To be a gamer, is to be surrounded by all kinds of phrases and terminology that we have grown to know and use frequently. To the novice gamer, these words may be foriegn. This section is intended to define and aquaint a newbie to gaming to the words of trade or maybe those baby boomers who want to know what all that stuff the generations ahead of theirs are talking about.
UPDATE: I've added new entries to this list and corrected a little bit on some of these.
1-Up - Synonymous with "Extra Man" "Extra Life" and "Free man," the 1-up allowed for the gamer in a specific game to add an extra amount equal to 1 of either spaceships, characters, or anything that was controlled or manipulated by the gamer to challenge the game that he or she might lose, become defeated, or "killed." This term is rather archaic in the modern era of gaming and it's usage has been significantly removed from many video games. It is mostly been limited to platformer type games and games that appeal to small children.
AI - (Artificial Intelligence) Most notably refered to the notion of having a conscious or self aware computer or neural network the term inself applies to anything done by a computer or similar device designed to duplicate the processes of a human brain such as decision making and reaction to stimulus. Computer controlled opponents in video games use AI to oppose the efforts and actions of the player. Games with good AI often contain enemies that can predict, counterattack, and evade the player in attempt to "stay alive."
Arcade - Video Gaming's roots started here. The arcade is the place where numerous video game cabinets are housed and played for the cost of either 25 or 50 cents by gamers. First appearing in amusement parks, then later strip malls and shopping plazas the arcade was a boom industry of the 80's. In the late 70's and early 80's arcades became very popular and original titles like Asteroids, Space Invaders, Frogger, and Pac-Man became legendary to the teenagers of what is called today's "Baby Buster" generation. Millions of dollars were pumped into these quarter eating monsters. Home game systems that were produced during this time were often inferior to the level of gaming obtained from the cabinet's in an arcade. Often these costly to manufacture devices represented the most sophisticated digital techology of thier era. Movies like "Tron" and the "Last Starfighter" emulated America's infatuation with the arcade. As time passed, the influence of arcades began to diminish as home gaming systems caught up to the techology often displayed only in arcade systems. There were some rallying times during the early nineties when gamers entered a period where fighting games like Street Fighter II, and Mortal Kombat took center stage. Since this time the capabilities of computers and home console systems has met and in some ways exceeded the capabilities of costly arcade cabinets, and the arcade today is far less than what it used to be. You can still find them, but only a fraction as many as you would have in a year like 1982. In today's digital proliferation, existing arcades must find new and more immersive ways of getting gamers to "Insert Coin."
Byte - a value of data storage equivalent to 8 bits.
Cartridge - During much of the past 20 years of home console system gaming, the information for video games themselves has been stored on cartridges. These cartridges contain ROM memory that stores everything required to make the game function and communicate with the hardware console. Video Game Cartridges are most easily identified as a square or retangular plasic casing with a long multi-pin connector on one end designed to fit into a recepticle on a video game system. Cartridges were produced in mass quantity but managed to be rather durable. Until the Compact Disc became the standard for gaming systems, the cart ruled king. Cartridges are still produced today, but will soon be a thing of the past and totally obsolete. Nintendo's Nintendo 64 system still obtains data off of cartridges and in many aspects keeps up with it's CD counterparts but falls short in others. The production costs and memory limitations of cartridges have sealed their fate. The N64 will be the last cartridge console system for the rest of time. CD's and DVD's have proven to be the standard in storage media and will pave the way for the future of gaming.
CD-ROM - (Compact Disc - Read Only Memory) - CD's first started appearing and became widely distributed by the early 90's. At first CD's were used as a storage medium for Digital Music and CD's quickly replaced Cassette Tapes as an inexpensive, more durable, and higher quality media type. During the early nineties personal computers began to use CD-ROM's to contain large programs and files that were two large and impractical to put on 1.44 MB High Density magnetic floppy disks. A CD works on the principle that millions of tiny pits or holes in the surface of a circular metal sheet are bombarded by a laser that detects the location of these pits to obtain Binary digital information that is sent to the remaining hardware necessary to process and output the information. CD-ROM's can hold a maximum of 650 Megabytes of data. The first non-computer console systems to use a CD-ROM Drive (a reader/player of CD-ROMs) was the TurboDuo and the SegaCD. During the early usage of CD-ROM's it was frequent to see a game that was designed with Full Motion Video or Multimedia where gameplay sequences were interjected with scenes that would have never been viewable on the proprietary cartridge format of that period of time. The CD-ROM has since become the most widely used formats for holding game information, but alas time a technology wait for no one, and the CD-ROM has been surpassed in capability by the DVD and DVD-ROM.
