field of play, and the system of rotation.


In 1979, Alexey Pajitnov joined the Computer Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences as a speech recognition researcher. While he was tasked with testing the capabilities of new hardware, his ambition was to use computers to make people happy.  Pajitnov developed several puzzle games on the institute's computer, an Electronika 60, a scarce resource at the time due in part to CoCom. For Pajitnov, "games allow people to get to know each other better and act as revealers of things you might not normally notice, such as their way of thinking."
 

In 1984, while trying to recreate a favorite puzzle game from his childhood featuring pentominoes, Pajitnov imagined a game consisting of a descent of random pieces that the player would turn to fill rows.  Pajitnov felt that the game would be needlessly complicated with twelve different shape variations, so he scaled the concept down to tetrominoes, of which there are seven variants. Pajitnov titled the game Tetris, a word created from a combination of "tetra" (meaning "four") and his favorite sport, "tennis."


Because the Electronika 60 had no graphical interface, Pajitnov modelled the field and pieces using spaces and brackets (45 lines of 80 ASCII characters). Realizing that completed lines filled the screen quickly, Pajitnov decided to delete them, creating a key part of Tetris gameplay. This early version of Tetris had no scoring system and no levels, but its addictive quality distinguished it from the other puzzle games Pajitnov had created. Pajitnov wrote the game using Pascal for the RT-11 operating system on the Electronika 60.


Pajitnov had completed the first playable version of Tetris circa 1985. Pajitnov presented Tetris to his colleagues, who quickly became addicted to it.  It permeated the offices within the Academy of Sciences, and within a few weeks it reached every Moscow institute with a computer.  A friend of Pajitnov, Vladimir Pokhilko, who requested the game for the Moscow Medical Institute, saw people stop working to play Tetris. Pokhilko eventually banned the game from the Medical Institute to restore productivity.
 

Pajitnov sought to adapt Tetris to the IBM Personal Computer, which had a higher quality display than the Electronika 60. Pajitnov recruited Vadim Gerasimov, a 16-year-old high school student who was known for his computer skills.  Pajitnov had met Gerasimov before through a mutual acquaintance, and they had worked together on previous games. Gerasimov adapted Tetris to the IBM PC over the course of a few weeks, incorporating color and a scoreboard. 


To Level Up on this game, complete ONE of the following:

🕹 Read a book set in Russia.
🕹 Read a book where a character works on any kind of puzzle.
🕹 Read a book with a title that starts with a letter in PASCAL.
🕹 Read a book where the author's first AND last names DO NOT start with a letter in TETRIS.