2D Forever Dictionary

8-Bit / 16-Bit / 32-Bit etc.

Back in the days when consoles ran off cartidges, a large emphasis was on the power of the machines, and their components. Often measured by 'Bit's'. It became more of a saying, the '8-Bit era of gaming'. It's not to do with what I used to think, 'Wow, this Mega Drive was made of only 16 bits?! How did the make the Master System then??'

AST

Arranged Sound Track. A remix of the original sound track! If the original sound track was any good, it should also be good, theoretically...

Adobe Illustrator

A vector based program, by the creators of Photoshop. I should use it more, as it can do some nice stuff... but I don't. Shame on me!

Akira

Film adaptation of the popular Manga (comic/graphic novel) series. The movie played a big role in popularity for Japanese anime in the western world, often cited as the greatest animated film ever. There's too much story to explain, but in short: There are bikes, riots, wars, general cyber-punk themes and mutations.

Akuma / Gouki

Akuma (Gouki, as he's known in Japan) was a hidden character in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, designed to be a stronger, faster and harder version of Ryu and Ken.

He became part of the Street Fighter storyline after that, seeking out stronger apponents for him to defeat. Akuma is typically seen as an evil version of Ryu and Ken, but he's not evil in such that he'll only fight those worthy and equal of fighting him. There is, however a version of Akuma known as 'Shin Akuma' - who appears to be a more sadistic and demented version of Akuma.

Anime

Simply put, Japanese cartoons.
A popular style that has been used in Japan for a while, and now (over-)used across the world.

Apple

A Fruit, or what I usually refer to is the company Apple, who make Apple Macintosh computers.

The popular choice for designers and artists alike, Apple have a great repuation for not just well designed computers, but aesthetically designed computers.

Art Nouveau

An art style that picked up somewhere along the 1800's (That's detailed for you!)
- The style is usually simplistic looking, yet very high in detail on some intricate parts.

Art of Fighting

The original Street Fighter rip off, from SNK! The lead character from this series, Ryo, was an obvious rip of Ryu, from Street Fighter.

Capcom joked at this and created their own joke character of Ryo (Not Ryu)

Azel

From Panzer Dragoon Saga. Azel is found in an excavation site by Edge after a monster attack breaks a wall to reveal her sleeping. She is a drone, with a black and white 'shell' that covers her body. Edge and Azel are vital to the plot line of Saga.

Blue Mary

A character originally from Fatal Fury, and featured in the King Of Fighters series.
She wears a belt way too large for herself, and it falls near to her knees.

Bomberman

A great multi-player series in which your objective is to blow up your opponent. Simple enough, but there's plenty of strategy to Bomberman - but best of all - the characters! They're all so cute, with their TV's for heads and cute anime eyes!

Bubble Bobble

Classic game made in 1986 - Two small dragons, Bub and Bob, set out into the 'cave of monsters' in hope to return back to humans. Cute. The popular characters had a spin-off game made, which is probably what they're better known for, the competitive puzzle game 'Puzzle Bubble' (aka: Bust-a-Move).

Burning Rangers

A Sonic Team game, in which you're a fire fighter from the future. So instead of putting out fires, you go flying about saving people and killing bosses.
And get stupid fan mail from the people you save!

Call of Duty

Originating as a historical first-person-shooter covering World War 2, the most recent in the series (COD4) covers modern warfare, such as issues in the middle-east. The Call of Duty series is well known for replicating warfare action.

Cammy White

Introduced into Street Fighter from the 'Super' series, Cammy was the first British character introduced into Street Fighter. Her background came from working as a slave under Bison, but broke free and sought revenge.

Capcom vs SNK

Capcom vs SNK and SNK vs Capcom (yeah, they are different) were a series of games in which characters from Capcom and SNK's fighting games crossed over. So you could have Ryu from Street Fighter versus Kyo from King of Fighters.

Capcom's version of the series were highly rated, where as the SNK version was comparitively weaker.

Chun-Li

From Street Fighter, Chun-Li is seeking revenge for her fathers death. Crime fighting chunky thighs, aka Chun-Li is forever cool!

Cloud Strife

Lead character from Final Fantasy 7 (FFVII). An incredibly popular game, getting loads of new interest into the Final Fantasy series, even though most would say FF7 was the best still.

