Monkey Island (Game)

Monkey Island is the collective name given to a series of five graphical adventure games produced and published by LucasArts, originally known as LucasFilm Games through the development of the first game in the series. The fifth installment of the franchise was developed by Telltale Games in collaboration with LucasArts. The games follow the misadventures of the hapless Guybrush Threepwood as he struggles to become the most notorious pirate in the Caribbean, defeat the plans of the evil undead pirate LeChuck and win the heart of governor Elaine Marley. Each game's plot usually involves the mysterious Monkey Island and its impenetrable secrets.

The games were created as a collaborative effort among Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. Gilbert worked on the first two games before leaving LucasArts. Grossman and Schafer, who also worked on the first two games, would enjoy success on other titles before both of them also left. The rights to Monkey Island remained with LucasArts, and the third and fourth games were created without the input of the original writing crew. Development of the fifth game was headed by Dave Grossman, with work from Michael Stemmle; while not actively engaged in the project, Gilbert was involved with the initial design of the game.

Overview
The Monkey Island series is known for its humor and "player-friendly" qualities. The player cannot permanently place the game in an unwinnable state or cause Guybrush to die without great effort. This "player-friendly" approach was unusual at the time of the first game's release in 1990; prominent adventure-game rivals included Sierra On-Line and Infocom, both of which were known for games with sudden and frequent character deaths or "lock-outs". LucasArts itself used such closed plot paths for its drama games like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (1989), but preferred the open format for other humor-oriented adventure games such as Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993) and Day of the Tentacle (1993). After Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge in 1991, the series went in hiatus until 1997, when it resumed with The Curse of Monkey Island. After the fourth entry, Escape from Monkey Island, the franchise again went on hiatus, though numerous rumors persisted about a revival until the announcement of Tales of Monkey Island by Telltale Games in early 2009.
Much of the music of the games is composed by Michael Land. The score largely consists of reggae, Caribbean and dub-inspired music.
The series also tends to break the Fourth wall, as several of the characters acknowledge that they are in a video game.

Setting
Each of the games takes place on fictional islands in the Caribbean around the Golden Age of Piracy in the 18th century. The islands teem with pirates dressed in outfits that seem to come from movies and comic books rather than history, and there are many deliberate anachronisms and references to modern-day popular culture.
The main setting of the Monkey Island games is the "Tri-Island Area", a fictional archipelago in the Caribbean. Since the first game in the series, The Secret of Monkey Island, three of the games have visited the titular island of Monkey Island, while all have introduced their own set of islands to explore. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge features four new islands, but does not return to Monkey Island until the final cutscene. The Curse of Monkey Island introduces three, and Escape from Monkey Island, which revisits some of the older islands, features three new islands as well. As such, the "Tri-Island area" actually comprises a total of 13 visitable islands. Tales of Monkey Island takes place in a new area of the Caribbean called the "Gulf of Melange".
The main islands of the Tri-Island Area are Mêlée Island, Booty Island, and Plunder Island governed by Elaine Marley in place of her long lost grandfather, Horatio Torquemada Marley. Elaine moves from island to island at her convenience, though she considers her governor's mansion on Mêlée Island, the capital island of the area, as home.
Other islands in the region are considered under the umbrella of Tri-Island Area as well, even though not directly governed by Elaine include: Lucre Island, Jambalaya Island, Scabb Island, Phatt Island, Plunder Island, Hook Island, Skull Island, Knuttin Atoll, Blood Island, Spittle Island and Pinchpenny Island.
The Gulf of Melange has its own set of islands: Flotsam Island, the Jerkbait Islands (Spinner Cay, Spoon Island, Roe Island), Brillig Island, Boulder Beach, Isle of Ewe, and the Rock of Gelato.
Monkey Island and Dinky Island are not officially part of any island area, but nonetheless are central to the series' overall back-story and canon.

Characters
The games have a wide cast of characters, many of which reappear throughout the series. Each entry in the series revolves around three main characters: Guybrush Threepwood (the protagonist); Elaine Marley (the primary foil as the object of Guybrush and LeChuck's affection); and LeChuck (the primary antagonist).

Inspiration
Ron Gilbert's two main inspirations for the story were Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride and Tim Powers' book On Stranger Tides. The book was the inspiration for the story and characters, while the ride was the inspiration for the ambiance. "[The POTC Ride] keeps you moving through the adventure," Gilbert said in an interview, "but I've always wished I could get off and wander around, learn more about the characters, and find a way onto those pirate ships. So with The Secret of Monkey Island(TM) I wanted to create a game that had the same flavor, but where you could step off the boat and enter that whole storybook world."
Several specific references to the ride are made throughout the series, including a puzzle in the second game based on the ride's famous Jail Cell/Dog With Keys scene (the dog in the scene is even named Walt). The banjo music in the opening menu of the third game is also very reminiscent of the banjo music at the beginning of the ride. Additional references are made to Disneyland and theme parks in general throughout the series, including Guybrush finding an E ticket.

