|
| Pages 7 to 9 |
Compared to its German edition, your encyclopedia is missing one small but significant footnote: All cartridge and disk types are pictured in correct ratio, half their real size.
|
| Pages 46 and 47 |
Hailing form Scandinavia, Fredrik Jönsson objected our Germany-centric naming of Commodore's C-64 predecessor: The Commodore VC 20 is known to most people as the VIC-20 or simply the VIC. The name was originally derived from its Video Interface Chip (VIC) which formed the basis for its sound and color capabilities. He is right: The name VC-20 should have been changed to VIC-20 within our encyclopedia's English edition. Sorry, and thanks to Frederik, who goes on: According to Michael Tomczyk, marketing manager of Commodore at the time, it was not easy to find a suitable name for this machine. (...) Eventually the name VIC was chosen (which now stood for Video Interface Computer) and the number 20 was added. 22 was first contemplated because of its 22 columns but 20 sounded "friendlier." Unfortunately, VIC turned out to sound even worse in German than Vixen. In Germany, the VIC-20 would therefore be called VC-20, which could be translated as "Volks-Computer." The computer was known as VIC-20 in all other countries except Japan.
Regarding the term "Volks-Computer", Frederik finally added an info that was new to us at Gameplan: The term "People's Computer," however, was used in Sweden as well.
|
| Page 59 |
The real education of Psion's founders was lost in translation: Although the German version of Game Machines correctly described them as "Physiker", in the North American edition, Dr. David Potter and Dr. Charles Davies turned into `physicians´, not `physicists´. Geoff Wearmouth noticed this mistake and adds: "Doctor" is used for a physician (medical practitioner) but also for a person who has earned the highest academic degree (...) David Potter studied Physics - "the Queen of Sciences" - at Cambridge University and then won a scholarship at Imperial College London. After lecturing in the US he returned to the UK and founded Psion. Dr. Charles Davies had read for his doctorate under Dr. David Potter and was invited to become Psion's first employee.
|
| Page 60 |
Spot the difference: Compared to the same picture in the German version of the encyclopedia (above), the Spectrum +3 picture in Game.Machines seems misprinted (below). As the pictures for both versions of the book were identical, we have no idea how this - let's call it 'alias bug' - slipped in. But we are very sorry.
|
| Page 67 |
Researching the exotic Creativision console, Italian programmer Luca Antignano corrects some statements Gameplan made about the computer variant Laser 2001. You mention (...) Z80 but it uses a Rockwell 6502 at 2MHz, identical to the Creativision CPU. Other Laser computers use a Z80, except the 2001 and the Laser 3000 (an Apple II clone). Also, while cartridges might be compatible, tape software ain't. The Laser 2001 basic is an evolution from the Creativision's. It has a lot of new commands, and others have been removed. The tape management is different ... games on Creativision tape are not compatible with the Laser 2001, or vice versa. Luca believes that the Colocovision adapter, allowing game cartridges to run on the Laser 2001, actually shipped - in Finland, where the micro was marketed by Salora.
|
| Page 69 |
David Fox, one of the original members of Lucasfilm's legendary Games Division, noticed a mistake in our Ballblazer caption, bottom of the page: It was actually David Levine who did [the realtime anti-aliasing] on Ballblazer, as he was Ballblazer’s designer/project leader/programmer. Of course, David is right, and Gameplan mixed it up: The falsely credited Loren Carpenter was the fractal genius behind the realtime landscape of Lucasfilm's second start title, David Fox' Rescue on Fractalus.
|
| Page 97 |
At the end of the last paragraph, we point to 'page 84'. This is wrong. Please see page 144 to read about the 'CD-ROM and multimedia revolution'.
|
| Page 105 |
Regarding Atari ST variants, Chris Steadman spotted a typo: The Atari 520 STE shipped with 512 KB RAM (not 512 MB), of course.
Chris further explained: The total expandable memory depended on the type of motherboard used. Generally the max. upgradable memory for the lower models was 1 MB and the others' max. memory was 4 MB because of the way the operating system handles the memory. ST, STF and STFM had soldered on DRAM, and had to have a SIMM memory bank soldered straight to the motherboard for upgrades. The STE however had a SIMM memory bank already installed, and only had to put in another bank of memory sticks. You could physically upgrade the memory beyond 16 MB but the operating system would literally die on boot. There was a memory system made, later, which upgraded the OS to handle 16 MB, but that was just homebrew, I think.
Chris also mentions two ST models, not described within our Encylopedia, and not very much heard of: They are the 2080ST (2048 KB) and the 4160ST (4096 KB). As far as we know both were announced 1986, and manufactured and distributed in very limited numbers.
|
| Pages 110 and 111 |
Joachim Schwanters misses the two New Art editions of the A500, which were only marketed in Germany at a 10.000 units each. Gameplan didn't forget these case variants, but wanted to keep quiet due to ... erm... aesthetic reasons. One variant was a rather dully painted one with spheres and lines in red and green, the second New Art model had green and orange quadrants, and tiger-skin patterns. The New Art Amigas were 'designed' by German TV-hosts Stefanie Tücking and Viktor Worms, in the late 80s.
|
| Page 131 |
Talking about case variants of popular hardware, we would like to mention the yellow Game Boy Color Pokémon Special Edition, which was released in April 2001 across Europe. It has Pokémon to the left and right of the screen and a logo underneath.
|
| Pages 134 and 135 |
David Fox objected to the missing caption for our FM Towns pixels, pages 134 - 135. While all ordinary fotos and screenshots within the book got a describing caption, we see the close-up-screenhots, we placed above the headline, mainly as design elements and dropped most captions (unintentionally starting a "Name The Game!" quiz for many of our readers). The top pixels show the FM Towns version of Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (see Index, page 223).
