CD-ROM Player Research Articles

Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Dominic Arsenault

Reviewed by: Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Dominic Arsenault Dal Yong Jin (bio) Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System. By Dominic Arsenault. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. Pp. 240. Hardcover $29.95. Once upon a time, Nintendo reigned supreme in the global video game markets. With the newly launched Nintendo Switch in 2017, Nintendo dreams of the golden age it enjoyed between 1985 and 1990. Dominic Arsenault's Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was published right before the introduction of Nintendo Switch and provides rich data and discussions on the rise and fall of Nintendo in the global console market. This book has several strengths, and three clever ideas (presaged in the title) make the book valuable. Unlike several other books that have focused on the celebratory and upbeat tones of successful game companies and video games, Arsenault emphasizes the failures of Nintendo in his analysis of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Based on his exhaustive research, which draws on trade journals, manuals, and advertisements from the 1980s and the 1990s, he clearly identifies key technological discourses and business models that formed what he calls Nintendo's Super Power—one that all too quickly encountered market kryptonite, though for a time enabled the company's short-term dominance over the console game sector. While they helped produce a period of ascendance, Arsenault argues that these same business models were the major reasons why Nintendo eventually lost its market share to other Japanese console companies, namely Sega and Sony. Arsenault examines the historical evolution of the SNES from diverse, but connected perspectives. After discussing the different meanings of a video game platform, from an early emphasis only on hardware architecture to the marketing forces and cultural spheres that later developed, he discusses the ways in which Nintendo has faced its dark age. Arsenault identifies a few key technological shifts that happened during the SNES's lifetime, and he contends that Nintendo refused to admit that such technological [End Page 652] shifts had implications for the future of certain traditionally strong game genres. He also argues that the company pursued inflexible business models and maps out the cultural changes in the game world that wore away users' fondness for the SNES. What Arsenault discusses are some of the most significant reasons for the fall of Nintendo, even if that fall is not permanent, and his arguments provide a good lesson not only to game companies but also to other digital media and platform corporations that emphasize innovation as one of the most significant virtues. Throughout, Arsenault uses the three key concepts alluded to in the tantalizing title. "Super Power," as noted above, encompasses marketing and strategy in a broad sense; in Nintendo's case, this meant conceiving, developing, and marketing the Super Nintendo as the super version of the original Nintendo, not as something markedly new. "Silverware" refers to a particular approach to technology via the analogy of using shinier utensils to make a meal fancier without improving the quality of the food. Finally, "Spoony Bards," refers to a particular culture, specifically that of people who would sing the praises of the Super Nintendo without acknowledging its deficiencies and downfalls. Arsenault dexterously structures his argument by combining the extended notions of platform and three metaphors from the title in detailing the reasons why Nintendo has lost its supreme power in the console market. Chapters two and three explore the video game market, explain the context in which the Super NES was conceived and marketed, and articulate the critical steps in the process of launching a video game console. Chapters four and five discuss the technology of the Super NES, describing its limited processing and memory units, audio system, controller, and hardware design while exploring the larger technological revolution that video games went through during the SNES's lifespan. Chapters six and seven address the cultural images and identity of Nintendo as a corporation and the trials and tribulations it faced during the SNES's life. Arsenault eventually chronicles the fall of the SNES by emphasizing its failure to adopt a CD-ROM player...

Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design (review)

