A better understanding of the arcade and flash games

A short overview of the history of arcade games and flash games will show that there is a huge connection between these two types of games. Arcade games have a long history and, even though the arcade games were not in the past what we know them to be today, the same concept is the main ingredient for the new ones as well. The arcade games are usually simple, have iconic characters, a certain number of levels with increasing difficulty and they do not require high skills or much learning time. In addition, they do not have deep storylines as most console games have in our days. Today’s PC or console games with the same qualities can be considered arcade games.

Starting from the early 1920′s with the use of old ‘arcade games’ in the amusement parks (such as ball toss games, coin-operated machines or pinball) this whole ‘industry’ has evolved immensely. This passion for arcade games motivated their producers to always search for something better and more entertaining. They have outdone themselves every time something new appeared on the market. From wood made machines and mechanical or electronic scoring readouts to the playing of games online, all games have conquered the hearts of the ageless children. Because people enjoy these arcade games so much they want to play them all the time. This is why they have not even completely left aside the coin-operated arcade games. They resort to them in restaurants, shopping malls, bars or pubs. However, they are only a substitute to the computer versions because playing games online is much better.

When speaking of flash games, we must take into consideration the fact that they are a more complex, more modern, even if their ancestors are definitely arcade games. Flash games take their name from the platform used for their building – ‘Flash’, a program made by Macromedia. This modern interactive platform named ‘Flash’ has three major components: the player, the file format and the authoring tool. The main advantage of this program is that of being very easy to use. Because of this fact, the games built with the help of the platform have more options than others do. For example, a house the player destroys will burn down with different effects. In order to be more convinced of the high importance that this platform has for us when playing a flash game we should know that it is usually necessary to download a free version of Macromedia Flash Player each time one feels like playing free games online. Generally, you can download the latest version of ‘Flash’ from Macromedia. That is if your browser gets errors relating to Flash.

]]>

If you simply like to play good games online without knowing the whole technique that stands behind graphics, too many details about the designing of flash games are unnecessary. Flash games are all the games you play at home on your computer and have the ending ‘.exe’ (meaning ‘executable’). As long as they make you enjoy the spare time spent at home, the flash games will be your best friend. A favorite application can turn into a real sport because playing flash games stimulates competition and trains reflexes. Web sites that host these kinds of activities and offer you free games give you the opportunity of joining teams of players and of participating to mass championships online.

Today, flash games have come to incorporate the qualities of arcade games. Flash games have levels, characters and certain plots, just as the old games did, only they are more advanced. Built on the same basic concept that stands behind the old arcade games, flash games now present a bigger potential.  Therefore, a wider public uses them. At least one can be found in any home and on any computer. They are short, usually easy to play and they have evolved the same way as arcade games – from shorter to longer, from simple plots to more complex and contemporary ones. When playing flash games you will have to accomplish a certain task. For arcade games, the idea is pretty much the same, meaning that you will have to solve a certain problem.

Many of today’s Internet web sites offer a large amount of games, which are very popular thanks to their interesting and exciting plots, but also because of the fact that they are free games. Playing games online offers the player the chance to meet and confront new people or people they already know. Several surveys have shown that people enjoy sites that have a large offer of free games and that they would rather play flash games than do other things, considered more attractive in general. Another conclusion was that adults are more likely to play flash games than teenagers are. This goes to show that playing has no age and as long as the activity relaxes and makes people have fun it will always create an addiction. There is a child in everyone expecting to have his share of free games online.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Plot

Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) travel with three friends to a cemetery holding the grave of Hardestys’ grandfather. They aim to investigate reports of vandalism and of corpse-defilement. Afterward, they decide to visit an old Hardesty family homestead, and on the way, the group picks up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal). The man speaks and acts bizarrely, and then slashes himself and Franklin with a straight razor before being forced from the group’s van. The group stops at a gas station to fuel their vehicle, but when they find out from the proprietor (Jim Siedow) that the pumps are empty, the group continues to the homestead, intending to return to the gas station later after a fuel truck makes its delivery. Franklin tells Kirk (William Vail) and Pam (Teri McMinn) about a local swimming hole, and the couple heads off to find it. Instead, they stumble upon a nearby house. Kirk decides to ask the residents for some gas, while Pam waits on the front steps.