|
| Page 137 |
Leonardo Boiko noticed that our caption for the screenshot on the far right is misleading: While the Neo Geo hardware might be 'king' in the area of fighting games, the game shown is not 'King of Fighters', but 1998's Last Blade.
|
| Page 138 |
Joachim Hesse correctly remembered that the biggest size of any King of Fighters cartridges was in fact 716 Mbit for KoF 2003, not the 892 Mbit mentioned in the encyclopedia.
|
| Page 173 |
Insert Credit's Brandon Sheffield notes that professional software development for the Sega Dreamcast still goes on. He is right, as some arcade shooters were converted from Naomi to the home console. Published last year was Triangle's Trizeal, while 2002's spectacular Under Defeat (by G.rev Ltd.) will ship in 2006.
|
| Page 179 |
The final Wonderswan cartridge was entitled Judgement Silversword (not Judgement Silverfish). The title was misprinted in the very last sentence of this chapter, and also within our game index. Sorry.
|
| Page 180 |
Since our book's editorial deadline, the installed base of PlayStation2 hardware rose by another 20 million consoles. Thus, the number of 'Units sold' is 100 million as of November 2005.
|
| Page 182 |
The small and slim PlayStation2 SCPH-7000 was the last hardware included in our encyclopedia. It comes in a black case, just like the original PS2. A few months after our deadline, Sony released a silver variant of the scaled-down hardware in Europe, whereas in Japan, the case variant Ceramic White (SCPH-70000 CW) went on sale.
The Japanese home server PSX underwent some minor revisions: The new models DESR-7700 and -5700 allowed for swapping photo and movie data with the Playstation Portable (PSP), using the MemoryStick.
|
| Page 194 |
Within his Game.Machines review on Insert Credit Brandon Sheffield objects our statement that the Korean handheld GP32 wasn't released in the west. In fact it was, in Spain only, and might still be purchased through Virgin for 110.00 Euro.
|
| Page 195 |
Denis Roters, who works at the mobile end of game tech biz, complained about the low 'Number of games' we counted for the mobile phone/handheld hybrid N-Gage. He might be right: Because Gameplan only counts games that are sold on storage media and in real stores, and not downloadable Java titles, our number of games blurs the real figure. Sorry.
While it's hard to keep apart professionally produced and distributed Java games (which should qualify for our `number of games´) from semi-professional and amateur software, we guess that with the addition of downloadable titles like Gameloft's Rainbow Six Lockdown port or Glu's strategy-epic Ancient Empires II, the number of games for the N-Gage should be 50 + 100. Accounted for are also numerous ports of classics like Colin McRae (published by Digital Bridges), Sensible Soccer (Kuju), Pac-Man,Lemmings or Speedball II.
|
| Page 196 |
The abbrevation DS is mentioned many times in the Nintendo DS chapter, but we forgot to tell you what it means exactly: DS stand for Dual Screen, according to Nintendo.
|
| Page 196 |
While western markets were treated to merely one color variant of the DS, there are four case variants in Japan: Graphite Black and Pure White were released in March, Turquoise Blue and Candy Pink in April. Before July, some 50 different game titles were shipped for the new Nintendo system.
After deadline, worldwide sales of the Nintendo DS hardware reached approximately 13 million units, according to Nintendo, January 2006. While almost three and a half million Nintendo DS have been sold across Europe, during its release year 2005, the DS has sold approximately 4 million units in North America.
|
| Page 204 |
The Vectrex has three channels of PSG sound, not one. This error was spotted by Nils Dittbrenner, who is currently working on his thesis on sound chip music & programming.
Regarding the sound chip of Atari micros and the 5200 console, Nils added: The Pokey Chip was capable of 16-Bit frequency (...) as the 8-Bit registers of two of Pokey's channels could be combined to one 16-Bit register. In this case, Pokey had 2 or 3 (instead of 4) programmable sound channels.
|
| Pages 204 and 205 |
Footnote 11 is correctly used for SNES's 'other media', but it doesn't match the corresponding Nintendo Famicom/NES field. As only the Famicom, not the Western NES, used floppy disks as game media (either via the external disk drive or as special hardware variant like the Sharp Twin Famicom), you may read footnote 9 instead. Please correct this in your personal Game.Machine copy.
|
| Page 206 |
Nils doesn't like the sound entry for the PC (Yamaha Adlib), and states: The technology was called OPL by Yamaha, chips were YM 2413, YM 3526, YM 3812 and YMF 262. Ad Lib Technologies was the first company to manufacture a YM 3812-based PC sound card.
|
| Page 208 |
As the Atari Jaguar has no 'separate audio output´, the last field in its column should read: `no´
|
| Page 209 |
Because there are no sprites implemented in the hardware, the corresponding field for Sony Playstation should read: no
|
| Page 211 |
Oops - there shouldn't be a 'DigitalAV Out' remark in the 'Special AV ports' field for Xbox, but in the Nintendo Gamecube column instead: Only the Nintendo hardware featured a dedicated DigitalAV port for connecting component video and DSub cables. This port supported progressive scan, but was dropped by Nintendo in 2004.
|
| Page 217 |
The release year of the first home computer MITS Altair is mentioned on page 11, but not in our index: Read 1975, instead of 19xx.
|
| Page 224 |
We used Mr. Decuir's development documents as a source, but spelled his first name incorrectly in our 'Documents and supplements' section: The original Atari VCS programmer and engineer’s name is Joe (not John).
|
| Please give feedback or report any error to lit@gameplan-books.com |
| Last update: 17.05.2007 |
Home
Game.Machines