Reviewed by: Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design Paul Hoffert (bio) Karen Collins . Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design. MIT Press. 2008. 216. US$29.00 Game Sound is a welcome addition to the currently thin canon of books about video game music and sound. The author has mined hundreds of relevant interviews as well as academic and industry articles, excerpts of which are quoted and referenced. The book is liberally peppered with illustrations of music notation from game music scores. The author introduces the subject by noting that, since video gaming is a more recent media type than film or television, the academic frameworks for analysis are not yet agreed on. A video game is defined as a rule-based system with a variable and a quantifiable outcome, influenced by the interactions with one or more players. Interactivity is defined as acting with agency to influence the progress of the narrative and/or the visual images. The term dynamic audio is used throughout to describe both interactive (with the player) and adaptive (to the game's state) audio. The Intro concludes that 'technological and cultural forms [are] . . . the result of complex interactions between technical possibilities, economic incentives, representational norms, and cultural demands.' Chapters 2-4 comprise a history of music and sound in video games, organized roughly chronologically. They cover the rise of video games, the technology advances from 4- to 8- to 16-bit audio, and the eventual incorporation of CD/DVD readers into video game platforms. Detailed explanations are given, with many with graphic illustrations for sound-generating microchips and the physics of analogue and digital audio generation, including audio wave tables, samples, synthesis, and filtering, as well as oscillators, envelopes, modulation, carrier waves, and modulating waves. The adoption of sequence-based and repetitive looped music [End Page 289] is reasoned as a consequence of limited memory and computational resources in early video game circuitry. A combination of open industry standards (MIDI, General MIDI, and Standard MIDI) and proprietary software were invented to enable composers to compose and store large amounts of game music in greatly compressed formats. For example, Lucas Arts' iMuse middleware provides for decision points in the music that can be triggered by game play to turn on or off music parts, transpose parts, change instrumentation, and/or jump to new music parts. For example, a composer can change the melody and instruments during a fight scene, depending on which character is winning from time to time, while maintaining the bass and rhythm tracks. The inclusion of advanced hardware such as CDROM players in game platforms enabled cinematic-like orchestral recordings of real instruments to be blended with complex synthesized music. DVD technologies brought 3-D surround sound capabilities to games. Handheld and mobile consoles are discussed briefly, but the recent explosion of video gaming on smart phones and media tablets such as Apple's iPad occurred after this book was printed. The meat of the book begins in chapter 5, which details the business and process relationships among a game publisher, game developer, and their creative team - producer, audio director, art director, designers, and programmers. Each game production begins with a design document that details the storyline, maps, graphics, animation, programming, and audio (music, dialogue, and sound effects) as well as sub-design documents for each craft. The author discusses music and sound temp tracks, cue sheets, and emotion maps for creating and releasing the tensions of happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, anger, and fear. The functions of game music are discussed, including structural, anticipatory, spatial, and commercial uses. The dozens of video game genres are helpfully collected into super-genres of strategy, sports, shooter, role-playing, racing, action, adventure, arcade, fighting, flight, family, and children's. The author uses media theory to explain complex sound and music issues such as diegesis, immersiveness, mood induction, and information conveyance. A chapter on compositional techniques for games identifies media-specific solutions that can minimize a player's musical boredom from the otherwise too-repetitive sequences, as well as techniques for transitioning among musical sequences...

