Who's the brown dinosaur in Braid?

Question

At the end of each world, there's a brown dinosaur who tells you that the princess is in another castle. I get the Mario reference, but is the brown dinosaur a reference to something else or is it a character original to Braid?

Asked by Qiaochu Yuan

Answer

Although David Hellman did most of the art for Braid, Edmund McMillen did some early character designs including the dinosaur^[1]. You'll recognize Edmund's style from other gaming.SE favorites such as Super Meat Boy and the Binding of Isaac.

You can see the squat, tie-wearing style for Tim was kept from Edmund's early drawings, though David mentions that he redid the face for Tim. You can see variations on the Braid dino from Edmund here. Edmund didn't mention any specific inspirations from other sources^[2]; he's just a plush dino and one of his original creations for Braid.

Answered by authenticgeek

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What was the first Wireless Controller?

Question

Bit of an odd question here that I'm mainly asking out of curiosity.

Can anyone shed some light on which company was the first to produce a wireless controller ?

Personally my first experience was with Nintendo's Wavebird (which I considered revolutionary but I think it got overlooked because the GameCube was pretty much on its last legs when it came into being) but I'm sure there must be something that pre-dates this.

Asked by Craig Pilgrim

Answer

Acclaim made an officially-licensed wireless controller for the NES (link is to an eBay listing). I dimly remember using some terrible third-party controllers that I returned to Toys R Us less than a month after purchase, but those may not have been wireless.

Still, those weren't even close to the first wireless controllers. Believe it or not, even the Atari 2600 had wireless controllers. (I sure don't remember these. We had the normal joysticks, paddle controllers, and the free-spinning controllers for Indy 500.)

The same question was asked back in 2006 on another site; the answer there was also the Atari 2600, although no details were supplied. It's possible that another system had wireless controllers prior to 1983? or so, but I'm not sure offhand which one it would be.

Answered by Dave DuPlantis

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Why did you have to blow into an NES cartridge to make it work?

Question

Did doing this actually help at all? If so, how?

Asked by Anatidaus

Answer

Popular belief among those of us who remember the original NES held that that blowing into an NES cartridge removed dust from the contacts, which allowed a better connection to the system. In practice, the method was similar to the following:

• Plug in cartridge, turn on system
• Curse when system does not work
• Pull out cartridge, blow
• Re-seat cartridge, try system again

In a few cases, blowing may have actually removed dust, but the truth is that most of the time, what actually fixed the problem was the act of pulling the cartridge out and putting it back in.

As the original NES required you to put the cartridge in and then down, another common trick was to shove a second cartridge in the slot on top of the first one, which prevented the bottom (game) cartridge from slipping.

Answered by Steve V.

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Why does Pac-Man not like to eat eyes?

Question

I know Pac-Man has no real story, but I always found it weird how he doesn't eat the ghosts' eyes.

Is there some technical reason why he doesn't, or is this just an oversight?

Answer

The further the eyes are from the ghost pen, the longer it takes for them to reach it and regenerate. This means the time it takes for a ghost to respawn after being eaten is variable.

Because it is variable, the eyes give the player a measurable way to determine when the ghosts are going to respawn (when the eyes reach the ghost pen). If Pac-Man ate the ghosts' eyes, the player would have no visual idea when the ghosts would regenerate, which might be hazardous to Pac-Man's health.

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Is This a Megaman Reference? [closed]

Question

This looks suspiciously like one of those little helmeted bastards from the Megaman games. Is it a reference, or am I just crazy?

Answer

It certainly appears to be the helmet from a Met. Unfortunately, the pictures at the Megaman wiki aren't of a high enough quality for me to zoom in for a good look. Fortunately, the pic you attached and a couple of other unofficial sources are and the helmet on the poster looks to be the same, pixel for pixel.

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Why does Pacman not like to eat eyes?

Question

I know Pacman has no real story, but is there any explanation why he does't want to eat the eyes of the ghosts?

Answer

The further the eyes are from the ghost pen, the longer it takes for them to reach it and regenerate. This means the time it takes for a ghost to respawn after being eating is variable.

Because it is variable, the eyes give the player a measurable way to determine when the ghosts are going to respawn (when the eyes reach the ghost pen). If pacman ate the ghosts' eyes, the player would have no visual idea when the ghosts would regenerate, which might be hazardous to Pacman's health.

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What's the earliest third-person action game with a major escort component?

Question

ICO set a major precedent for the escort archetype, as both Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and later Resident Evil 4 made excellent use of support characters who needed to be protected and escorted, but who had mission-critical abilities of their own. Was ICO the first, though? What's the earliest game in which the player's character escorts a vulnerable NPC through an obstacle-littered landscape which contains objectives that can only be achieved by employing the NPC's abilities?

Answer

Oldest example I can think of is Whistler's Brother. Which isn't polygonal, but is 3rd person. And at '1984' has an auspicious birth year.

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What is Chillingo.ltd? What Do They Do?

Question

There are a ton of (mostly) highly rated games in the Apple appstore under the publisher 'Chillingo', but the games are so wildly different from one another, that I can't understand how they could develop the hundreds of them internally.

What's the deal with this? Is 'Chillingo' just a pseudonym for a group of developers?

Answer

It's a publishing company.

From their website:

Chillingo is a leading Independent Games Publisher and a division of Electronic Arts. The company publishes innovative games and software for various platforms.

They don't develop games. Developers come to them and make various arrangements for their games to be published/distributed. It works in a similar way to how games for PC and consoles are produced: for example, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is developed by Square Enix, but published by Eidos Interactive.

Game publishers perform a variety of functions. They are generally responsible for marketing and production costs which might include the development of the games they publish.

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Who wrote this incredible theme-song?

Question

If anyone here remembers a game for the Nintendo 64 by the name of "Buck Bumble" you will remember how awesome the theme song that played at the main menu was. Can anybody tell me who wrote this song? I would really like to know.

If you haven't heard the Buck Bumble Theme yet, you should. Here is a link.

Answer

JUSTIN SCHARVONA

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Which was the first game with bullet-time?

Question

The first game I played, which had bullet-time, was Max Payne. Was there any game before that to have a similar feature?

Answer

Max Payne was released in 2001, but in 1997 MDK was the first game to incorporate bullet time as a game mechanic.

Unlike in Max Payne, where bullet time was your ability to slow time temporarily and play with in it, MDK only used bullet time as a mechanism to follow sniper shots. While this too would be repeated in other games (including Max Payne) it first appeared in Shiny's classic MDK.

In 1999 Unreal tournament introduced "bubbles" which would slow time causing the bullet time effect (in the same manner as Max Payne but not at the user's direct control).

Later that year Requiem: Avenging Angel would provide for a more direct control over slowing down time.

No matter how you slice it, Max Payne was not the first game to have bullet time.

To continue the history lesson:

• First bullet captured in motion on film: MIT professor Doc Edgerton in the 1940s
• First televised Bullet Time: 1966 Japanese anime series Speed Racer
• First live action Bullet Time: 1985 Music Video Midnight Mover

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