Game Makers
Encyclopedia
Game Makers is a TV show
on G4
. The original series followed the process of game development, as a company attempts to finish a big new game in time for shipment. The "original" Game Makers did not air often, and when it did it was referred to as a "G4 Special Presentation" rather than a separate entity. The original Game Makers was cancelled and taken off air in early 2006. After the revamp of Icons
in June 2006, the classic game based episodes of Icons began to air under the name Game Makers. The original series no longer airs, but a few re-runs aired in May 2006. Game Makers (episodes of the original Game Makers and original Icons) last aired December 1, 2006, on G4. Considering one new episode of the show on Madden 07 (essentially an original Game Makers episode) was aired in November. G4 reran Game Makers in December 2007 on Wednesdays, despite its air in the early mornings.
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
on G4
G4 (TV channel)
G4, also known as G4 TV, is an American cable- and satellite-television channel originally geared primarily toward young adult viewers, originally based on the world of video games...
. The original series followed the process of game development, as a company attempts to finish a big new game in time for shipment. The "original" Game Makers did not air often, and when it did it was referred to as a "G4 Special Presentation" rather than a separate entity. The original Game Makers was cancelled and taken off air in early 2006. After the revamp of Icons
Icons (TV series)
Icons was a documentary TV show on G4 that originally focused on significant people, companies, products, history, and milestones in world of video games. It was relaunched in 2006 and focused entirely on pop culture. It was cancelled soon afterwards....
in June 2006, the classic game based episodes of Icons began to air under the name Game Makers. The original series no longer airs, but a few re-runs aired in May 2006. Game Makers (episodes of the original Game Makers and original Icons) last aired December 1, 2006, on G4. Considering one new episode of the show on Madden 07 (essentially an original Game Makers episode) was aired in November. G4 reran Game Makers in December 2007 on Wednesdays, despite its air in the early mornings.
Season one
| # | Title | Production Code | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Oddworld" | 101 | Oddworld Inhabitants Oddworld Inhabitants Oddworld Inhabitants Inc. is an American video game developer founded in 1994 by special-effects and computer-animation veterans Sherry McKenna and Lorne Lanning. The company is primarily known for the Oddworld Quintology, a series of award-winning video games about the fictional planet of Oddworld... |
| 2 | "Nolan Bushnell" | 102 | Nolan Bushnell Nolan Bushnell Nolan K. Bushnell is an American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain... |
| 3 | "Pac-Man" | 103 | Pac-Man Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games,... |
| 4 | "Lara Croft" | 104 | Lara Croft Lara Croft Lara Croft is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Square Enix video game series Tomb Raider. She is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, and athletic British archaeologist-adventurer who ventures into ancient, hazardous tombs and ruins around the world... |
| 5 | "Activision" | 105 | Activision Activision Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles... |
| 6 | "Miyamoto" | 106 | Shigeru Miyamoto Shigeru Miyamoto is a Japanese video game designer and producer. Miyamoto was born and raised in Kyoto Prefecture; the natural surroundings of Kyoto inspired much of Miyamoto's later work.... |
| 7 | "EverQuest" | 107 | EverQuest EverQuest EverQuest, often shortened to EQ, is a 3D fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game that was released on the 16th of March, 1999. The original design is credited to Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost... |
| 8 | "Bioware" | 108 | BioWare BioWare BioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts... |
| 9 | "Will Wright" | 109 | Will Wright |
| 10 | "Women in Gaming" | 110 | women video game company CEOs Girl gamer A girl gamer is a female who regularly engages in the playing of video games, role-playing games, or other games... |
| 11 | "Insomniac Games" | 111 | Insomniac Games Insomniac Games Insomniac Games, Inc. is an American video game developer headquartered in Burbank, California. Founded in 1994, Insomniac has released titles for the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. It created Disruptor, the first three Spyro the Dragon games, and the Ratchet &... |
| 12 | "Sid Meier" | 112 | Sid Meier Sid Meier Sidney K. "Sid" Meier is a Canadian programmer and designer of several popular computer strategy games, most notably Civilization. He has won accolades for his contributions to the computer games industry... |
| 13 | "Scary Games" | 113 | Horror games |
| 14 | "Richard Garriott" | 114 | Richard Garriott Richard Garriott Richard Allen Garriott is a British-American video game developer and entrepreneur.He is also known as his alter egos Lord British in Ultima and General British in Tabula Rasa... |
