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Overview In our final ENG 111 module, you will immerse yourself in…
Overview
In our final ENG 111 module, you will immerse yourself in Wikipedia. Since it’s a fair assumption virtually everyone with access to the Internet is familiar with Wikipedia, this beginning unit social annotation activity will give everyone a chance to consider more carefully a Wikipedia article. The module goal will be to research and create your own Wikipedia style entry about a topic, so analyzing a Wikipedia article together using Hypothesis (social annotation) is a great starting point.
Purpose
Analyzing an article from Wikipedia is intended to help everyone consider the platform and writing objectively. The purpose of this transition, from taking Wikipedia for granted to seeing it objectively, will help you understand the criteria and standards of an ideal Wikipedia page when you are ready to create your own.
Features of a Wikipedia article
According to wikipedia.org and the Wiki Education Foundation, characteristics of a good Wikipedia article include the following:
Use reliable sources that rely on verifiable information and do not demonstrate bias;
Present information with a neutral point of view that does not try to “prove” a thesis statement, but instead works to present others’ legitimate viewpoints and factual information. Note that Wikipedia guidelines do not allow for fringe viewpoints such as flat-earthers, holocaust deniers, moon-landing deniers, etc.
Be written and edited in good faith: writers and reviewers assume that the page is not written for self-promotion, deception, or political gain.
InstructionsThe Tool You’ll Use: Hypothesis
If you’d like a quick guide to creating annotations in Hypothesis, use this guide: Introduction to Hypothesis App for Students.Links to an external site.
If you feel proficient at annotating, you can annotate with images, GIFs or videos. Check out this article which explains how to do this: Adding Links, Images, and Video.Links to an external site.
Blast Corps is an action game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. In the game, the player uses vehicles to destroy buildings in the path of a runaway nuclear missile carrier. In the game’s 57 levels, the player solves puzzles by transferring between vehicles to move objects and bridge gaps. It was released in March 1997 in Japan and North America. A wider release followed at the end of that year.
The game was Rare’s first game for the Nintendo 64. Its development team ranged between four and seven members, many of whom were recent graduates. The team sought to find gameplay to fit Rare co-founder Chris Stamper’s idea for a building destruction game. The puzzle game mechanics were inspired by those of Donkey Kong (1994).
Blast Corps was released to critical acclaim and received Metacritic’s second highest Nintendo 64 game ratings of 1997. The game sold one million copieslower than the team’s expectationsand received several editor’s choice awards. Reviewers praised its originality, variety, and graphics, but some criticized its controls and repetition. Reviewers of Rare’s 2015 Rare Replay retrospective compilation noted Blast Corps as a standout title.
Gameplay[edit]
Screenshot of gameplay in which the player uses a bulldozer to clear a path for the carrier. Radar and an arrow in the lower-left corner show the proximity of objects in the carrier’s way.
Blast Corps is a single-player action video game. The player controls vehicles to destroy buildings, farms, and other structures in the path of a runaway nuclear missile carrier. The player fails if the carrier collides with an object. The eight demolition vehicles vary in the way they clear structures: the bulldozer rams, the dump truck drifts, the lightweight buggy crashes from higher ground, the tricycle shoots missiles, another truck presses outwards from its sides, and robot mechs tumble and stomp from the land and the air. The player must transfer between vehicles and other machinery to solve puzzles. Objectives include transporting timed explosive crates and bridging gaps. The game’s puzzles increase in difficulty[2] as the player progresses through its 57 levels.[3]
The world is portrayed from a three-quarters overhead view. The player can adjust the game’s viewable perspective with zoom and horizontal panning functions.[2] Pop-up hints will guide the player in the early stages of the game,[3] and other characters audibly encourage the player as each level wears on. The cheery soundtrack increases in tempo as the level’s timer runs low.[2] After completing a level, the player can return to explore without a time limit.[4] By finding secrets and activating lights throughout the level, the player raises their score and final medal ranking. There are also secret levels hidden throughout the game, where the player completes objectives against the clock. The player can compete against a ghost copy of their previous path through a level. There are no settings to change the game’s difficulty, and the game saves to both the game cartridge itself and external storage.[2]
Plot[edit]
The game’s story takes place on a parrallel Earth, in which mankind lives in relative peace, until an event occurs that threatens the lives of the whole planet. The national government of an unnaned country discovers that the transportation of two defective nuclear missiles has gone wrong, after they begin leaking radiation. The automated carrier transporting them becomes damaged as a result and automatically sets itself on a direct course towards the site for a controlled detonation, effectively placing it in danger where the slightest jolt from hitting buildings or falling into pits would trigger the missiles, causing a catastrophic explosion.