Oh, as for Cloud, he has spikey hair, and a big sword... enough said.

Cowboy Bebop

An Anime series set in the future, following a group of Space Bounty Hunters (Cowboy's) constant struggle to make money. The series is well known for it's unique style, especially in utilising a fantastic jazz soundtrack throughout the series.

Dan Hibiki

Yahoo! Dan's a joke character made from the blatent rip off that SNK did, in The Art of Fighting. He wears pink, he's a wimp, and majority of his moves are taunts. Can't beat that!

His father was killed by Sagat, that's why hes always crying (Oyaji = Father)

David Cameron

Current Leader of the opposition in British politics, and leader of the Conservative Party. Ignoring all political endeavour, a frequent comparison for Cameron is C-3PO... poor guy.

Dreamcast

The Dreamcast is Sega's last home console before they became solely a games company. Being the first 128-bit console it was a large leap and seen as being ahead of it's time. It did well at launch, but many held out for the PS2 which unfortunately cast an early end for the Dreamcast. The logo was changed from orange to blue in Europe due to a similar spiral logo in blue used in Europe. And as for the name 'Dreamcast' - God knows. A dreamy cast of games?!

EMS

EMS is a special type of quick shipping used for international parcels. Quick and secure, but costly. But more importantly, the EMS bloke! Your parcel is HERE!

Edge

From Panzer Dragoon Saga. Edge is the main protagonist from Saga, of whom the player controls. Edge quickly gains control of a mysterious dragon who can somehow understand him. With his Dragon, Edge sets off to avenge his Captain's murder which leads on a much greater story and plot within Saga.

Fatal Fury

Neo-Geo fighting series which was particularly popular in Japan. Never really took off too well elsewhere, but later recognised due to many of the characters featuring in 'the King of Fighters.'

G-Con

Namco's 'Time Crisis' was a huge hit in the arcade as a rail-shooter (gun game if you will). I believe it was the first game to feature gun recoil on the arcade version.

A home version was released for the Playstation which could be purchased with a gun, named the G-Con. However the home version of the gun didn't include the recoil due to the mechanism requiring power which couldn't be drawn from the machine.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves

Garou is Japanese for 'Fatal Fury', so it's a loose continuation of the Fatal Fury series... And Rock's first appearance! Yay!

Geese Howard

The king of all Bosses. Originally from the Fatal Fury series, Geese (despite having an odd name) has appeared across plenty of games, and will never loose his cool.
He's the seemingly self-proclaimed evil leader of 'South town', where Fatal Fury is set.

Gitaroo Man

PS2 game made by Koei. A rhythm-type game, where you play the guitar to the correct timing and so on. Similar to Parappa the Rapper, but harder. It quickly became a legend of a game and just as quickly became a rarity!

Golden Axe

A truly amazing Sega game, side scrolling beat-em-up with (at the time) great visuals, and some damn good gameplay.
Don't forget the magic grass! Sssh, it's a secret!

Gordon Brown

Current British Prime Minister, and leader of the Labour party. Before Tony Blair left this position he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Fun times. He's a big burly Scottish man who tends not to smile for the camera...

Half-Life

In the science world, half-life is the rate of decay on radioactive elements (or anything)... it's something like that - however I'm talking about Half-Life the game (no doubt).

Half-Life is a first person shooter game by Valve Software. It's highly acclaimed for it's in depth and well scripted story.

An unfortunate modification of Half-Life however, brough us all Counter-Strike. Dark days indeed. (On the counter-side, Half-Life 2 mods brought us Portal!)

Iori Yagami

Kyo Kusanagi's enemy... but I still don't know why! A large symobl of SNK, like Kyo, he's a greatly inventive character, with cool clothes and cooler hair.

Jet Set Radio

Jet Set Radioooooo! You have to shout it, don't ask why. Known as Jet 'Grind' radio in the US, this was a game based upon skating around the streets of Japan spray painting your groups tags everywhere.

Innovitive cel-shading (at the time) with great characters and funky music. and a daft storyline. Essential!

KOF / King of Fighters

The King of Fighters, a tournament set up to test the skill of a 3-person team against various others. Usually a front for something more sinister!
In other words, it's an SNK game, which like Fatal Fury, was only really popular in Japan.