| 15 | "Bruce Shelley" | 115 | Bruce Shelley Bruce Shelley Bruce Campbell Shelley is a computer game designer who helped design Sid Meier's Civilization and Railroad Tycoon with MicroProse and the 1997 hit real-time strategy game Age of Empires with Ensemble Studios. He is currently working with Zynga, best known for Farmville, and had helped develop... |
| 16 | "John Madden NFL Football" | 116 | Madden NFL Madden NFL Madden NFL is an American football video game series developed by Electronic Arts Tiburon for EA Sports. The game series is named after Pro Football Hall of Famer John Madden, a well-known former Super Bowl-winning coach of the Oakland Raiders and color commentator... |
| 17 | "Splinter Cell" | 117 | Stealth games |
| 18 | "Lord of the Rings" | 118 | The Lord of the Rings The Lord of the Rings The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in... (Vivendi Universal) |
Season two
| # | Title | Production Code | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Atari" | 201 | Atari Atari Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in... |
| 2 | "Game Music" | 202 | video game musicians |
| 3 | "Unreal" | 203 | Unreal Unreal Unreal is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive in May 1998... |
| 4 | "Yu Suzuki" | 204 | Yu Suzuki Yu Suzuki is a Japanese game designer and producer who has spent his entire career with Sega Enterprises. Often referred to as Sega's answer to Shigeru Miyamoto, he has been responsible for the creation of many of Sega's most important arcade games such as Hang-On, Out Run, After Burner II, Virtua Fighter,... |
| 5 | "Intellivision" | 205 | Intellivision Intellivision The Intellivision is a video game console released by Mattel in 1979. Development of the console began in 1978, less than a year after the introduction of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. The word intellivision is a portmanteau of "intelligent television"... |
| 6 | "The Legend of Zelda" | 206 | The Legend of Zelda series The Legend of Zelda series , occasionally called Legend of Zelda or simply Zelda, is a high fantasy action-adventure video game series created by Japanese game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. It is developed and published by Nintendo, with some portable installments outsourced to Flagship/Capcom, Vanpool, and... |
| 7 | "Xbox" | 207 | Xbox Xbox The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console... |
| 8 | "Arcade" | 208 | Video arcade Video arcade An amusement arcade or video arcade is a venue where people play arcade games such as video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers , or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables... s |
| 9 | "The History of E3" | 209 | History of E3 History of E3 The history of the E3 began with its creation in 1995 and has continued through the latest expo in 2011 The conference was known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo from 1995 to 2006. In 2007 and 2008, the conference was known as the E3 Media and Business Summit... |
| 10 | "LucasArts" | 210 | LucasArts LucasArts LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s... |
| 11 | "Red Storm" | 211 | Red Storm Entertainment Red Storm Entertainment Ubisoft Red Storm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ubisoft Entertainment, specializing in video games and related merchandise, mainly based on the works of the writer Tom Clancy. The company develops and markets their own CD/DVD-ROM games... |
| 12 | "Warren Spector" | 212 | Warren Spector Warren Spector Warren Spector is a role-playing game designer and a video game designer. He is known for having worked to merge elements of role-playing games and first-person shooters. He currently resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, fantasy writer Caroline L. Spector... |
| 13 | "PC Gaming" | 213 | Personal computer gaming Personal computer game A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine... |
| 14 | "The Crash" | 214 | Video game crash of 1983 Video game crash of 1983 The North American video game crash was a serious event that brought an abrupt end to what is considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. Beginning in 1983, the crash almost destroyed the then-fledgling industry and led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing... |
| 15 | "Games in the Military" | 215 | Military simulation Military simulation Military simulations, also known informally as war games, are simulations in which theories of warfare can be tested and refined without the need for actual hostilities. Many professional contemporary analysts object to the term wargames as this is generally taken to be referring to the civilian... |
| 16 | "Naughty Dog" | 216 | Naughty Dog Naughty Dog Naughty Dog, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Santa Monica, California. Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1986 as an independent developer, the studio was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001... |
| 17 | "Mario" | 217 | Mario Mario is a fictional character in his video game series, created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as Nintendo's mascot and the main protagonist of the series, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation... |