To prevent this, the government hires the demolition company known as Blast Corps – founded by several former military soldiers who were stationed in the base the missiles came from, until an accident involving one of their members led the others to desert their post. Using a variety of different machines to assist them, Blast Corps assigns a new recruit to help clear the carrier’s path, ensuring it can get past areas safely, while at the same time seeking out a group of missing scientists needed to conduct the safe detonation of the missiles. Dealing with an array of difficult situations, Blast Corps manages to prevent catastrophe, finding the scientists and putting an end to the threat from the missiles.
After Blast Corps successfully complete their mission, the company finds themselves contracted to help clear several buildings in a city in order to create an emergency runway for a space shuttle returning to Earth. The company successfully completes the mission, later earning a contract to clear debris on the moon, before its employees take a well-earned break after establishing a reputation for being the best demolition company in the business.
Development[edit]
If you knock down buildings, it will be fun.
Rare founder Chris Stamper famously gave Blast Corps its raison d’être.[4]
Blast Corps was among Rare’s first games for the Nintendo 64 and led a run of seven critically acclaimed Rare titles for the console.[4] The game’s production began in early 1996.[5] The development team consisted of four recent graduates, though it expanded at times to seven concurrent staff. Martin Wakeley became the game’s lead designer. He credited the team’s small size for their easy progression from planning to market. Rare founder Chris Stamper was the impetus for the project. He had wanted to make a game about destroying buildings for years prior to Blast Corps’s development. The team worked to fit his idea to a gameplay concept and devised a “Constantly Moving Object” conceit that would give the levels a time limit. This idea became the nuclear missile carrier.[4]
Blast Corps led a set of seven critically acclaimed Rare titles developed for the Nintendo 64.
Retro Gamer credited Wakeley for Blast Corps’s idiosyncratic ideas and humor in light of the game’s serious premise.[4] For instance, the Mario Kart 64 “power slide” drift mechanics inspired that of Blast Corps’s dump truck. Wakeley championed the drift controls against the rest of the team, who found them aggravating. The game’s lead artist, Ricky Berwick, had developed the vehicle concepts without consideration for their in-game function, and the vehicles were only later retrofitted to the gameplay. One of the robot vehicles was designed without an arm because the developers had run out of computer memory to store the data and liked the look anyway.[4] Wakeley determined the game’s high score “goal medal” objectives, in which players would attempt to better a set completion time on each level. Blast Corps’s Japanese and American quality assurance teams later competed to push the levels to their limits, which resulted in the game’s platinum level objectives. Wakeley described these platinum challenges as “just insane” and said he could only finish four himself.[4]
Wakeley saw Blast Corps as a puzzle game at its core. He was influenced by the 1994 Donkey Kong, in which the player begins each level with all the tools they need to finish but must learn how to use them. Wakeley said this was Blast Corp’s core game mechanic. He was also inspired by the Super Mario 64 demo at Nintendo’s annual trade show in 1995, which introduced him to the 3D analog stick and spurred him to achieve something similar.[4] The team’s technical accomplishments included character and environment models composed completely of polygons and the absence of distance fog to obscure the draw distance.[2]
Nintendo published Blast Corps for their Nintendo 64.[2] In its 1995 trade show preview, it was originally titled Blast Dozer, a name it retained for its Japanese release.[6] (The team had considered other titles, including “Heavy Duty Heroes”, “Blast Radius”, and “Power Dozer”.[7]) Blast Corps was first released in Japan on March 21, 1997, and in North America three days later. Its European and Australian release followed on December 22.[2] The game had been in production for just over a year.[4]
Reception
