Accademic writing essay:
Comparing works from different media that were both made in the same year as a critical writing assignement.
There's was a year while on the cinema you could find a lot of films about space missions, asteroids, wars and catastrophes. A year where the topic of the war became preponderant in the news.
A year where space and science had a lot of influence. In that year two pieces of history for the nerd-world were born.
1998. A year you must to knows about.
In that year Microsoft release the
second graphic-based operating system of the Windows' saga ; “Win
98” MS-Dos based introduce a big jump in quality for the computer
system, it "..was the first operating system to use the Windows Driver Model (WDM)" (Wikipedia, 2014) , now for
every nerd-passionate, knows as the funniest Win32, wich every one of
us as had some problem with in our young-experimental phase. The
networking enhancements to the protocol TCP/IP and the IP forwarding
has layered the foundation for LAN-Based game
playing to explode.
All this introduction (and marketing for Mister Gates) just to give you a flashback of the situation that there was at the time when one of the biggest video game in the world was released.
The most famous Blizzard's creature. The game changed forever the idea of “professional game”, "..a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment and released for Microsoft Windows on March 31, 1998" (Wikipedia, 2014): Starcraft.
All this introduction (and marketing for Mister Gates) just to give you a flashback of the situation that there was at the time when one of the biggest video game in the world was released.
The most famous Blizzard's creature. The game changed forever the idea of “professional game”, "..a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment and released for Microsoft Windows on March 31, 1998" (Wikipedia, 2014): Starcraft.
The first chapter of this epic and big
saga started exactly in the 1998, after 3 years of developing and a
lot of stop-and-go on the production time line.
Starcraft was
released at the end of the March and became immediately a success. As the Blizzard's website says "The year of its release, more than 1.5 million copies of StarCraft were sold around the world, making it the bestselling PC game of 1998. To date, it has sold more than 9.5 million copies worldwide. A considerable number of those copies have been sold in South Korea, where the game continues to enjoy unprecedented levels of popularity." (Web.archive.org, 2014). And it still the most popular online game
in the world.
Starcraft was
released at the end of the March and became immediately a success. As the Blizzard's website says "The year of its release, more than 1.5 million copies of StarCraft were sold around the world, making it the bestselling PC game of 1998. To date, it has sold more than 9.5 million copies worldwide. A considerable number of those copies have been sold in South Korea, where the game continues to enjoy unprecedented levels of popularity." (Web.archive.org, 2014). And it still the most popular online game
in the world.
Starcraft, in few years, became a new
standard for the strategic games.
In the same year a new must-have-for-nerds creature came to light. The american writer, artist, film director and nerd hero Frank Miller published a new comic. After Daredevil, The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City, the comic book “300” was born.
Frank Miller had a passion about the Thermopylae, he put link at it in almost every his works. The comic “300” was just the perfect sequel. "300 was initially published as a monthly five-issue comic book limited series by Dark Horse Comics, the first issue published in May 1998. The issues were titled Honor, Duty, Glory, Combat and Victory" (Wikipedia, 2014). It won three Eisner Awards in 1999: "Best Limited Series", "Best Writer/Artist" for Frank Miller and "Best Colorist" for Lynn Varley.
This
two mile stones in the nerd-power galaxy have a lot in common. Both stories talk about peoples fighting for their land and survival against
other peoples (human or not) who are very different.
In “Starcraft” the Human race fights against the high-tech alien race Protoss, and both fight against the mutated alien race Zerg. Everyone fights each other to defend their planets and avoid the extinction of their own race.
In “300” the Spartans fight against the Persians to defend their land and their families.
In both cases, the number of deaths is uncountable.
Both stories talk about honor and respect for fighters, who have the courage of putting the honor of their people before their lives. Tassadar, the Protoss' hero, sacrifices himself to fight the Zerg threat which his taking over his home planet. In the same way, the Spartans sacrifice themselves when the Persian start to invade Greece.
Both are military-based stories, with an high level of strategy and war knowledge involved. Both are very male-oriented, but surprisingly, the number of women who appreciated them was very high.
The geeks were influenced considerably in these years. Especially in 1998 when there were five massacres, three war began, human disasters, natural disasters a nuclear crisis. All of these events cannot just pass by without leaving any sign.
It was also a spectacular year for astronomy with many discoveries, with probes launched towards the Moon and Mars, galaxies discovery. (Wikipedia, 2014)
If I needed to put a mark in the history of comics and video games, I would absolutely put it in 1998.
Post scriptum: I found all of this thanks to Google, founded on 4th of September 1998, anyway.
In “Starcraft” the Human race fights against the high-tech alien race Protoss, and both fight against the mutated alien race Zerg. Everyone fights each other to defend their planets and avoid the extinction of their own race.
In “300” the Spartans fight against the Persians to defend their land and their families.
In both cases, the number of deaths is uncountable.
Both stories talk about honor and respect for fighters, who have the courage of putting the honor of their people before their lives. Tassadar, the Protoss' hero, sacrifices himself to fight the Zerg threat which his taking over his home planet. In the same way, the Spartans sacrifice themselves when the Persian start to invade Greece.
Both are military-based stories, with an high level of strategy and war knowledge involved. Both are very male-oriented, but surprisingly, the number of women who appreciated them was very high.
The geeks were influenced considerably in these years. Especially in 1998 when there were five massacres, three war began, human disasters, natural disasters a nuclear crisis. All of these events cannot just pass by without leaving any sign.
It was also a spectacular year for astronomy with many discoveries, with probes launched towards the Moon and Mars, galaxies discovery. (Wikipedia, 2014)
If I needed to put a mark in the history of comics and video games, I would absolutely put it in 1998.
Post scriptum: I found all of this thanks to Google, founded on 4th of September 1998, anyway.
References
Tom's Hardware, (2009). Average 1998-ish era computer specs. [online] Available at: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/266641-28-average-1998-computer-specs [Accessed 29 Sep. 2014].
Web.archive.org, (2014). Blizzard Entertainment - 10 Years of StarCraft. [online] Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20080402134120/http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/10-years-starcraft.html [Accessed 29 Sep. 2014].
Web.archive.org, (2014). Blizzard Entertainment - StarCraft. [online] Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20080403205106/http://blizzard.com/us/starcraft/ [Accessed 29 Sep. 2014].
Wikipedia, (2014). 1998. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2014].
Wikipedia, (2014). Windows 98. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2014].
Wikipedia, (2014). StarCraft. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft [Accessed 12 Oct. 2014].
Wikipedia, (2014). 300 (comics). [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(comics) [Accessed 29 Sep. 2014].