Creating and Publishing Custom-Made Multimedia Screen Presentations

Camtasia Studio 4.0. 2006. Developed by TechSmith Corporation, 2405 Woodlake Drive, Okemos, MI 48864-5910. Single-user license of Camtasia Studio 4.0 for education costs $179. For complete pricing and ordering information contact sales at http://www. techsmith.com. System requirements: Minimum 1 GHz processor (2.5 GHz is strongly recommended for PowerPoint[R] recordings) Minimum 500 MB of RAM (1 GB recommended) Windows-compatible sound card, microphone and speakers are recommended Program installation takes up 60 MB of hard-disk space Camtasia Studio supports Microsoft Windows 2000/XP with Microsoft DirectX 9 or later. The Camtasia Studio add-in for PowerPoint[R] requires Office 2000/ XP or later For an up-to-date listing of system requirements, visit the TechSmith Web site at www.tech smith.com. Camtasia Studio 4.0 is a complete software package for the production of multimedia screen videos. It is well designed and provides a greater variety of features than previous versions while it has become easier to use. The high-quality custom videos can be played back on the Internet, CD-ROM, and mobile media players, such as a Video iPod. The software allows the user to record and edit PowerPoint[R] presentations, various audio tracks, and videos to create amazing interactive videos, screencasts, and presentations that are useful to educators. Other options include picture-in-picture format for capturing video from a webcam that is synchronized with the screen recordings and screen drawings with effects, such as highlighting cursor movements and drawing on the screen. The software combines verbal and textual information into videos, which has been shown to significantly increase student understanding and memory of the concepts being presented. Camtasia Studio 4.0 can be used to create instructional supplements for advanced students who need more challenge, and also to offer additional help to students who are failing behind. These supplements allow students to work at their own pace and review material multiple times. Teachers can embed quiz questions into the video content to assess student learning. Camtasia Studio 4.0 also helps instructors comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act regarding the designing and deploying of accessible information to breakdown delivery and learning barriers regardless of the student's capabilities. It is easy to get started with Camtasia Studio 4.0 and to successfully create multimedia presentations. Instructors can immediately record narrated presentations for student lectures by using the Recording Wizard with familiar Record, Pause, and Stop controls. I easily produced a PowerPoint[R] recording of a presentation on cellular respiration on my first attempt by doing the following steps: 1. Plug a microphone into the computer. 2. Start PowerPoint[R]. 3. Click on the record button in the toolbar to capture the screen video and audio. 4. Give presentation by speaking into the microphone and explaining the content of each slide. (I use cursor movements to direct the attention of the audience and with more advanced presentations I include video from a webcam and screen drawings as I give the presentation.) 5. Edit presentation if desired. 6. Use the simple Production Wizard to render screen video to the best format for viewing from Web, CD-ROM, or mobile media players. (It allows for many media formats, such as MP3, iPod video, Adobe Flash (SWF and FLV), AVI, WMV, QuickTime (MOV), RealMedia (RM), animated GIF, and even an executable (EXE) file.) 7. Upload video file to Screencast.com, personal or school Internet server, or burn onto CD-ROM for sharing. 8. Share the specific Internet address of the video on the Screencast.com site with the selected audience. Camtasia Studio 4.0 can be used not only for recording PowerPoint[R] presentations but also for creating training, instruction, and demonstrations of software applications. …

Vibration damper for dampening vibrations at low frequencies

Electronic equipment gains still wider use and becomes a more and more integrated part of daily life. Different types of electronics are thus fitted to a still greater extent in vehicles, such as boats, ships, trains, buses, lorries, normal cars etc., why the elec-tronic items are exposed to jolts and other non-uniform actions. Particularly with re-gard to jolts, electronic items or apparatuses in which there is also mechanical compo-nents are particularly exposed. This is particularly the case with CD players, CD-ROM players, hard disks and similar apparatuses, which besides very sensitive electronics also consist of very sensitive mechanics. In order that these installations may also op-erated optimally, it is desirable to dampen the vibration transmission from the vehi-cle/ship/train/bus/car itself and to the electro-mechanical component. This is achieved with a vibration damper consisting of two springs arranged in two mutually perpendicular planes of which one plane is parallel with the base, where a first spring is fastened to the base, and a second spring is fastened to the vibration sen-sitive item, and that the two springs are mutually connected.

Control Related Topics in Identification - Closed Loop Experiments and Identification for Control

This paper summarizes the organization of a graduate course on control related topics in identification. The course is taught at the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego and analyzes the problems of estimation on closed-loop data and control relevant approximation of systems. As part of the course, several case studies are reviewed and include the well documented examples of a sugar cane crushing mill and the identification of the marginally stable electromechanical system found in a CD-ROM player.

Photocurrent measurements for laterally resolved interface characterization.

A miniaturized optical set-up based on a CD-ROM player optic was developed for LAPS (light addressable potentiometric sensors). A focus of 2.6 microm was achieved using this easy to handle device. The lateral resolution of LAPS measurements can be improved by using GaAs as the semiconductor material instead of Si. The diffusion length of the minority charge carriers was determined to be smaller than 3.1 microm. A new method called SPIM (scanning photo-induced impedance microscopy) is described. Using this technique, the impedance of thin films can be measured with lateral resolution.