CD-RW - (Compact Disc - Re-Writable) - a CD-RW drive can read CD-ROM discs just like a standard CD-ROM, but it can also record data onto special discs called CD-RW's. Most CD-R's and CD-RWs can hold a capacity of 650 Megabytes of data or 74 Minutes of Music, however some are now produced that can store 700 Megabytes of data equivalent to 80 Minutes of continuous music play time. Currently no console game systems support this function however it has become the fastest growing storage media in the late 90's and early 2000's. CD-RW's became the source of the term "burn a disc."
Code - In the field of computer programming this word denotes the actual lines of text and commands associated with the operation or utilization/interaction between a computer user and the computer itself. In video gaming a code can be a set of instructions input by the player to make a change in the gameplay circumstances take place. A code can originate from a set order of pressed buttons on a controller. It can also be input from a specific set of keys on a computer. In video games often entering a code will allow for the player to alter aspects of the game like difficulty or limitations. Some codes allow for invincibility or unlimited gameplay retries (infinite lives), unlimited ammunition, or no-clipping.
Controller - Sometimes referred to as a "remote" or I've even heard, "paddle" (to me that sounds kind of geeky) it's the input device used by the gamer to interact and manipulate the game as well as cause gameplay circumstances to become altered by the will of the person controlling the game. The controller is an essential tool of the gamer, and is most easily identified as a device connected by a cord (sometimes not) with buttons on the face or top of the controller. In the past controllers were very unsophisticated and emulated the joysticks and layouts of arcade units. Early controllers had one or two buttons, and a movable pole or a wheel to turn. Time passed thoug and controllers started adding more buttons. The Atari game system had simply a square shaped box with a joystick pole and one red button. The Nintendo Entertainment System, had a small rectangular device with two red buttons, a plus shaped button, and two rubber buttons labeled, "start" and "select." Most notaby the original NES controller set the standard for usage of the A and B buttons. The Sega Genesis added another button called the "C" button. Nintendo's forward thinking allowed for the creation of a controller with buttons on the top and face of the controller and added a forth button on the face. Realeased with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, this controller had a total of 9 buttons labeled, A, B, X, Y, L, R, select, and start, as well as the plus control pad. Sega followed suit shortly after the SNES's release with a 6 face button controller. This was mostly done because fighting games like Street Fighter required the use of all 6 face buttons. Sony decided to 1-up (pun intended) Nintendo in 1994 by adding a second pair of top or shoulder buttons with L2, and R2. Sony's controller was the first in a series of Ergonomic controllers designed for comfort and ease of use. In 1996 Nintendo's answer to the Sony's Playstation controller was to make the futistic and completely ergonomic Nintendo 64 Controller. The N64 controller had 7 buttons on it's face, A, B, up-C, left-C, right-C, and down-C, a "Start" button, as well as two top shoulder buttons L and R, and inside the underneath interior it had a Z-button mimicking the trigger of a gun. Furthermore the N64 controller had not only the directional plus pad, but it was the first to have the "Analog Stick" that allowed gamers to better interact with 3-D environments rendered by the game system. In the neverending battle to build a better controller Nintendo released with a game, Star Fox 64, a device called the Rumble Pak which created vibrations and force feedback that would occur related to specific gameplay events the player was experiencing. The rumble back required an external power source of two AAA batteries to operate and was inserted into the Memory Card port on the bottom of the N64 controller. Sony soon mimicked the idea and developed a controller supposedly better than Nintendo's called the "Analog Dual Shock Controller" which had not 1 but 2 analog sticks, and the force feedback mechanism was integrated into the controller design requiring no batteries. This design has not changed much since that time and was subsequently employed with the production of the Playstation 2 game console system. The only addition to the Dual shock since then has been the addition of pressure sensitivity to the face buttons. Another controller to note was the SEGA Dreamcast controller released with SEGA's console system, The Dreamcast. This controller had 4 face buttons, a start button, and two triggers on either side of the controller. This controller's innovation was the fact that you could insert 2 memory cards called VMU's into the unit, and it had a small digital screen to display information.