The world of emulators bootlegging games mainly brought the joy of KOF around the world though. How sad!

Ken Masters

From Street Fighter, Ken is Ryu's friendly rival always trying to be better than each other.

Most people would say they're the same, but there's a fair bit of difference... Like Ken wears red!

Kill Bill

Tarantino Film, about a lass out for revenge! A great film, loads of blood (vital) and a cool story for what it is!

Kyo Kusanagi

The main man from The King of Fighters. And one of my favourite characters!

Lara Croft

Tomb Raiding's her game! (Literally)...

The concept of Lara initially started life as a man, but with the Tomb Raiding role, there was too much comparison to a certain Indiana Jones. Lucky for Core, the creators of Tomb Raider, choosing a female protagonist also created one of the most famous and recognisable female characters in modern history. However the creators also state her problem is how she has become a sex icon.

Lara's character is of a wealthy 'bachelorette' who is fascinated by archaeology and explores ruins searching for treasure - or Tomb Raiding.

Layers (Graphical Term)

Layers are used within many graphics programs, such as Photoshop. You can think of layers as sheets of acetate, with different images on them.

On top, it makes one image, but with layers you can alter each layer (Or sheet of Acetate, if you like) without altering the other layers. I'd find it hard to do anything without this function.

Levels (Graphical Term)

Levels, used in Photoshop (And highly likely other programs too) are the function that alteres the contrast of each Red, Green and Blue value.

In other words, fiddle about with these and the colours will change accordingly!

Link

By this I don't mean the usual terminology of Links like a chain, he's a character from the Legend of Zelda, the popular Nintendo series.
He's the one that goes about saving Zelda all day!

Magic Markers

Nope, no drugs, they're pens. Very good pens at that. Create a nice smooth and bold colour, and the smell damn nice. Bloody expensive too!

Mai Shiranui

Mai first appeared in Fatal Fury 2 and has been such a hit she's been through almost all of the King of Fighters series. Her storyline is basically her infatuation with Terry Bogards brother, Andy.

She's famous for setting the trend of not only being an attractive busty female character, but a bouncy female character too. Mai is a prime example of large-breasted depiction of women.

Meader

A Meader can be many things, but down to the core, they're ugly, horrible, and make normal people's lives hell.

Call me a snob, I don't care, these people are horrible.
Note: they don't actually know they're meaders either

Megaman

Known in Japan as Rockman, this little fella is Capcom's (They invented Street Fighter dontcha know) character, in which... I dont really know much about! Sorted.

Metal Gear Solid

A classic stealth game, where it's hero, Solid Snake, manages to take down a whole army, and stop the world from being nuked. Good Boy.

Lot's of fun and action, and making people 'Freeze!' and stealing their dog-tags a plenty

Metal Slug

A Side-scrolling humorous shoot-em-up, with amazing detail, great gameplay, and upon completition an anti-war message! Metal Slug is referring to the re-inforced tank used within the game.

Motion Blur

A filter used in Photoshop, to create a blur in one direction.
Could be described as creating a large and smooth smudge... Maybe.

NiGHTS

A Sega Saturn game, made by the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog.
One of the best Saturn games by far, it was really beautiful. Minus Claris' singing... that was rough. Even my mum liked this game!

Nintendo Gamecube

Nintendo's 128 bit console which can almost fit into your back pocket... Or use as a handbag. Game wise, it has some bad ones, and some good ones. Don't they all?
And of course, the few exceptional games, like Smash Bros. F-Zero, and Metal Gear Solid

OST

Original Sound Track. They tend to make OST's from movies and such, but knowing me I'm probably talking about game soundtracks...

Ocarina of Time

Sometimes known as 'Zelda 64', this was the first Zelda game that appeared on the Nintendo 64.
It lived upto the hype, and was very popular. Quite simply, it was damned cool. Go Link!

PAL / NTSC

PAL: phase alternation line, and NTSC:National Television System(s) Committee, are colour encoding systems used on TV's. It's confusing, but in other words, different types of TV formats. NTSC is used by America and Japan, and the rest use PAL. Games and systems are sometimes referred to as PAL or NTSC to state where they come from.

Panzer Dragoon

Sega game that was introduced with the Sega Saturn. The player controlled a dragon from ancient times capable of firing lazers from it's mouth.

