BBC Multimedia releases the first-person shooter Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors for Windows PCs in the UK. Featuring sound clips from the classic series, the game also boasts the last new footage of actor Anthony Ainley in character as the Master. 
Interplay releases the turn-based tactical space combat game Star Trek: Starfleet Command for Windows PCs, featuring a musical score by former Star Trek: The Next Generation composer Ron Jones.
Hasbro Interactive, under its Atari imprint, releases a modern remake of Q*Bert for the Sony Playstation, including the original ’80s arcade game as a minigame.
Nichibutsu, originators of the 1980 arcade game Crazy Climber, releases the 3-D sequel/remake Crazy Climber 2000 for the Sony Playstation in Japan only. Though this is not the first PS1 Crazy Climber game, it is the first to allow players to use both the D-pad and the four action buttons as two D-pads, mimicking the two-joystick control scheme of the original arcade game.
Taito releases the puzzle game Builder’s Block for the Sony Playstation. (This game was released in Japan in late 1999 under the title Landmaker.)
Takara releases the fighting game Tatsunoko Fight for the Sony Playstation, featuring characters from Tatsunoko anime series such as Gatchaman, Tekkaman, and Casshan.
Running Press publishes John Sellers’ non-fictional recap of the video game industry’s early landmark titles, “Arcade Fever” (initially announced as “Arcade Planet”). Focusing almost entirely on coin-op games from the 1970s and 1980s, and illustrated with emulator screen shots and game cabinet artwork, the book is subtitled “The Fan’s Guide to the Golden Age of Video Games”. Its irreverent tone is less scholarly than some of the other books on the same topic published around this time.
Nintendo releases Mario Kart: Super Circuit for the Game Boy Advance in North America (the game had already been released in Japan a month earlier. The game is essentially a Game Boy Advance port of the smash hit SNES game Super Mario Kart.
More about Mario Kart: Super Circuit in Phosphor Dot Fossils
MIT Press publishes Van Burnham’s non-fictional history of the video game industry and its products, “Supercade“. Covering developments from Spacewar! and the Magnavox Odyssey through the Playstation era, “Supercade” is a coffee table book lavishly illustrated with emulator screen shots (and some surprisingly low-resolution digital photos and scans) and numerous essays by various authors on arcade and console games of note.
Bandai releases the scrolling shoot-’em-up game Gatchaman: The Shooting for the Sony Playstation in Japan. Based on the anime Kagaku Ninjatai Gatchaman, this is volume 8 of the Simple Character 2000 series.
Intellivision Productions (a collective of programmers and designers who created the games for the iconic ’80s video game console) releases the album Intellivision In Hi-Fi at Classic Gaming Expo 2002, containing recordings of some of the system’s signature musical moments, and new renditions of some of the games’ musical themes.
Rolenta Press publishes Confessions Of The Game Doctor, the memoirs of Bill Kunkel (1950-2011), one of the founding editors of Electronic Games Magazine.
Ralph Baer, the inventor of home video games, receives the National Medal of Technology from President George W. Bush. While working for defense contractor Sanders & Associates in the 1960s, Baer pioneered the concept of interactive television programming, eventually gathering a hand-picked team to create a prototype called the Brown Box. Baer and his employer licensed the technology to Magnavox, which repackaged it and marketed it as the world’s first home video game console, the Odyssey. Baer also created other key video game innovations, such as the first light gun.
BBC subsidiary 2|entertain releases the interactive DVD trivia game Red Dwarf: Beat The Geek in the UK, featuring new footage of both Norman Lovett and Hattie Hayridge as Holly exclusive to his game.
MIT Press publishes the non-fiction book Racing The Beam: The Atari Video Computer System by Nick Montfort & Ian Bogost, a technically-oriented overview of the historic home video game system.
The 21st century iteration of Atari, now owned by the French video game company formerly known as Infogrames, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it tries to disentangle itself from its parent company’s descent into insolvency. Revealed in the filing is that, despite numerous modern games distributed under the Atari “label”, licensing of the 1970s Atari logo accounts for almost one-fifth of Atari’s current revenue. The classic Atari game portfolio dating back to such games as Pong and Asteroids is put up for sale in an effort to raise funds for the troubled company.
To allay public fears that the next level might not be reached, NASA offers an explanation for an enigmatic 2010 image from the Hubble Space Telescope, showing a galaxy cluster, Abell 68, approximately 2,000,000,000 light years away. In the middle of that cluster, however, is what appears to be an alien from the video game Space Invaders. NASA explains that it’s a visual artifact of gravitational lensing caused by the gravity influence of the foreground galaxies upon the light of galaxies further away in the image. Earth breathes easy once more.
The president of Nintendo through the latter half of the 20th century, Hiroshi Yamauchi, dies at the age of 85. Having dropped out of college to assume control of Nintendo from his ailiing grandfather in 1949, Yamauchi transformed the company from a maker of playing cards into a power player in the electronic game market, even though Nintendo’s first video game product was a licensed version of the American-made Magnavox Odyssey. Twice, Yamauchi boldly decided to break into the American video game market with no guarantee of success: once with the arcade game Donkey Kong, and again with the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System, even after a Stateside licensing deal with Atari fell through at the last minute, depriving the NES of Atari’s existing marketing and distribution channels.
The creator and programmer of Lode Runner, Douglas E. Smith, dies at the age of 53. A spare-time creation that became an all-consuming passion for Smith, Lode Runner sparked a nearly unprecedented bidding war among major computer game publishers in 1983. At the time of Smith’s death, Lode Runner has been ported to most major game and computer systems over the past 31 years.
Nintendo of Japan CEO Satoru Iwata dies as a result of complications from gall bladder surgery. As the head of game developer HAL Laboratories, Iwata oversaw games in the Kirby, Super Smash Bros. and Pokemon series, until he replaced outgoing Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi in 2002. His tenure saw the introduction of the Nintendo DS handheld, the Wii console, and the wildly popular Amiibo figurines, as well as unprecedented interaction with fans and customers on the internet.
Masaya Nakamura, the founder of pioneering Japanese video game maker Namco, dies at the age of 91. Founded in 1955 as Nakamura Manufacturing Co., Namco was an early proponent of video game development in Japan, though it saw its earliest successes as the Japanese distributor of Atari arcade games imported from the U.S. After moderately successful early coin-ops such as Gee Bee, Namco quickly established itself as a global powerhouse with the release of such perennial classics as Pac-Man, Galaxian, Galaga, Dig Dug, Pole Position, and Xevious, among many others. Namco’s growth in the 1980s was so explosive that it absorbed Japanese film studio Nikkatsu in 1993 (several of whose titles Nakamura oversaw as executive producer), and later merged with Bandai in 2005.
Schiffer publishes David L. Craddock’s non-fictional collection of essays on the stories and creators behind Apple II computer games, “Break Out: How The Apple II Launched The PC Gaming Revolution “. The book profiles the creators and the stories behind such popular titles as Ultima, The Oregon Trail, Pinball Construction Set, Wizardry, Zork, Lode Runner, and more.
Former Atari game designer and programmer Howard Scott Warshaw self-publishes his memoir, Once Upon Atari: How I Made History By Killing An Industry.
Santa Monica Press publishes Warren Davis’ career memoir, “Creating Q*Bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games“. Davis recalls his work on such ’80s and ’90s arcade games as Q*Bert, Exterminator, Terminator 2, and Revolution X, as well as numerous games and game concepts that never saw the light of day.
