PUBLIC MARKS with tags game & gaming

Graphics and images have been an integral part of every game ever made -- it's a visual medium, after all. What you see is what you get. Even the most primitive games that couldn't draw proper images onscreen at least gave you ASCII art or text. And so it went, throughout gaming history, until Parappa the Rapper finally brought a new sense into play: in NanaOn-Sha's PSone masterpiece, you had to rely on your ears as much as your eyes.

Atari's token entry into the handheld market during the classic era was actually a portable version of its unsuccessful coin-op game. Touch Me was a simple yet addictive game but never caught on, but its fun factor was confirmed by the popularity of Milton Bradley's Simon (an imitation of Touch Me by Ralph Baer), which proved to be a runaway best seller for the toy giant.

2005 draws to a close with a look back at the many great games this year. Independent gaming continues to grow each year offering game experiences that you can't find anywhere else.

In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps--as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces.

Follows the adventures of geeks Gabe and Tycho