| 18 | "218" | 218 | Onimusha Halloween Halloween Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day... '03 |
| 19 | "Mega Man" | 219 | The Mega Man series Mega Man (series) Mega Man is a video game franchise from Capcom, starring the eponymous character Mega Man, or one of his many counterparts. The series is well-known and comprises well over fifty releases, easily making it Capcom's most prolific franchise. As of December 31, 2010, the series has sold approximately... |
| 20 | "Yuji Naka" | 220 | Yuji Naka Yuji Naka , is a video game designer and programmer, best known as the former head of Sonic Team, a group of Sega programmers/designers, where he was the lead programmer of the original Sonic the Hedgehog.... |
| 21 | "Final Fantasy" | 221 | Final Fantasy Final Fantasy is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and is developed and owned by Square Enix . The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science-fantasy role-playing video games , but includes motion pictures, anime, printed media, and other merchandise... |
| 22 | "Dungeons and Dragons" | 222 | Dungeons & Dragons Dungeons & Dragons Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997... |
| 23 | - | - | Castlevania Castlevania Castlevania, known as in Japan, is a video game series created and developed by Konami. The series debuted in Japan on September 26, 1986, with the release of for the Family Computer Disk System , followed by an alternate version for the MSX 2 platform on October 30... |
Season three
| # | Title | Production Code | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Music Games" | 301 | Music games Music video game A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs... |
| 2 | "Dreamcast" | 302 | Dreamcast |
| 3 | "ESRB" | 303 | ESRB Entertainment Software Rating Board The Entertainment Software Rating Board is a self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings, enforces industry-adopted advertising guidelines, and ensures responsible online privacy principles for computer and video games as well as entertainment software in Canada, Mexico and... |
| 4 | "Peter Molyneux" | 304 | Peter Molyneux Peter Molyneux Peter Douglas Molyneux OBE is an English computer game designer and game programmer. He created the God games Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and Black & White, among others, as well as business simulation games such as Theme Park and more recently, the RPG series Fable.Despite the success of his games,... |
| 5 | "Tetris" | 305 | Tetris 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, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic... |
| 6 | "Electronic Arts" | 306 | Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers... |
| 7 | "Game Boy" | 307 | Game Boy Game Boy The , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on... |
| 8 | "Donkey Kong" | 308 | Donkey Kong Donkey Kong (video game) is an arcade game released by Nintendo in 1981. It is an early example of the platform game genre, as the gameplay focuses on maneuvering the main character across a series of platforms while dodging and jumping over obstacles. In the game, Jumpman must rescue a damsel in distress, Lady, from a... |
| 9 | "Nobuo Uematsu" | 309 | Nobuo Uematsu Nobuo Uematsu is a Japanese video game composer, best known for scoring the majority of titles in the Final Fantasy series. He is considered as one of the most famous and respected composers in the video game community... |
| 10 | "The DOOM Franchise" | 310 | Doom |
| 11 | "Dead or Alive" | 311 | Dead or Alive Dead or Alive (video game series) is a video game series that is primarily composed of fast-paced 3D fighting games for arcades and home systems. The series is produced by Tecmo and developed by Team Ninja. Its story and characters are the creation of Tomonobu Itagaki, who has since left the company and is no longer working on the... |
| 12 | "SNK" | 312 | SNK Playmore SNK Playmore SNK Playmore Corporation is a Japanese video game hardware and software company. SNK is an acronym of , which was SNK's original name. The company's legal and trading name became SNK in 1986.... |
| 13 | "Mortal Kombat" | 313 | Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat (series) Mortal Kombat, commonly abbreviated MK, is a science fantasy series of fighting games created by Ed Boon and John Tobias. The first four renditions and their updates were developed by Midway Games and initially released on arcade machines. The arcade titles were later picked up by Acclaim... |
| 14 | "Prince of Persia" | 314 | Prince of Persia Prince of Persia Prince of Persia is a platform game, originally developed by Jordan Mechner and released in 1989 for the Apple II, that represented a great leap forward in the quality of animation seen in video games.... |
| 15 | "Mark Cuban" | 315 | Mark Cuban Mark Cuban Mark Cuban is an American business magnate and investor. He is the owner of the National Basketball Association's Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres, and Magnolia Pictures, and the chairman of the HDTV cable network HDNet.... |
