I Am Error


Book Description

The complex material histories of the Nintendo Entertainment System platform, from code to silicon, focusing on its technical constraints and its expressive affordances. In the 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System videogame Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, a character famously declared: I AM ERROR. Puzzled players assumed that this cryptic mesage was a programming flaw, but it was actually a clumsy Japanese-English translation of “My Name is Error,” a benign programmer's joke. In I AM ERROR Nathan Altice explores the complex material histories of the Nintendo Entertainment System (and its Japanese predecessor, the Family Computer), offering a detailed analysis of its programming and engineering, its expressive affordances, and its cultural significance. Nintendo games were rife with mistranslated texts, but, as Altice explains, Nintendo's translation challenges were not just linguistic but also material, with consequences beyond simple misinterpretation. Emphasizing the technical and material evolution of Nintendo's first cartridge-based platform, Altice describes the development of the Family Computer (or Famicom) and its computational architecture; the “translation” problems faced while adapting the Famicom for the U.S. videogame market as the redesigned Entertainment System; Nintendo's breakthrough console title Super Mario Bros. and its remarkable software innovations; the introduction of Nintendo's short-lived proprietary disk format and the design repercussions on The Legend of Zelda; Nintendo's efforts to extend their console's lifespan through cartridge augmentations; the Famicom's Audio Processing Unit (APU) and its importance for the chiptunes genre; and the emergence of software emulators and the new kinds of play they enabled.




Producing Animation


Book Description

Drawing heavily from the authors' twenty years of combined experience, Producing Animation offers a clear overview of this exciting industry and a comprehensive guide to the process of developing a project from conception to final delivery. Written from the perspective of a producer, this book offers the foundation of how a project is created in addition to describing the role of the producer at each phase. Answers are provided to many of the most commonly asked questions about animation ranging from how to enter the business to the average cost and schedule for a prime-time animated series. Producing Animation has the first-of-its-kind comprehensive chart of accounts for animation, named the Animation Budget Builder, which can be individually tailored for each project. Visit www.MovieMagicProducer.com for more details. Students, aspiring producers, investors, television and studio executives, artists, film line producers wishing to branch into animation, and legal advisors will find this an invaluable tool. The chapters specifically geared to the pre-production, production and postproduction processes offer animation producers a wealth of practical advice. Numerous illustrations outline the different steps of production. Forms the authors have devised to help streamline the process are also included. Observations from a wide range of industry professionals such as; studio heads, creators, directors, producers, writers and members of the production crew, give the reader insight into what it takes to be successful in this business. The authors' personal anecdotes at key process checkpoints relay firsthand experience, illustrating some of the pitfalls a producer must learn to circumvent. Detailed information on preparing a thorough production plan including the budget, schedule, and crew plan can also be found in this book.




Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams


Book Description

Since the end of the Second World War—and particularly over the last decade—Japanese science fiction has strongly influenced global popular culture. Unlike American and British science fiction, its most popular examples have been visual—from Gojira (Godzilla) and Astro Boy in the 1950s and 1960s to the anime masterpieces Akira and Ghost in the Shell of the 1980s and 1990s—while little attention has been paid to a vibrant tradition of prose science fiction in Japan. Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams remedies this neglect with a rich exploration of the genre that connects prose science fiction to contemporary anime. Bringing together Western scholars and leading Japanese critics, this groundbreaking work traces the beginnings, evolution, and future direction of science fiction in Japan, its major schools and authors, cultural origins and relationship to its Western counterparts, the role of the genre in the formation of Japan’s national and political identity, and its unique fan culture. Covering a remarkable range of texts—from the 1930s fantastic detective fiction of Yumeno Kyûsaku to the cross-culturally produced and marketed film and video game franchise Final Fantasy—this book firmly establishes Japanese science fiction as a vital and exciting genre. Contributors: Hiroki Azuma; Hiroko Chiba, DePauw U; Naoki Chiba; William O. Gardner, Swarthmore College; Mari Kotani; Livia Monnet, U of Montreal; Miri Nakamura, Stanford U; Susan Napier, Tufts U; Sharalyn Orbaugh, U of British Columbia; Tamaki Saitô; Thomas Schnellbächer, Berlin Free U. Christopher Bolton is assistant professor of Japanese at Williams College. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. is professor of English at DePauw University. Takayuki Tatsumi is professor of English at Keio University.







Dreamtime


Book Description

Essays in which happiness becomes a magic carpet, lifting readers above momentary fret and making the ordinary appears wondrous.




Anagram Solver


Book Description

Anagram Solver is the essential guide to cracking all types of quiz and crossword featuring anagrams. Containing over 200,000 words and phrases, Anagram Solver includes plural noun forms, palindromes, idioms, first names and all parts of speech. Anagrams are grouped by the number of letters they contain with the letters set out in alphabetical order so that once the letters of an anagram are arranged alphabetically, finding the solution is as easy as locating the word in a dictionary.




The Italian Gothic and Fantastic


Book Description

Meanwhile, by assimilating the Other into our own modes of representation of reality and imagination, twentieth-century female writers of the fantastic show how alternative identities can be shaped and social constituencies can be challenged."--BOOK JACKET.




Approaches


Book Description

It is true that it is problematic to decide whether or not to include alcoholic beverages among drugs in the strict sense of the word. Perhaps their primordial power has been domesticated during millennia of enjoyment. Myths have passed down to us a more powerful image, and also a more disturbing one, in which Dionysius appears as the master of the festival, with his retinue of satyrs, sileni, maenads and wild beasts.




Me I Am!


Book Description

An illustrated poem which celebrates children who enjoy doing all kinds of activities. This poem originally appeared in The Random House book of poetry for children, published in 1983.




Collected Poems and Other Verse


Book Description

'sense too definite cancels your indistinct literature' Stéphane Mallarmé was the most radically innovative of nineteenth-century poets. His writings, with their richly sensuous texture and air of slyly intangible mystery, perplexed or outraged many early readers; yet no writer has more profoundly influenced the course of modern poetry - in English as well as in French. In both form and content, his poems created new ways of conveying existential doubt, fragmentation, and discontinuity. This is the fullest collection of Mallarmé's poetry ever published in English, and the only edition in any language that presents his Poésies in the last arrangement known to have been approved by the author. Apart from verse, it includes all the prose poems and the unique, unclassifiable Un Coup de dés... (A Dice Throw...). The lucid, wide-ranging introduction and invaluable notes help an understanding of this astonishing poet's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.