Technology

Video games trivia | 100 did you know facts about famous series (part 2)

Video games have become a part of pop culture. With many titles gaining worldwide recognition and a rapid fanbase.

So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about these famous video game series.

Candy Crush Saga is a free-to-play match-three puzzle video game
It is released by King on April 12, 2012, for Facebook
Other versions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 followed
It is a variation of their browser game Candy Crush
In the game, players complete levels by swapping colored pieces of candy on a game board to make a match of three or more of the same color, eliminating those candies from the board and replacing them with new ones, which could potentially create further matches
Matches of four or more candies create unique candies that act as power-ups with larger board-clearing abilities
Boards have various goals that must be completed within a fixed number of moves or limited amount of time, such as a certain score or collecting a specific number of a type of candy
Candy Crush Saga is considered one of the first and most successful uses of a freemium model
While the game can be played completely through without spending money, players can buy special actions to help clear more difficult boards, from which King makes its revenues
At its peak the company was reportedly earning almost $1 million per day
Around 2014, over 93 million people were playing Candy Crush Saga
While revenue over a three-month period as reported by King was over $493 million
Five years after its release on mobile, the Candy Crush Saga series has received over 2.7 billion downloads
The game has been one of the highest-grossing and most-played mobile apps in that time frame
King has since released three related titles, Candy Crush Soda Saga, Candy Crush Jelly Saga, and Candy Crush Friends Saga
Most of the company’s other mobile titles follow the same Saga freemium format
Deus Ex is a series of role-playing video games
The first two games in the series were developed by Ion Storm
Subsequent entries were developed by Eidos Montréal, following Ion Storm’s closure
The series, set during the 21st century, focuses on the conflict between secretive factions who wish to control the world by proxy, and the effects of transhumanistic attitudes and technologies in a dystopian future setting featuring references to real-world conspiracy theories
The series consists of six games: Deus Ex (2000), Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003), Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), Deus Ex: The Fall (2013), Deus Ex Go (2016) and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2016)
The series has received critical acclaim and sold over 5 million units worldwide
Diablo is an action role-playing hack and slash dungeon crawler video game series
The game is developed by Blizzard North
It continued by Blizzard Entertainment after the north studio shutdown in 2005
The series is made up of three core games: Diablo, Diablo II, and Diablo III
Expansions include the third-party published Hellfire, which follows the first game, Lord of Destruction, published by Blizzard and released after the second game, and Reaper of Souls, which follows the third game
Additional content is provided through story elements explored in other media forms
Diablo IV was announced at BlizzCon 2019
The series is set in the fantasy world of Sanctuary
The three games in the series take place in similar geographic areas, with several common areas including the town of Tristram and the region around Mount Arreat
Additional setting is provided by the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, two separate realms with ties to Sanctuary
The series focuses on the battle between the humans living on Sanctuary and the Prime Evils, demons who are led by Diablo, the series’ chief antagonist
The humans are occasionally aided by angels, notably the archangel of justice, Tyrael
The characters in the world of Sanctuary are primarily humans, angels, and various classes of demons and monsters
The series has resulted in the publishing of several books relevant to the Diablo setting, covering a wide range of the timelines of the universe
There are also comics that explore various stories within the world of Sanctuary
As of May 30, 2012, the series has sold over 24.8 million copies worldwide
Donkey Kong is a series of video games featuring the adventures of a gorilla character called Donkey Kong
It was conceived by Shigeru Miyamoto in 1981
The franchise consists mainly of two game genres
It also includes additional spin-off titles of various genres
The games of the first genre are mostly single-screen platform/action puzzle types, featuring Donkey Kong as the opponent in an industrial construction setting
Donkey Kong first made his appearance in the 1981 arcade machine called Donkey Kong, in which he faced Jumpman (Mario), now Nintendo’s flagship character
This game was also the first appearance of Mario, pre-dating the well-known Super Mario Bros. by four years
In 1994, the series was revived as the Donkey Kong Country series
Featuring Donkey Kong and his clan of other apes as protagonists in their native jungle setting versus a variety of anthropomorphic enemies, usually against the Kremlings, a clan of crocodiles, and their leader King K. Rool
These are side-scrolling platform games
Titles outside these two genres have included rhythm games (Donkey Konga), racing games (Diddy Kong Racing), and edutainment (Donkey Kong Jr. Math)
A hallmark of the Donkey Kong franchise is barrels, which the Kongs use as weapons, vehicles, furniture, and lodging
The Donkey Kong character is highly recognizable and very popular