CPU - (Central Processing Unit) also known as microprocessor. This is the hardware device that computes the mathematical equations involved in displaying and utilizing digital data. A CPU can perform computational tasks many millions and now billions of times per second. This measure of processor speed is done in Mhz and most recently Ghz. The CPU is an essential requirement to the operation of a Personal Computer or any device requiring some kind of ability to make a decision. Some popular CPU manufacterers are Intel, Cyrix, and AMD. The fastest CPU as of February 2001, was the Pentium 4, at 1.5 Ghz or 1,500 Mhz.
Driving Simulator - this is an extension of the Racing Genre and always includes racing as the major gameplay device. Driving Simulation is essentially a recent sub genre that appeared after the emergence of polygon based gaming environments and design. These type of games attempt to duplicate the experience of driving a specific vehicle or set of vehicles to match real conditions and physics. Usually graphics are very detailed, and the gameplay is designed to closely duplicate the conditions the real vehicle would face. Often times you are given many options and customizations that match what is entirely possible to be done on a real car. Some of these type of games also duplicate actual locations and courses from the world. An example of this type of game is the Gran Tursimo series.
DVD-ROM - (Digital Versatile Disc - Read Only Memory) Enevitably sooner or later CD technology was going to become obsolete, and the DVD is the replacement for the CD. DVD's work on about the same principles of a CD in terms of obtaining information, but the placement of binary information pits is more concentrated allowing for a DVD-ROM to hold up to 4.7 Gigabytes of Data. DVDs are used to hold digital movies, and have increased substantially in popularity and usage during the late 90's and early 2000's.
Emulator - Perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of modern gaming is the emulator. An emulator is anything such as software that is designed to mimic or copy the hardware of something else. These allow for gamers to play games solely designed for console systems on the computer. Some popular emulators are Nemu, UltraHLE, ZSNES, and Bleem. Most emulators read the actual ROM Image of a cartridge game to work, without the necessary cartridge but rather the information that makes up the game. The legality of these programs has been heatedly debated and Sony has attempted to sue the creators of a commercially sold Emulator Bleem, but were unsuccessful in preventing it's release or sale. Emulators even allow you to play games that might only be available in an arcade by making the ROM image think a computer program is the hardware of the arcade cabinet.
Enemy - Any time there is a specific identifiable unit of opposition to the progression or completion of a gameplay task, it is most frequently refered to as "the enemy." Enemies can be spaceships, tanks, blobs, monsters, or other characters or things that act in a way that is solely programmed to provide a resistance force and challenge for the player. Contact with enemies by the player may result in a reduction of a player's available energy reserve or the loss of a life or gameplay turn. In more story driven games enemies take the role of characters that behave in a manner that is counteractive to the ultimate goal of the story or plot.
Energy - Also known as, "power," "health," "life," and related to "Hit Points," this term denotes a specific value equal to the remaining available pool from which a player's mistakes are subtracted from. This is most frequently represented in a video game as a metered bar or something similar that diminishes incrementally as an opposing force counteracts the player. For instance a warror with a sword might clobber the heroic knight and his Energy or Health is decreased by a predetermined value. Usually when the player's energy reaches a value of 0, or empty, the gameplay phase of the game ends and he or she loses, becomes defeated, runs out of fuel, etc. Many games allow for Energy to be replenished to keep the player from ending gameplay. Reduction of the total decreased value of energy can be affected or varied by circumstances in the game most often initiated by the player.
Environment - Used to describe the actual location or range available to the player in which circumstances and events can be manipulated or influenced. A gaming environment can be linear and 2-Dimesional as well as global and 3-dimensional.
First Person Shooter - This type of game places the player in a first person perspective of 3-D surroundings or environments in which the player must utilize some kind of projectile weapon like a gun or laser to annihilate enemies and progress to the next level or scenario. First Person Shooters are often very violent and graphic in nature hightening the thrill of the gaming experience. This type of gaming was pioneered by games designed for the Personal Computer during the early to mid 90's like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and later became very popular when these games allowed for connectivity over the internet and a player could then challenge another human opponent. Today's most popular first person shooter is Quake.
Frag - to remove or kill off another player from gameplay in a multiplayer gaming scenario. This term was popularized by enthusists of First Person Shooters like Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem. Curently the most popular games in this category are Half Life, Halo, and Quake III.
Game Over - When a player's quantity of availabe energy or value of gameplay tries (lives) equals 0 the game play phase ends, and a screen indicating that the player has lost or been defeated appears on the screen. Getting a game over screen is most frequently associated with the words, "wasted" "trashed" "killed" "fragged" and "you lose!" In some case's it's the most frequently seen screen by a gamer. The Game Over screen is a throwback to the very annals of video gaming and arcade cabinets when after losing the game, this screen would appear and another quarter would have to be inserted to continue gameplay.
