The American Library Association, realising what some of us have known for years, have decreed that games can be a positive force in the teaching of history, and that the medium should be celebrated with a special day commemorating that.

“We have found that by adding board and video game formats to library collections”, ALA President Dr. Camila Alire told Reuters, “we are providing users with tools to build strong literacy practices while sharpening technical and critical thinking skills”.

Before you scoff, remember: history isn’t always about dates and names. If a game can introduce a player to a period in time, let them see social and political forces at work (or give them an understanding of how those forces affect everyday people), that can be just as important as sticking a historical figure in a game, or having the player recreate an actual event.

Academics hope history in video games spurs interest [Reuters]

More pics from Japanese site Inside-Games in the link below.

【KYOTO Cross Media Experience 2009】京都でNintendoゲームイベント！朝から多くのファンが駆けつける | インサイド [Inside-Games]

Computer Space was developed and published in 1971 by Nutting Associates, not Atari, although programmers Bushnell and Ted Dabney did found Atari later. It’s based on Spacewar!, developed at MIT in 1961, which is itself considered one of the first video games ever.

There’s a green and a yellow version for sale. In addition to its cultural impact, the Computer Space cabinet is itself a funky piece of furniture, and a sure conversation starter for anyone visiting your rec room.

Rare Computer Space Arcade Machines Turn up on eBay [Technabob via Gizmodo]

Explore the history of Skira Island, the fictional setting for Codemasters upcoming Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, coming in October for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Skira Island has long been a place of turmoil. Luckily its real-life inspiration, Kiska Island, which was the scene of much strife during World War II. In 1942 the Japanese captured the island, one of the Rat Islands group of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, owned by the United States. After staging several bombing runs, the Allies brought in a force of 34,426 troops in 1943, only to discover that the Japanese had evacuated the island under cover of fog without the Allies noticing. Despite encountering no human opposition, booby traps and friendly fire caused close to 200 casualties.

Now the site is a US Historic Landmark. Unfortunately, its fictional counterpart hasn’t fared nearly as well.

OK, this very definitely is about a Gamescom announcement, but the choice of historical figures is quite intriguing. Guevara and Robespierre are men of considerable controversy. Lincoln was also controversial for his time (well, it was a civil war), but he is remembered in a much better light than the other two. I mean, the guy’s on money. End of argument.

Honest Abe’s quote is about revolution and reinforces that theme. Any clues on what we’re dealing with other than yet another homepage countdown?

Lionhead Studios [site]

What we’ve got here is a chart by Capcom community blogger Snow, displaying the grand amount of Mega Man games released by Capcom during the last 23 years.

The horizontal lines represent years. The bunched columns represent lines of Mega Man games. The classic Mega Man games are shown in the left column.

Click through for the full-sized chart, but be warned that one of the reasons I didn’t put it in this post (other than because I’m classy) is because it’s enormous.

Complete Mega Man Game History [Capcom-Unity.com]

In 1999, Bungie was probably the best-known studio developing specifically for Macintosh, having delivered titles like Marathon, Myth, and Pathways Into Darkness. At Macworld 1999, Steve Jobs introduced the studio’s next big Mac exclusive: Halo.

Within a year, Bungie would be bought out by Microsoft and Halo would become a launch title that, more than any other game, made the Xbox viable in its infancy. Although Jobs had sworn that Apple had “put an initiative in place to get games back to the Mac,” the new console project and Microsoft’s commitment to it seemed a much more stable environment than remaining the lone standard bearer of gaming on the Mac.

People argue the Halo franchise’s innovation and significance, or lack thereof, all the time. What isn’t disputable is its place in history to these two companies, as the catalyst for the fortunes of one and the persistent listlessness of another, at least in gaming. I often wonder if Macintosh really could have evolved into a serious gaming platform, using OpenGL, with Halo as a leadership title. And I wonder what would have happened with the Xbox – if anything could have matched the impact of Halo on that console, or if Microsoft would have simply developed another multiplayer FPS with which to stake its claim in the market.