Adult Airway Management

Adult Airway Management: Principles and Techniques, Rafael A. Ortega and Harold Arkoff. Norwood, MA: SilverPlatter Education, Inc., 1994, 250 pp, $175.00 individual, $495.00 library for a multimedia CD-ROM compact disc. Requirements: Windows PC--8 MB RAM, Microsoft Windows, version 3.1, hard disc with 4 MB free space, MS DOS 5.0 or later, MPC standard CD-ROM player, sound board, and speakers. Macintosh--8 MB RAM, system 7.0 or later, CD-ROM player, standard Mac color monitor, and Mac sound. This CD uses a multimedia approach demonstrating the equipment and techniques applied for airway management. It is designed for use with a personal computer by people with only basic computer skills. This CD covers a great deal of information in 17 chapters. Each chapter is minimal in text, is narrated well, and combines pictures, drawings, and video presentation. Similar to a textbook, the CD has a Table ofcontents consisting of 17 chapters with a total of 250 pages. Chapters vary in length from 2 to 47 pages. Chapters 1 and 2 discuss airway anatomy and evaluation of the airway. Chapter 3 jumps to causes and management of foreign body airway obstruction, followed by descriptions of endotracheal tubes and double-lumen tubes in Chapters 4 and 5. Adult Airway Management: Principles and Techniques includes a considerable amount of pediatric material, suggesting that a change in title might be less misleading. The airway is described from the nares to the carina. The bronchial anatomy was excluded. One of the factual errors was in the description of the four eminences in the aryepiglottic fold as being the arytenoids; later these are correctly noted to be the paired cuneiform and corniculate cartilages. The title of Chapter 12, "Translaryngeal Injection," would be better if changed to "Anesthesia and Analgesia of the Airway," as it describes different techniques of topical anesthesia and superior laryngeal and glossopharyngeal nerve blocks to abolish the pain, gag, and cough reflexes during awake oro-naso-tracheal intubation. Chapter 13, "What Is a Difficult Airway?" would also benefit from a title change and reorganization of the contents. This 47-page chapter devotes two pages to the American Society of Anesthesiologists algorithm for the difficult airway. The rest of the chapter describes various techniques applied to the management of the difficult airway. Six pages are devoted to the use of the esophageal obturator and esophageal-gastric tube airway, and four pages describes the Augustine guide, compared with three pages devoted to fiberoptic intubation, which includes description of the endoscopy mask and intubating airways. Chapter 15, "Extubation Criteria," not only covers the criteria applied for tracheal extubation, but also discusses extubation techniques, difficult extubation, complications of extubation, and prevention and treatment of complications during and after extubation. The usual textbook is intrinsically linear, with each chapter to be read straight through. Nonlinear books make excellent CDs, allowing searching and cross-referencing to be performed readily. The true multimedia approach should be multilevel and interactive, allowing each use of the CD to be a different experience, to access diverse but self-contained portions of information on each occasion. This CD on adult airway management goes only partway toward full use of the multimedia potential. The CD does include useful animation, film, and sound clips, but otherwise does not progress beyond being a commentary and slide show. In the next edition, the authors might consider the use of hypertext to explain difficult concepts or to hide less informative sections. Several of the links provided were imperfect in their execution and could be improved. In summary, the main menu is clear and gives good coverage of the CD's extensive contents. The optional use of video and sound clips allows the user additional insight not usually available in a book. The text is short and informative, each page designed to be self-contained. This is a good start for multimedia presentation of airway management. The authors are to be congratulated on their extensive review of this topic. Andranik Ovassapian, MD Colin Shanks, MD Department of Anesthesiology Northwestern University Medical School Anesthesiology Service V.A. Lakeside Medical Center Chicago, IL 60611

0.8 /spl mu/m CMOS analog front-end processor for 4/spl times/ speed CD-ROM

A CMOS analog front-end processor for a 4/spl times/ speed CD-ROM is designed and fabricated in a 0.8-/spl mu/m process. The IC consists of RF amplifiers, pulse reshaping circuits, an automatic power control circuit for laser diode, and a servo control signal generator which includes track and focus error detecting circuits. Experimental result shows that its RF performance is enough for 8/spl times/ speed CD-ROM. The circuit enables to design a true one chip 4/spl times/ speed and 8/spl times/ speed CD-ROM or DVD player in digital CMOS process technology.

