Playing AND LEarning

Action Script

ActionScript is an object-oriented language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (now owned by Adobe Systems). It is a dialect of ECMAScript (meaning it is a superset of the syntax and semantics of the language more widely known as JavaScript), and is used primarily for the development of websites and software targeting the Adobe Flash Player platform, used on Web pages in the form of embedded SWF files. The language itself is open-source in that its specification is offered free of charge and both an open source compiler (as part of Adobe Flex) and open source virtual machine (Mozilla Tamarin) are available.

Appeared: 1998
Designed by: Gary Grossman
Community: adobe.com

Java

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems (which has since merged into Oracle Corporation) and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems’ Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities than either C or C++. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode (class file) that can run on any Java Virtual Machine (JVM) regardless of computer architecture. Java is a general-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented language that is specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is intended to let application developers “write once, run anywhere” (WORA), meaning that code that runs on one platform does not need to be recompiled to run on another.

Appeared: 1991
Designed by: James Gosling and
Sun Microsystems
Community: oracle.com

Arkanoid

Arkanoid is an arcade game developed by Taito in 1986. It is based upon Atari’s Breakout games of the 1970s. The title refers to a doomed “mothership” from which the Vaus, the player’s ship, escapes.

Reference: wikipedia.org

Tetris

Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. He derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra- (all of the game’s pieces, known as Tetrominoes, contain four segments) and tennis, Pajitnov’s favorite sport.
The Tetris game is a popular use of tetrominoes, the four element special case of polyominoes. Polyominoes have been used in popular puzzles since at least 1907, and the name is given by the mathematician Solomon W. Golomb in 1953. However, even the enumeration of pentominoes is dated to antiquity.

Reference: wikipedia.org

Frogger

Frogger is an arcade game introduced in 1981. It was developed by Konami, and licensed for worldwide distribution by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct frogs to their homes one by one. To do this, each frog must avoid cars while crossing a busy road and navigate a river full of hazards. Skillful players may obtain some bonuses along the way.

Reference: wikipedia.org

Asteroids

Asteroids is a video arcade game released in 1979 by Atari Inc. It was one of the most popular and influential games of the Golden Age of Arcade Games.[citation needed] Asteroids uses a vector display and a two-dimensional view that wraps around in both screen axes (a toroidal topology).

Reference: wikipedia.org

Pacman

The developer of the classic Pacman arcade game is Namco. The designer is Toru Iwatani, and Hideyuki Mokajima San is the programmer. Toshio Kai is responsible for the sound and music. The release dates for the game were 1979, 1980, 1991, 1999, 2005, and again in 2006. It is a maze game for up to two players who take alternating turns. The game was licensed by Midway for distribution in the United states. It was first released in Japan. The game immediately became popular and still is today. The game inspired an animated television serious and a Top 40 Pop song. Pac Man was a good change from the space invaders games that seemed to be about the only choice people had until Pac Man was released.

Reference: 80smusiclyrics.com

Space Invaders

Space Invaders​ is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to defeat waves of aliens with a laser cannon to earn as many points as possible.

Reference: wikipedia.org

Awk

AWK is a data driven programming language designed for processing text-based data, either in files or data streams. It is an example of a programming language that extensively uses the string datatype, associative arrays (that is, arrays indexed by key strings), and regular expressions.

Appeared: 1977
Designed by: Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan
Community: awk.info

Sed

sed (stream editor) is a Unix utility that parses text files and implements a programming language which can apply textual transformations to such files. It reads input files line by line (sequentially), applying the operation which has been specified via the command line (or a sed script), and then outputs the line.

Appeared: 1974
Designed by: Lee E. McMahon
Community: sourceforge.net

Connect4

Connect Four (also known as Four Up, Plot Four, Find Four, Four in a Row, and Four in a Line) is a two-player game in which the players first choose a color and then take turns dropping their colored discs from the top into a seven-column, six-row vertically-suspended grid. The pieces fall straight down, occupying the next available space within the column. The object of the game is to connect four of one’s own discs of the same color next to each other vertically, horizontally, or diagonally before one’s opponent can do so. There are many variations on the board size, the most commonly used being 7×6, followed by 8×7, 9×7, and 10×7.

The game was first sold under the famous Connect Four trademark by Milton Bradley in February 1974.

You’ll find a guide here.

Reference: wikipedia.org

Snake

Snake is a video game first released during the mid 1970s in arcades and has maintained popularity since then, becoming something of a classic. After it became the standard pre-loaded game on Nokia phones in 1998, Snake found a massive audience.

Reference: wikipedia.org

Ping Pong

Pong, while not the first videogame, was the first coin-op arcade game and the first mainstream videogame that was available to almost everyone. The origins of Pong lie with an abstract tennis game created with an old oscilloscope and some vacuum tubes by Willy Higinbotham way back in 1958. What eventually became “Pong” was a pretty simple game with simple rules – hit the ball across the playing field and try your best to hit it past your opponents paddle on the other side.

Reference: 80smusiclyrics.com

Tic tac toe

Tic-tac-toe, also spelled tick tack toe, or noughts and crosses as it is known in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, O and X, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid, usually X going first. The player who succeeds in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row wins the game.

The first known video game, OXO (or Noughts and Crosses, 1947) for the EDSAC computer played perfect games of tic-tac-toe against a human opponent.

Reference: wikipedia.org