[1] Pixel Pioneers: A Brief History of Graphics, Part One;
[2] Sprite Supreme: A Brief History of Graphics, Part Two;
[3] Polygon Realm: A Brief History of Graphics, Part Three;
[4] Voodoo Bloom: A Brief History of Graphics, Part Four;
[5] Future Crisis: A Brief History of Graphics, Part Five.
"Space Invaders is quite simply the most influential video–game of all time. A single player moves an armed 'base' left or right along the bottom of the screen and shoots the endless waves of aliens marching relentlessly down the screen towards earth. There are four buildings (shields) at the bottom of the screen that the player can hide behind, but these will eventually be destroyed by either enemy missiles or by direct contact with the invaders themselves. The player's shots will also destroy the shields. The aliens' descent quickens as they are eliminated, making them harder to hit. A flying saucer will fly across the top of the screen at regular intervals and can be shot to earn extra points."
(Alexis Bousiges and Kukulcan, Arcade–History)
Fig.2 Youths play on a Space Invaders machine in Newcastle (UK) in December 1980.
Fig.3 Space World, Auckland (Aotearoa New Zealand), 1982.
"Sima Urale's debut short film, beautifully realised in black and white, tells the story of a young Samoan boy who is expected to play guardian to his siblings. As his parents struggle in their new country, he is overwhelmed by the responsibility. When faced with his grief, the adults fail to recognise his pain. Poignant attention to details that convey a child's perspective (eg. the movement of a spacies game and shopping trolley are intercut) saw O Tamaiti win awards at film festivals around the globe, including the prestigious Silver Lion at Venice."
(NZ On Screen)
Fig. 1 Dir. Sima Urale, 15mins, NZ, 1996, black & white, 1.1:66
"9–year–old Caine Monroy spent his summer vacation building an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad's used auto parts store. The entire summer went by, and Caine had yet to have a single customer. Then, on the last day of summer, a filmmaker named Nirvan stopped to buy a door handle for his car. Caine asked Nirvan to play, and Nirvan bought a $2 FunPass, becoming Caine's first customer. Inspired by Caine's creativity, Nirvan came back to make a short film about Caine's Arcade and organized a flashmob to surprise Caine with lots of customers."
DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) is a music video game series produced by Konami. The game is played through its users following steps displayed on a video screen. Players mimic the on–screen steps through dancing on a dance pad input device. Their success is determined according to the accuracy of their performance.
"Rimmon–Kenan (1983) notes how the distinction between Plato's and Aristotle's mimesis (often translated as showing) and diegesis (telling) had come by the end of the nineteenth century to mean, on the one hand, the direct presentation of events in which the narrator seems to disappear (as in drama), and, on the other, presentation mediated by a narrator who, instead of exhibiting events, talks about them, sums them up, and so forth. Since then, the term diegesis has been widely adopted in film theory with a rather different sense: diegetic space is that which is accessible to the characters in the film (Giejgo 2001). By contrast, one of the most common extra–diegetic components is film music, heard by the audience but not by the characters in the story. Subtitles and inter–titles are also extra–diegetic. In the case of a painting, the artist's signature is usually in the non–diegetic space of the canvas surface ? but occasionally is made diegetic by being incorporated into the scene itself. In a videogame, there is almost invariably a diegetic world occupied by the scenery and characters, and a non–diegetic layer occupied by status indicators for variables such as health, weaponry, and so forth. We argue that this divided relationship between the world and the interface, between the diegesis and the extra–diegetic, is analogous to the configurational mode of graphics. There is a diagrammatic relation between a pictured world and the set of controls and measures which are external to that world. Such a relation is also familiar in standard graphical user interfaces, usually considered as examples of direct manipulation (Shneiderman 1998:186 passim) but often favouring indirect manipulation, so that for example an onscreen video–console has a set of controls to play, stop, rewind and so forth, rather than the user interacting with the displayed video material itself. The controls are extra–diegetic."
(Stephen Boyd Davis)
[1] Rimmon–Kenan, Shlomith. 1983. Narrative Fiction: contemporary poetics. Methuen, London.
[2] Giejgo, Marja. 2001. www, ?Val Geilgud and the BBC?, website of Independent Radio Drama Productions
Ltd, http://www.irdp.co.uk/GIELGUD/valbbc14.htm (1 September 2001)
[3] Shneiderman, Ben. 1993. 3rd edition. Designing the User Interface – strategies for effective human computerinter action. Addison–Wesley, Reading, MA.