The franchise has sold over 40 million units worldwide
Fallout is a series of post-apocalyptic role-playing video games and later became an action role-playing game
It was created by Interplay Entertainment
The series is set during the 22nd and 23rd centuries, and its atompunk retrofuturistic setting and art work are influenced by the post-war culture of 1950s United States, with its combination of hope for the promises of technology and the lurking fear of nuclear annihilation
A forerunner for Fallout is Wasteland
This was an 1988 game developed by Interplay Productions to which the series is regarded as a spiritual successor
The series’ first title, Fallout, was developed by Black Isle Studios and released in 1997, and its sequel, Fallout 2, the following year
With the tactical role-playing game Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, development was handed to Micro Forté and 14 Degrees East
In 2004, Interplay closed Black Isle Studios and continued to produce Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, an action game with role-playing elements for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, without Black Isle Studios
Fallout 3, the third entry in the main series, was released by Bethesda Softworks
It was followed by Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian Entertainment
Fallout 4 was released in 2015
Fallout 76 released on November 14, 2018
Bethesda Softworks owns the rights to the Fallout intellectual property
After acquiring it, Bethesda licensed the rights to make a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) version of Fallout to Interplay
The MMORPG got as far as beta stage under Interplay
But a lengthy legal dispute between Bethesda Softworks and Interplay halted the development of the game and led to its eventual cancellation
As Bethesda claimed in court that Interplay had not met the terms and conditions of the licensing contract, the case was decided in favor of Bethesda
The Fallout series has been met with mostly positive reception
The highest rated title is Fallout 3 and the lowest is Fallout 76 according to review aggregator Metacritic
Far Cry is a franchise of first-person shooter games
All of which have been published by Ubisoft
The first game, Far Cry, was developed by Crytek to premiere their CryEngine software, and released in March 2004
Subsequently, Ubisoft obtained the rights to the franchise and the bulk of the development is handled by Ubisoft Montreal with assistance from other Ubisoft satellite studios
The following games in the series have used a Ubisoft-modified version of the CryEngine, the Dunia Engine, allowing for open world gameplay
There have been five main games in the series along with three standalone expansions
The first game, initially developed for Microsoft Windows, also saw a number of ports to video game consoles
The Far Cry games, due to the history of their development, do not have any significant shared narrative elements, instead share a theme of placing the player in a wilderness environment where they must help fight against one or more despots that control the region as well as surviving against wild animals that roam the open spaces
The Far Cry games feature a robust single-player campaign with later titles offering co-operative campaign support
The games also offer competitive multiplayer options and the ability for users to edit the games’ maps for these matches
The Far Cry games have generally been well-received and they are considered commercial successes
Ubisoft reports that through 2014, lifetime sales of the Far Cry franchise has exceeded 20 million units
Halo is an American military science fiction media franchise managed
It is developed by 343 Industries and it is published by Xbox Game Studios
The franchise and its early main installments were originally developed by Bungie
The central focus of the franchise builds off the experiences of Master Chief John-117, one of a group of supersoldiers codenamed Spartans, and his artificial intelligence (AI) companion, Cortana
The original trilogy centers on an interstellar war between humanity and an alliance of aliens known as the Covenant
The Covenant, led by their religious leaders called the Prophets, worship an ancient civilization known as the Forerunners, who perished while defeating the parasitic Flood
The eponymous Halo Array are a group of immense, habitable, ring-shaped superweapons that were created by the Forerunners to destroy the Flood, but which the Covenant mistake for religious artifacts that, if activated, would transport them on a Great Journey to meet the Forerunners
They are similar to the Orbitals in Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, and to a lesser degree to author Larry Niven’s Ringworld concept
The games in the series are critically acclaimed, with the original considered the Xbox’s “killer app”
This led to the term “Halo killer” being used to describe console games that aspire, or are considered, to be better than Halo
Fueled by the success of Halo: Combat Evolved, and by marketing campaigns from publisher Microsoft, its sequels went on to record-breaking sales
The games have sold over 65 million copies worldwide
The games alone have grossed almost $3.4 billion
Halo has since become one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time and one of the highest grossing video game franchises
These strong sales led to the franchise’s expansion to other media
The Halo Universe now spans multiple best-selling novels, graphic novels, comic books, Lego sets, short movies, animated movies and feature films as well as other licensed products
The sixth main installment, Halo Infinite, is due for release in 2021