| 16 | "Metal Gear Solid" | 316 | The Metal Gear series Metal Gear (series) is a series of stealth video games created by Hideo Kojima and developed and published by Konami. The first game, Metal Gear, was released in 1987 for the MSX2. The player takes control of a special forces operative Solid Snake who is assigned to find the eponymous superweapon "Metal Gear", a... |
| 17 | "Half-Life" | 317 | Half-Life |
| 18 | "Bungie" | 318 | Bungie Bungie Bungie, Inc is an American video game developer currently located in Bellevue, Washington, USA. The company was established in May 1991 by University of Chicago undergraduate student Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones after publishing Jones' game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of... |
| 19 | "Apple II" | 319 | Apple II Apple II The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977... |
| 20 | "Fighting Games" | 320 | fighting game Fighting game Fighting game is a video game genre where the player controls an on-screen character and engages in close combat with an opponent. These characters tend to be of equal power and fight matches consisting of several rounds, which take place in an arena. Players must master techniques such as... s |
| 21 | - | - | Yuji Ctala |
Season four
| # | Title | Production Code | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Gran Turismo" | 5001 | Gran Turismo |
| 2 | "Splinter Cell" | 5002 | Splinter Cell Splinter Cell Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is a series of stealth video games, the first of which was released in 2002, and their tie-in novels. The protagonist, Sam Fisher, is presented as a highly-trained agent of a fictional black-ops sub-division within the NSA, dubbed "Third Echelon"... |
| 3 | "Frank Miller" | 5003 | Frank Miller Frank Miller (comics) Frank Miller is an American comic book artist, writer and film director best known for his dark, film noir-style comic book stories and graphic novels Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City and 300... |
| 4 | "5004" | 5004 | Tim Schafer Tim Schafer Timothy Schafer is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in January 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts... |
| 5 | "Star Wars Games" | 5005 | Star Wars video games |
| 6 | "Ralph Baer" | 5006 | Ralph Baer |
| 7 | "PlayStation" | 5007 | PlayStation PlayStation The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000... |
| 8 | "George A. Romero" | 5008 | George A. Romero George A. Romero George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:... |
| 9 | "Xbox 360" | 5009 | Xbox 360 Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles... |
| 10 | "NES" | 5010 | Nintendo Entertainment System Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987... |
| 11 | "King Kong" | 5011 | King Kong King Kong King Kong is a fictional character, a giant movie monster resembling a gorilla, that has appeared in several movies since 1933. These include the groundbreaking 1933 movie, the film remakes of 1976 and 2005, as well as various sequels of the first two films... |
Trivia
At least seven of these episodes were put onto versions of the games they were about.- Episode 219, "Mega Man," was featured on the Nintendo GameCube and Xbox versions of Mega Man Anniversary CollectionMega Man Anniversary CollectionMega Man Anniversary Collection a compilation of video games developed by Atomic Planet Entertainment and published by Capcom. It was released exclusively in North America on June 23, 2004 for the Nintendo GameCube and Sony PlayStation 2 and on March 15, 2005 for the Microsoft Xbox...
(Though some of the content featured in the original episode that was unrelated to Mega Man or Capcom was removed). - Episode 116, "John Madden NFL Football," was featured as part of the Madden 2005: Collector's Edition for PlayStation 2.
- Episode 310, "The DOOM Franchise," was featured on the Doom 3Doom 3Doom 3 is a science fiction horror video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. An example of the first-person shooter genre, Doom 3 was first released for Microsoft Windows on August 3, 2004. The game was later adapted for Linux, as well as being ported by Aspyr Media for Mac...
Collectors Edition for Xbox. - Episode 117, "Splinter Cell," was featured on the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory collectors disc for the PlayStation 2.
- Episode 112, "Sid Meier,"was put in the game of the year edition of Civilization IVCivilization IVSid Meier's Civilization IV is a turn-based strategy, 4X computer game released in 2005 and developed by lead designer Soren Johnson under the direction of Sid Meier and Meier's studio Firaxis Games. It is the fourth installment of the Civilization series...
. - Episode 223, "Castlevania," was featured in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness for PS2 and Xbox.
- Episode 314, "Prince of Persia," was featured as an unlockable video on "Prince of Persia: Warrior WithinPrince of Persia: Warrior WithinPrince of Persia: Warrior Within is a video game and sequel to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Warrior Within was developed and published by Ubisoft, and released on December 2, 2004 for the Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Microsoft Windows. It picks up where The Sands of Time left off,...
".
External links
- Official Gamemakers page at G4TV.com
- Official Icons page at G4TV.com