Gigabyte - a value of data storage equivalent to 1000 Megabytes.
Graphics - This word goes back to the early days of video gaming, and has nothing to with graphs but rather the visuals of the game. Graphics are probably the most essential part of a video game. They are the video in video game. Since the early days of video gaming graphics have become progressively more detailed. The quality of these graphics has substantially improved since the late 70's and early 80's. (The Paleolithic Age of Gaming), Early systems and arcade machines produces very pixelated and blocky images that were often repeated to form a collective of images. Graphics on many early systems like the Atari, CollecoVision, Intellivision, and Commodore 64 were very primative. Over time as microprocessors became more powerful, the definition and quality of the digital images in video games became sharper and more detailed. The appearance of the visuals of games was often a result of the bit depth of the microprocessor. For instance, the Nintendo Entertainment System released in Japan in 1985 was an 8-bit gaming system, and subsequently systems progressed to 12, 16,24, 32, 64 and most recently to today's standard of 128, and 256 bit. In the past, games were played with in a linear, left to right, right to left, up or down 2-dimensional environment. By the mid 90's game console systems and computers were capable of reproducing 3-Dimensional games, and since this time the clarity of the games has progressively approached the threshold of television and motion picture.
Kilobyte - a value of data storage eqivalent to 1024 bytes.
l33t (l337) Speak - L33T Speak (spoken as "Leet Speak") is the usage of non standard keyboard characters to create words of phrases. l337/Leet is in fact a misspelling of "Elite." This is essentially derived entirely from the PC gamers, and teenage hackers who found that this was a way to seem cool or perhaps hide their real words from those who could not understand what they were typing. Some examples of Leet Speak are as follows: "pwnd" = "owned," "h4x0r" = "hacker," "d00d = "dude." "w00t" = "
Level - the usage and relationship of this term can vary from game to game. In the first usage, a level can be any specific environment or area where a player must interact with or complete a specific set of tasks within. Sometimes refered to as "Stage" or "Board," by gamers, often Levels of a game become increasingly more difficult as the player completes or masters previous levels. Most notably this is one of the very rudimentry archetypes of video games and is still employed today. 3-Dimensional Action, Adventure, and RPG gameplay has departed from the linear progression of Levels ex: 1,2,3, but still uses the premise of increasing the difficulty of the game as the player progresses further into the game or encounters a new environment or locale. The second usage of this term in gaming is associated primarily to video games that allow the player to increase the statistics of a specific character to make the character more resilient to damage. This is related directly to the usage of "Leveling Up."
Megabyte - a value of data storage equivalent to 1024 kilobytes.
Motion Capture - To add more realism to characters in a video game, actual nodes are attached to specific key regions of a person's body like joints and referance points. The source of the motion capture then performs the actions that might appear in the game like crouching, kicking, jumping, punching, or running. A computer collects all the information about each location of each node while the source is doing this and then extrapolates a mathematical set of variables to associate with AI and reproduces the actions of the source into a collection of polygons that make up a representation of a video game character. Motion capture allows for player controlled video game characters or enemies a very real and natural range of motion.
Peripheral - This term refers to any devices aside from the standard or stock controllers that is associated with a console unit. More often than not peripherals are highly specialized componets that may only be used for specific games or types of games. For example a "Light Gun" like the Zapper, Super Scope 6, or Menacer, is a peripheral that is only useful for games that support it or use gameplay mechanics that make use of such a device plausable or enjoyable. Peripherals can be both first party brand named produced and certified by the manufacturer of the console unit such as Nintendo or Sony, or they can be aftermarket brands made by other companies like the brand name, "Mad Cats" or "Pelican." These peripherals are compatable with the respective units they are designed to operate with. Some rather unusual peripherals from the past include, The Power Pad (NES), The Power Glove (NES), R.O.B. The Robot (NES), SEAMAN Microphone (Dreamcast), Activator (Genesis), and Eye Toy (Playstation 2).
Pixel - This term references a single point or dot that is displayed upon a video terminal or monitor screen. Pixels are tiny units that may be assigned a given color value. Many thousands or even millions of pixels are piled together to form an image. In essence, it's a digial replica of the pointilistic method of painting. If you press your face to your television or computer monitor you will see tiny green, blue, and red dots that are either made brighter or darker to form an image on the screen. In video games digital pixels are used to form the visual representation of processed data in the CPU.
