Game Informer

Game Informer (GI) is an American monthly video game magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of video games and associated consoles. As of December 2014, over 6.7 million copies are sold each month, making it the fourth-largest magazine in the United States by circulation.Game Informer debuted in August 1991 when FuncoLand started publishing a six-page magazine. It is owned, and published by GameStop Corp., the parent company of the video game retailer of the same name, who bought FuncoLand in 2000. Due to this, a large amount of promotion is done in-store. Purchasing a subscription to the magazine also gets the subscriber access to special content on the official website.

History

Magazine

Game Informer debuted in August 1991 as a six-page magazine. It was published every two months until November 1994, when the magazine began to be released monthly.

In April each year, Game Informer includes Game Infarcer, an annual spin-off of the normal magazine, as an April Fool's joke.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy (ファイナルファンタジー, Fainaru Fantajī) is a science fiction and fantasy media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and developed and owned by Square Enix (formerly Square). The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science fantasy role-playing video games (RPGs). The eponymous first game in the series, published in 1987, was conceived by Sakaguchi as his last-ditch effort in the game industry; the title was a success and spawned sequels. The video game series has since branched into other genres such as tactical role-playing, action role-playing, massively multiplayer online role-playing, racing, third-person shooter, fighting, rhythm and anime.

Although most Final Fantasy installments are stand-alone stories with different settings and main characters, they feature identical elements that define the franchise. Recurring elements include plot themes, character names, and game mechanics. Plots center on a group of heroes battling a great evil while exploring the characters' internal struggles and relationships. Character names are frequently derived from the history, languages, pop culture, and mythologies of cultures worldwide.

The Story of Tracy Beaker (TV series)

The Story of Tracy Beaker (also known as Tracy Beaker or TSOTB) is a British television programme adapted from the book of the same name by Jacqueline Wilson. It ran on CBBC for five series, from 2002 to 2007 and also contained a feature-length episode, Tracy Beaker's Movie of Me, broadcast in 2004, as well as a week of interactive episodes for Children in Need. The theme song was written and performed by Keisha White. All of the five series have been released on DVD and the entire first series has been made available on Netflix.

Episodes

The pilot episode aired on 8 January 2002 and the series finale aired on 9 December 2005. The show spanned a total of five series with 120 episodes in total.

Series 1 introduces the characters and feel of the show. In "Tracy Returns", Tracy moves back into the Dumping Ground. Three episodes in Series 1 form the basis of the show and make the format and atmosphere easy to understand, "Sneaking in Ben" shows Tracy's friendships, "The Truth Is Revealed" shows Tracy's way of thinking and "Friend" shows Tracy's way of understanding things. Series 1 also sees the introduction of characters such as Duke, Mike, Louise, Zac, Ryan and Ben.

Monster Rancher

Monster Rancher, known in Japan as Monster Farm (モンスターファーム, Monsutā Fāmu), is a series of life simulation role-playing video games created by Tecmo (now Tecmo Koei). The series currently consists of fourteen games across different video game platforms, and future titles are planned. In addition, the series has been adapted into an anime.

Story

Before the world's continents broke up into pieces, a huge disaster hit the world. People prayed to God for help, and God created new life forms. However, new life forms brought new troubles, so God became exasperated and sealed them in "disc stones". Many years have passed since then and God entrusted the humans with the secret of "disc stones". Today people still continue searching for these missing "disc stones" to unlock the lifeforms within.

It is said that the "disc stones" are almost impossible to find among the ancient ruins. It is said that one monster is trapped inside each one. One day a group of workers excavating the ancient ruins happened to dig up one of these mythical disc stones. The worker who first discovered a disc stone took the disc to the Monsters' Temple. There the priests, using the ancient methods, unlocked the monster inside the disc stone. In a place where ranchers and monsters coexisted peacefully, the battle of the monsters began! As time passed these monster battles became extremely popular, and monster breeding became the standard pastime of the land. Eventually disc stones were found around the entire world. Now ranchers across the globe come together and enter unto battle!

Tim Schafer

Timothy John Schafer (born July 26, 1967) is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts. Schafer is best known as the designer of critically acclaimed games Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, and Broken Age and co-designer of The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Day of the Tentacle. He is well known in the video game industry for his storytelling and comedic writing style.

Career

College and LucasArts (1989-2000)

While studying computer science at UC Berkeley, Schafer became interested in writing, and took inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut, who while an engineer at General Electric wrote short stories in the evenings that he was able to sell for $300. Schafer opted for a similar course, interning to help develop databases for small companies while trying to position himself for an opening in a larger corporation such as Atari and Hewlett-Packard, but he was rejected by these. He saw an offering at Lucasfilm Games, looking for programmers who could also write game dialog, which piqued his interest. During his application process for the job, he had a somewhat disastrous phone interview with David Fox in which he mentioned being a fan of Ballblaster. Fox informed him that the Lucasfilm Games title was Ballblazer, and that only the pirated version was known as Ballblaster, but despite the misstep, Fox asked Schafer to submit his resume for further consideration. To make up for the phone interview, Schafer sent in a comic of himself applying for and getting the job at Lucasfilm Games, drawn as a text adventure.