The intial release had a few additional titles follow: Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Pazner Dragoon Saga for the Sega Saturn, and later came Panzer Dragoon Orta, continuing the story. When the first Panzer Dragoon was released it was the most expensive game ever produced to date.

Perfect Dark

The major follow up to the popular 'Goldeneye' game for the N64, although totally unrelated.
First person shooter with many inventive features and hoards of gameplay.
Classic!

Phantasy Star Online (PSO)

PSO was originally a Dreamcast game with a large focus on online play. It was famed due to it's online play style which was unique for consoles at the time. PSO is a rough continuation of the older Phantasy Star role playing games on the Master System and Mega Drive.

Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop, a powerful graphics program. Widely used for professional images and art, however this wide use also spans out to those trend whores of the internet...

Princess Heart

Heather's strange outfit from Silent Hill 3.
It's a joke outfit in which her main weapon is the 'sexy beam'! Lazers fre from her eyes, anime style, to defeat the enemies. It's all very 60's -- Erm, Groovy baby...

Project Gotham Racing

PGR is a racing series by Bizarre creations. It's a long running series originally stemming from the Dreamcast game 'MSR' (Metropolis Street Racer).

The game combined fun arcade style racing with realistic visuals based in real cities across the world. One aspect that has remained throughout all of the series is 'Kudos' where the player is rewarded for stylish driving.

Pudding

'Good Evening! Watch my report on Channel 42!' Ulala's rival from Space Channel 5, Pudding is a reporter always trying to beat her opponent to the scoop

Pyramid Head

Fear the sound of screetching as you walk down the corridor, it can only mean Pyramid Head's there!

Amazingly scary freak from Silent Hill 2, his name based upon the fact that he has a big bucket on his head.

Qipao

A chinese dress popular in the early 20th Century. Typically a classic formal dress.
Chun-Li from Street Fighter wore one in her later life throughout the games.

Rock Howard

Seriously, this guy is too cool. He is Geese Howard's son, raised by Terry Bogard, and he kicks ass. And how cool is his jacket?

He's practically the lead character from Garou: Mark of the Wolves. This was a loose follow up from the series of Fatal Fury.

Ryu

A common name in Japan, however when I refer to 'Ryu', I can only mean one man: Street Fighter's Ryu.

Quite possibly one of my favourite characters ever, mainly for his classic attributes - memories of SF2!

He only get's better in his Evil incarnation (Evil Ryu) - lot's of insane Hadouken's, and ruthless killing! WOOOH!!

SNK

Japanese games company which made various great games for their 'Neo-Geo' systems, and certainly well over-looked.
Great company, with great games!

Samba de Amigo

One of Sonic Team's stranger creations, Samba de Amigo was essentially a dance game. The difference being you controlled the game with electronic maracas! 'Amigo' himself is the main character, the crazed looking monkey.

Samurai Shodown

Also known as 'Samurai Spirits' this is another fighting game from SNK, based around the Samurai world.

Sega

The dogs... parts... within the late 80's, making hit arcade games such as After Burner 2.
However their success was later flawed by the giant monsters of life, Sony.

Sega Saturn

Sega's 32-Bit console, released in 1995. Despite bringing lots of Sega's famous 3D arcade games to home, the Saturn never did too well, due to the PlayStation's supersession. Owning a Saturn also resulted in general mocking. However, I stand by it! Still one of my personal favourites!

Shenmue

It's actually a type of tree, but I mean the epic (and I mean epic!) game made by Sega for the Dreamcast.

Set across Asia, Ryo Hazuki sets out for revenge of his fathers death - How original!

Silent Hill

A Playstation game, which as I write, has 4 games in the series spanning across the PS1 and PS2 (and partially the Xbox)
A damn creepy game, which is one of the few things in life that truly freak me out.

Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic is Sega's blue hedgehog mascot. Created way back in 1990, this guy sold loads of Mega Drives due to his games, and is still popular today with a new generation.

Aww. How couldn't you like him? He's blue, runs at the speed of sound and
... oh, that irritating voice he's got in Sonic Heroes. Ruined!