Polygon - You might remember this term from Geometry Class. To refresh your memory, a polygon is simply a multisided shape. A polygon can have 3 or a million "sides." Modern video games are designed to construct objects and environments out of many of these. The more polygons that are displayed at a single time, the more smoother a shape becomes. Greater numbers of available polygons that are interconnected can condense tightly together to make a 3-D digital image like a sphere, toris, or a person or thing like Sophita from Soul Caliber. Polygons are often texture mapped with either a color or a pattern applied to the face of the polygon. Polygons or groups of polygons can be made emulate lighting physics of the real world, and change color or appearance as the they pass a light source. One of the first console video games to significantly impliment the usage of polygons was "Star Fox" for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Sony Playstation has a capability of displaying 180,000 polygons at the same time. The Nintendo 64 has the capability of displaying 300,000. Most recently released in the United States, The Sega Dreamcast, can utilize around 4,000,000 polygons per second. Developers of new console gaming systems yet to appear in America, like Nintendo Dolphin, Playstation 2, and Microsoft X-Box tout polygon counts in excess of 60,000,000 polygons per second with Microsoft's yet to be seen console system being the claimer of bragging rights at 300,000,000. What does this mean exactly? High Polygon counts mean digital 3-D games that duplicate reality more realistically and grow even closer to the domain of full interactive entertainment motion video.
Power Glove - The Power Glove was a very odd looking glove peripheral that would fit over the gamer's hand and forearm and would allow the ability to manipulate a gaming scenario or environment in an almost virtual reality type fashion. Although the Power Glove was forward thinking and innovative during the mid to late 80's it never caught on. The Power Glove had very few games produced for it and ended up dissappearing soon after it's release. The only game I can think of produced for this thing off hand was Klax.
Power Up - The first usage of this word relates to an actual object or device in the gaming enviornment that alters the strength or ability of a character or object being manipulated by the player. A power up item can increase speed, make the player invisible, add extra energy, make the character bigger, make a car go faster, add extra missles, etc. Ex: "He took all the power-ups and is going on a rampage now!" Power Up is also used by video game players as a verb to denote the act of upgrading his or her character's condition. Ex: "I just powered up my guy with new sword, so now I'll kick your ass!"
Score - A total value of accumulated points obtained by the player during a given time. Achieving a higher or larger score amount was a gameplay element that added degree of challenge and replay value to a specific game. The usage of a scoring system in gaming was very popular during the late 70's and early to mid 80's. It's usage has since waned significantly and very rarely do you see it used. There are a few games produced today that do impliment a scoring system, but overall it's been phased out.
Terabyte - A value of memory storage equal to 1000 gigabytes. Currently home PC's don't support this much memory but may soon approach this level before the end of the decade.
Virtual Reality - a.k.a VR is basically a computer generated environment where a user interacts in what is meant to be a very realistic fashion using most frequently goggles, headphones, and tactile stimulation. Familiar images of VR show users wearing goggles that place 3-D environments over the wearer's eyes. Moving left will make the image move left naturally. VR has always been a fringe hobbist's and research science of gaming and computing that never really caught on with consumers due to high cost and awkwardness of the interface. Nintendo attempted this with an affordable system called "The Virtual Boy" and it failed miserably due to it's poor quality and overall awkwardness. A movie that popularized the notion of VR was "Lawnmower Man" in which VR is used to increase the intelligence of a metally retarded man, however his intelligence becomes so immense that he invisions himself as an omnipotent demigod, merges his consciousness with a digial world and takes over the corporeal one. When computing power becomes far greater than today and such systems are not cumbersome VR may yet catch on.
VMU - (Visual Memory Unit), This is a rather new technology in gaming that uses a grapical user interface to view saved game data. The Sega Dreamcast features VMU's and even allows the VMU to play mini games.
Warp Zone - I do believe that this term originated with the game "Super Mario Bros." but I could be wrong, if I am please let me know. A warp zone allows the player to skip levels to a more difficult or entirely different part of the game. The term "Warping" refers to the ability to accomplish this action. More often than not, warp zones are not easily recognizable and often are difficult to find or require some special trick or action to discover.
Zapper - The name given to the gun frequently packaged with the Nintendo Entertainment System. Like many gunlike peripherals the Zapper had very few games produced solely for it's use and it was never very popular.