Receiving no answer but finding the door unlocked, Kirk enters the house; Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) suddenly appears and kills him. Pam enters soon after to find the house filled with furniture made from human bones. She attempts to flee but Leatherface catches her and impales her on a meathook. At sunset, Sally’s boyfriend Jerry (Allen Danziger) heads out to look for the others. Finding the couple’s blanket outside the house, he investigates and finds Pam still alive inside a freezer. Before he can react, Leatherface appears and murders him, stuffing Pam back inside the freezer afterward.

With darkness falling, Sally and Franklin set out to find their friends. As they near the killer’s house, calling for the others, Leatherface lunges out of the darkness and murders Franklin with a chainsaw. Sally escapes to the house only to find the desiccated remains of an elderly couple in an upstairs room. With Leatherface still pursuing her, she jumps through a second floor window and continues to flee, eventually arriving at the gas station. As she reaches it, Leatherface disappears into the night. The proprietor at first calms her with offers of help, then binds her with rope and forces her into his truck. He drives to the house, arriving at the same time as the hitchhiker, who turns out to be Leatherface’s younger brother. The pair bring Sally inside, with the hitchhiker taunting her when he realizes who she is.

The men torment the bound and gagged Sally while Leatherface, now dressed as a woman, serves dinner. The old man from upstairs is still alive, and brought to the table to join the meal. During the night, they decide Sally should be killed by “Grandpa” (John Dugan) out of respect for his work at the slaughter house when he was younger. “Grandpa” is too weak to hit Sally with a hammer, repeatedly dropping it. In the confusion, Sally breaks free, leaps through a window and escapes from the house, running out into the road. Leatherface and the hitchhiker give chase, but the hitchhiker is run down and killed by a passing semi-trailer truck. Armed with his chainsaw, Leatherface attacks the truck when the driver stops to help, and is hit in the face with a large wrench wielded by the driver. Sally escapes in the bed of a passing pickup truck as Leatherface waves the chainsaw above his head in frustration.

Production

Development

“I definitely studied Gein,…. but I also noticed a murder case in Houston at the time, a serial murderer you probably remember named Elmer Wayne Henley. He was a young man who recruited victims for an older homosexual man. I saw some news report where Elmer Wayne… said, ‘I did these crimes, and I’m gonna stand up and take it like a man” Well, that struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters.”

  Kim Henkel

The concept for the film arose in the early 1970s while Hooper worked as a college professor at the University of Texas at Austin and as a documentary cameraman. He had previously developed the idea of a film centering on isolation, the woods, and darkness, and continued to explore these ideas as he thought up the concept of the film. He also credited the local San Antonio news as part of the inspiration for the film, due to the graphic nature of the story being featured. Development took place using the working titles of Headcheese and Leatherface. Hooper based the plot loosely on the murders committed by 1950s Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein, who served as the inspiration for a number of other horror films.

In discussing influences on the film, Hooper cites the impact of changes in the cultural and political landscape. He directly correlates the intentional misinformation that the “film you are about to see is true” as a response to being “lied to by the government about things that were going on all over the world,” including Watergate, the gasoline crisis, and “the massacres and atrocities in the Vietnam War.” The additional “lack of sentimentality and the brutality of things” that Hooper noticed in watching the local news whose coverage was graphic, “showing brains spilled all over the road” led to his belief “that man was the real monster here, just wearing a different face, so I put a literal mask on the monster in my film.” The idea for featuring a chainsaw came to Hooper while in the hardware section of a crowded store as he contemplated a way to get out quickly through the crowd.

Hooper and Kim Henkelhe original writers of the screenplayormed a corporation named Vortex, Inc., with Henkel as president and Hooper as vice president. They asked Bill Parsley, a friend of Hooper’s, to provide funding for the film. Parsley then formed a company named MAB, Inc. and invested ,000 towards making the film. In return, MAB owned fifty percent of the film and its profits. Production manager Ron Bozman told most of the cast and crew to defer parts of their salaries until after the movie was sold. Vortex made the idea more attractive by awarding nearly everyone with a share of Vortex’s potential profits, ranging from .25 to six percent (similar to mortgage points). Due to a miscommunication among Vortex and the others, the cast and crew were not informed that Vortex owned only fifty percent of the film, thereby making their points worth half of the assumed value.