Above is Steve Jobs’ keynote introduction of Halo on July 21, 1999 at Macworld Expo in New York. The game had been given a closed-door screening at E3 earlier that year. This is its public debut.

Eventually, Halo would make it to the Mac. In 2003.

Halo … On the Mac? [YouTube]

The Toronto Star waxes nostalgic about moon games in a writeup that spans some of the major games set on the moon, in whole or in part. Naturally, Williams’ Moon Patrol stands as one of the granddaddies; Atari’s Lunar Lander of 1979 – an arcade port of a game common to PCs before then – was something of an oddity, a science-fiction game that was non-violent. Well, unless you crashed your lander, of course.

In addition to those two, Military Madness, Command & Conquer: Yuri’s Revenge, Duke Nukem 3D, the Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and I Wish I Were the Moon are all mentioned for featuring the moon, in whole or in part. I’m certain there are more than just those games. For example, DuckTales’ moon level – cited by many as having the greatest level music of the chiptone era.

So what else did the Star miss in the Moon? Think it over, while you play this lunar lander flash game. Or listen to President Kennedy’s address of Sept. 13, 1963, one of the best in his campaign to make landing on the moon by the end of the 1960s a national priority. Why, indeed, does Rice play Texas? Maybe InsidiousTuna, as the private-school doormat representative from that state, can tell us.

Kotaku AU Note: Visiting the moon in Mass Effect to look up and see, not some generic star or gas giant, but the Earth right there in the sky… that was a special moment.

Glows in Many a Title [The Toronto Star]

The thing is so super-huge you should probably just go directly to it or download it to magnify it for yourself. But it covers all 130 games featuring Mario or any permutation of the Italian pipefitter/construction worker, beginning with Donkey Kong, including Wrecking Crew and Mario Teaches Typing (1 and 2) right on down through Super Mario Galaxy. The groupings seem to be by platform type and/or genre.

Mario Family Line [Limit Break]

“The Underground Railroad was a much more complex issue that it’s been made out. When you push a person to a point where they have nothing to lose, that’s when you create a formidable enemy. Ultimately, human beings are going to be free.”

The story of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad that was responsible for liberating so many slaves during a darker time in our country’s history is often over-simplified, in order to present a more appealing version of the story. Such simplified tales provide both children and adults with a clear hero and a clear goal, making it easier to understand without going into some of the more disturbing details on the length that slaves would go to take back their lives.

As Newby-Alexander puts it, “When you ask people to describe the Underground Railroad, they think of Harriet Tubman on foot, with a gun. Most slaves didn’t escape that way.”

In fact, many slaves never escape at all, losing their lives in the cramped holes of smoked-out ships, or simply captured, punished, and returned to their “owners”. This is the sort of realism that the professor seeks to elicit in her video game. The player will be forced to make decisions – which path to take; who to trust – and not every decision will be the right one. The player, in the role on an escaped slave, can potentially be captured or even killed, but Newby-Alexander assures, “Even wrong choices in the game will lead to learning.” In fact, while the game is aimed at middle and high school students, the plan is to make it challenging enough that success isn’t always a foregone conclusion. “I don’t want to dumb-down the game.” If only more developers felt this way, right?

In order to facilitate the project, the professor was recently awarded a grant of $US100,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create the interactive video game. She will pull on her own knowledge gained through extensive research of the Underground Railroad in the Norfolk, Virginia area in order to help assure the game’s authenticity. She’s working with a local playwright Terrence Afer-Anderson to write the script and develop characters, and next year will work on programming with the aid of various other professors and historians. The plan is to launch the PC game locally by the year 2011.

I’d expect the subject of an Underground Railroad to drum up the usual criticisms and arguments. Video games are not the medium to respectfully depict tragic or profound events. A video game version of the slaves’ struggles to be free would trivialize sad struggles. Still, I believe that if handled with the respect it deserves, the video game could shed new light on the truth behind one of America’s darker eras.

Source: The Virginian-Pilot July 5th 2009 Edition