Sony Playstation

A household name, the Playstation was Sonys big break into the gaming industry. It was another 32-bit console to compete with the Sega Saturn. The PLaystation was more powerful and easy to work with compared to the Saturn, so it did extremely well as a result.

Sony produced a follow up due to it's succession and kept the already popular name to produce the Playstation 2. The same old success story, a thrid Playstation is now out and about. No doubt it'll do well, just a shame that 99% of Playstation games are crap.

Space Channel 5

Dreamcast game of a futuristic News Show in which 'Ulala' gets to the bottom of the story of the Aliens forcing people to dance!
Very funky game, smiles gauranteed!

Stock Photo

Stock Photo's are prepared photo's for use in whatever instance you may find for them. You can search for the appropriate image, and chances are theres a photo fitting your need (for whatever work) already taken by someone else. However, typically you'll find they're not free. Look around though...

Street Fighter

Duh, only the biggest fighting game of the 90's! I don't even need to explain it!

Street Fighter Alpha

Street Fighter Alpha fills the gap between the lesser-known Street Fighter 1 and Street Fighter 2. Familiar Characters from SF2 took younger appearances and old Characters from SF1 made a return, amongst new comers.
Although set before SF2, this was the next game released after the SF2 series were (finally) completed.

Streets of Rage

Side-scrolling beat-em-up for the Sega Megadrive, which was very similar to Final Fight. Players would typically walk left to right and beat up endless enemies who walked into their path - and of course, beat the end boss. Story? Who cares, you got to beat people up!

By far, the best level in the original was the elevator level, where you could throw people over the edge... and yourself. Weaker versions of the game with improved graphics followed.

StrongBad

A strange character (and even stranger is his popularity) from the Homestar Runner website. See my links for the website.

Tekken

Namco's competition for Virtua Fighter, in being a decent 3D fighting game. Spanning across the arcade and Playstation 1 and 2 - Popular series, but not a personal favourite.

Terry Bogard

The main man from Fatal Fury. Sporting 80's/early 90's gear, he may look a bit dated, but he certainly is cool.

Despite his dated attire (ignoring his latest outfit) he's got some great character to him. How could you not like someone who celebrate by throwing off his hat and shotuing, 'OHKAY!' in his bad Japanese-American accent?!

The Crow

A 90's film starring Brandon Lee, the son of the famous Bruce Lee.

In a nut shell, the film was about a guy who came back from the dead to kill his murderes -- but with make up! eek!

Tomb Raider

Series of adventure games starring Lara Croft. Gameplay typically involves exploring ruins, solving puzzles, avoiding traps and encountering supernatural enemies. The series was made widely popular due to the main character, Lara Croft.

Tri-Force

A vital part of Zelda. That's all you're getting for a definition!

Tunic

A type of clothing. Now-a-days probably seen as a usual type of clothing, I'm referring to the medievil sort. It's like a cross between a dress and a shirt.

Looks good with shiny tights. Maybe that's just me.

U-1

Gitaroo Man's lead character. When he holds his 'gitaroo' (Guitar) he turns into Gitaroo Man. Unlike most main characters U-1's story focuses on the fact that he's a loser and can't do anything. Beat's the hell out of Parappa's 'I Gotta Believe!'.

Ulala

Lame phrase said by people to suggest a certain beauty of someone else, or, the main character from Space channel 5, Ulala!

Wacom Tablet

Wacom are a company who specialise in drawing tablets for computers. Drawing tablets are specialist pieces of equipment in which the user can physically draw onto the tablet, and it will show up on the computer.
Thus saving time, and is much easier to use than a mouse.

Xbox / Xbox 360

Microsoft launched into the gaming industry with their Xbox, to compete with the Playstation 2 and the Gamecube. A powerful machine, and it was clear it was the strongest of the 3 with games that were released on all platforms (such as Soul Calibur 2). However it was a bit of a PC in a box. Too many nerdy war games, naff green and black design and it was HUGE.

The predeccessor, the Xbox 360 is a more powerful version with many new features based around online gaming. Again though, it still feels like a PC to me. Microsoft just don't understand usability!
Games seem to be coming out slowly, and there are few that are actually good. But those which are, excel.

Yaxay

A graphics forum on the internet. Consumed with 'Trend-Whores' and lot's of people who don't really know that much.
However, there are some great artists/graphic designers on there which make it all worth it.