The crew had exceeded the original ,000 budget for the film during the editing process, which, by that time, had amounted to a total of 0,000. Pie in the Sky (P.I.T.S.) donated ,532 in exchange for 19 percent of Vortex’s 50 percent share of the profits. That left Henkel and Hooper with 45 percent of Vortex between them, and the remaining 36 percent divided among 20 cast and crew members. Warren Skaaren made a deal as an equal partner with Hooper and Henkel, along with a 15 percent share of Vortex. Skaaren received a deferred salary of ,000 and three percent of the gross profits (MAB and Vortex combined). David Foster, producer of the 1982 horror film The Thing had arranged for a private screening for some of Bryanston Distributing Company’s West Coast executives, and received 1.5 percent of Vortex’s profits and a deferred fee of 0.

On August 28, 1974, Louis (Butchi) Periano of Bryanston Distribution Company offered Bozman and Skaaren a contract of 5,000 and 35 percent of the profits from the worldwide distribution of the film. Years later, Bozman stated, “We made a deal with the devil, [sigh], and I guess that, in a way, we got what we deserved.” They signed the contract with Bryanston. After the investors recouped their money (including interest), Skaaren’s salary and monitoring fee were paid, and the lawyers and accountants were paid, leaving only ,100 to be divided among the 20 members of the cast and crew. Eventually the producers sued Bryanston for failing to pay them their full percentage of the box office profits. A court judgement fined Bryanston the sum of 0,000 to be paid to the filmmakers, and by then the company had declared bankruptcy. Bryanston Pictures folded in 1976, when Louis Peraino was convicted on obscenity charges for his role during the production of the film Deep Throat (1972). New Line Cinema took over from Bryanston and gave the producers a bigger percentage of the gross profits than Bryanston initially had paid them.

Casting

Many of the cast members had few or no previous acting credits. The cast consisted of actors around Texas who had previous roles in commercials or television and stage shows, as well as actors who were acquaintances of Hooper. Involvement in the film propelled many cast members into the motion-picture industry. The lead role of Sally went to the then-unknown Marilyn Burns. Burns had appeared previously on stage, and while attending the University of Texas at Austin, she joined its film commission board. Teri McMinn was a student and worked with various local theater companies, including the Dallas Theater Center. Henkel spotted her picture in the Austin American-Statesman, and called McMinn to come in for a reading. On her last call-back, he requested that she wear short shorts. Her costume proved to be the most comfortable of all the cast members’ costumes, taking into consideration the Texas heat that was to last throughout the entire shoot. Icelandic-American actor Gunnar Hansen gained the role of Leatherface. In preparing for his role, Hansen came to envisage Leatherface as mentally retarded and as never having learned to speak properly. Hansen visited a school for the mentally challenged and watched how the students moved and spoke to get a feel for his character. Hansen recalled, “It was 95, 100 degrees every day during filming. They wouldn’t wash my

Game Reviews: Fallout 3 For Xbox 360

Fallout is considered as one of the best game series today. Fallout 3 is the third installment of this game and is set in Washington DC after an apocalypse. The story revolves around the Fallout Shelter and Vault 101, which serves as the residence of the survivors of the apocalypse. Following the series where the Cold Nuclear Propaganda was launched, you need to fight against mutated insects, humans, raiders, and slavers.

One of the best things that this game can offer is the action-packed scenes, and the fast-paced game that will keep you glued to your seat. Your main goal for this game is to find your missing father and uncover the truth about his disappearance.

You need to be very careful with every step, because everything you do will have a great effect in the outcome of the game. The skills of the character depend on how you act on the game. You will be getting a set of skills that will help you improve your fighting skills, and will let you finish the game easily, depending on the actions that you take.

This is one of the reasons why game reviewers said that you can play this game forever. With these differences in every action you take, you will end up with different skills every time you play the game. This will allow you to try all the skills and abilities available in the game.

The HD graphics and audio of this game is simply amazing. I would personally give this game, 4.5 stars out of 5. Fallout 3 is definitely a game that will keep you busy for months, and will keep you glued to your seat and controller.  So, if you are a hardcore gamer, and is looking for a game that will entertain you this holiday season, I would personally recommend this game.

Find More Game Reviews Articles