Star Craft (Game)

StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling games for the personal computer. A Mac OS version was released in March 1999, and a Nintendo 64 adaptation co-developed with Mass Media Interactive Entertainment was released on 13 June 2000. StarCraft has had its storyline adapted and expanded through a series of novels, the expansion pack StarCraft: Brood War and two authorized add-ons. The game's sequel, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, was released in 2010.
Set in the 26th century, the game revolves around three species fighting for dominance in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy: the Terrans, humans exiled from Earth skilled at adapting to any situation; the Zerg, a race of insectoid aliens in pursuit of genetic perfection obsessed with assimilating other races; and the Protoss, a humanoid species with advanced technology and psionic abilities, attempting to preserve their civilization and strict philosophical way of living from the Zerg. The game has been praised for pioneering the use of unique factions in real-time strategy gameplay and for a compelling story.

Many of the industry's journalists have praised StarCraft as one of the best and most important video games of all time, and for having raised the bar for developing real-time strategy games. StarCraft's multiplayer is particularly popular in South Korea, where players and teams participate in professional competitions, earn sponsorships, and compete in televised tournaments.

Gameplay
Blizzard Entertainment's use of three distinct races in StarCraft is widely credited with revolutionizing the real-time strategy genre. All units are unique to their respective races and while rough comparisons can be drawn between certain types of units in the technology tree, every unit performs differently and requires different tactics for a player to succeed. The enigmatic Protoss have access to powerful units and machinery and advanced technologies such as energy shields and localized warp capabilities, powered by their psionic traits. However, their forces have lengthy and expensive manufacturing processes, encouraging players to follow a strategy of the quality of their units over the quantity. The insectoid Zerg possess entirely organic units and structures, which can be produced quickly and at a far cheaper cost to resources, but are accordingly weaker, relying on sheer numbers and speed to overwhelm enemies. The Terrans provide a middle ground between the other two races, providing units that are versatile and flexible. They have access to a range of more ballistic military technologies and machinery, such as tanks and nuclear weapons. Although each race is unique in its composition, no race has an innate advantage over the other. Each species is balanced out so that while they have different strengths, powers, and abilities their overall strength is the same. The balance stays complete via infrequent patches (game updates) provided from Blizzard.
StarCraft features artificial intelligence which scales in difficulty, although the player cannot change the difficulty level in the single-player campaigns. Each campaign starts with enemy factions running easy AI modes, scaling through the course of the campaign to the hardest AI modes. In the level editor provided with the game, a designer has access to four levels of AI difficulties: "easy", "medium", "hard" and "insane", each setting differing in the units and technologies allowed to an AI faction and the extent of the AI's tactical and strategic planning. The single-player campaign consists of thirty missions, split into ten for each race.

Resource management
Each race relies on two resources to sustain their game economies and to build their forces: minerals and vespene gas. Minerals are needed for all units and structures, and are obtained by using a worker unit to harvest the resource directly from mineral nodes scattered around the battlefield. Players require gas to construct advanced units and buildings, and acquire it by building a refinery on top of a geyser and using worker units to extract the gas from it. In addition, players need to regulate the supplies for their forces to ensure that they can construct the number of units they need. Although the nature of the supply differs between the races—Terrans use physical supplies held in depots, Protoss use a psionic power nexus and Zerg are regulated by the number of controlling overlord units present—the supply mechanic works in exactly the same way for each race, allowing players to create new units when there are sufficient resources to sustain them.

Base construction
Protoss and Zerg building construction is limited to specific locations: Protoss buildings need to be linked to a power grid, while almost every Zerg structure must be placed on a carpet of biomass, called "creep", that is produced by certain structures. Terran buildings are far less limited, with certain primary base structures possessing the ability to take off and fly slowly to a new location. Terran buildings, however, require the worker unit to continue construction on the building until it is completed. Also, once a Terran building has taken a certain amount of damage, it will catch fire and eventually burn to the ground without further enemy action, though this can be prevented by repairs performed by a worker unit. The Protoss, by contrast, only require a worker unit to begin the process of transporting a building to the theater of operations via warp, and their buildings' shields (but not their structure) are regenerative. The Zerg worker unit physically transforms into the structure created, which is capable of healing itself.

Multiplayer
Multiplayer on StarCraft is powered through Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net Internet service. Through this, a maximum of eight players can compete in a variety of game modes, from simply destroying all other players on a level, to king of the hill and capture the flag objective-based games. In addition, the game incorporates a variety of specialized scenarios for different types of game, such as simulating a football game, using the Terran hoverbike unit to conduct a bike race, or hosting a Zerg hunting competition. StarCraft is also one of the few games that include a spawn installation, which allows for limited multiplayer. It must be installed from a disc, and requires a product key to work just as the full version does. However, one product key can support up to eight spawned installations with access to Battle.net. Limitations of a spawned installation include the inability to play single-player missions, create multiplayer games or use the campaign editor.