Compact Disc Erasable (CD-E) with Ag–In–Sb–Te Phase-Change Recording Material

The compact disc erasable (CD-E) disc has been developed with Ag–In–Sb–Te phase-change recording material. The disc has been designed for recording at a speed twice that of conventional CD's. The CD-E disc has high modulation, high sensitivity, wide power margin after 1000 overwrite cycles and high reliability. It is readable using CD-ROM players and recordable using CD-R recorders with minimum modification.

Book Review Laparoscopic Inguinal Hernia Repair By James C. Rosser, Jr. CD-ROM Version M08.1.594 with pamphlet. System needed: Macintosh computer with a CD-ROM player (internal or external), with at least 8 MB of memory and 230-MB hard drive. St. Louis, Quality Medical, 1994. (Developed by Piedmont Systems.) $225 (single user).

Book Review Laparoscopic Inguinal Hernia Repair By James C. Rosser, Jr. CD-ROM Version M08.1.594 with pamphlet. System needed: Macintosh computer with a CD-ROM player (internal or external), with at least 8 MB of memory and 230-MB hard drive. St. Louis, Quality Medical, 1994. (Developed by Piedmont Systems.) $225 (single user).

The book as companion, the author as friend: Aldine octavos illuminated by Benedetto Bardon

Abstract Computer and telephone technology can transform the solidity of texts and images in the form of books as if to a gas with the qualities of a ghost, instantaneously transmissible throughout the world. For all the wealth of information available, the freedom of access to electronic texts is hindered by the need to plug into a cumbersome terminal, and the tangible sense of words on a page is lost. The desire to recapture the physical portability of the paperback is indicated in the recent introduction of the compact CD-ROM player.

CD-ROM player for business presentations

A portable CD-ROM player with compressed color graphics and sound was developed. The CD-ROM player, which provides a synchronized presentation function and a hyperlinked database function, is a personal multimedia tool for business presentations and educational publications. >

Food labelling and the visually impaired

An IFST-led Joint Working Group has developed a scheme to allow a visually impaired person to access the information on food labels, when shopping and in the home. The device would consist of a portable data storage and playback device, such as a CD-ROM player with product information stored on a compact disc, referenced by scanning a product bar code with a hand-held modified bar code scanner and delivered to the user by synthesized speech.

Developing an Instructional Workstation

A computer-based instructional workstation (IWS) is a means to: 1) integrate computer, video, and optical data storage technology into a single instructional system, 2) enable students to learn how to manage information and resolve problems by using the new technology available to them, and 3) help preservice and inservice teachers learn how to use these forms of technology to teach subject matter and information management skills. This workstation is a “problem-centered, information management” instructional system, suitable for individuals or small groups. It combines a microcomputer; video tape, video disc, and CD-ROM players; a video camera; and a printer with productivity, educational, and custom-designed software. An instructional workstation enables teachers and media specialists to focus on educational intents, processes and outcomes without the restrictions of discrete technologies. The system is flexible enough to provide multiple options in task selection, information presentation, and performance evaluation.

Patents and CD-ROM

CD-ROM offers a new and exciting information delivery mechanism that can provide a valuable extension to the power and resources that the patent professional needs. The ever increasing complexity of the information that has to be assimilated, analysed and compared means that better solutions are required. The growth in online databases is indicative of this and the potential of CD-ROM to complement and add to these resources will become increasingly important. The pundits are also projecting a big explosion in the amount of information available on CD-ROM so that dictionaries, directories and listings of various kinds will be produced. If this comes about then, in turn, it will add further value to the personal computer based ‘information station’. CD-ROM is believed by the pundits to usher in a new era of information storage and distribution. Patent information has a high ‘information value’ content that makes it an attractive area for the use of this technology. There is, therefore, a rapidly growing interest by the ‘patent information industry’ in CD-ROM. First of all it may be appropriate to briefly describe the technology. The disks are physically the same as the audio compact disk that many of us are now using in the home to obtain even higher hi-fi. The production process to produce a master and then stamped copies from the master is the same. The difference is that the digital data used to produce the master would have come from a computer systems rather than a recording studio. The CD-ROM mastering process would also embody an error checking stage which would result in an error rate on the final copy of better than 1 in 10 15. The information on the disk is permanently embedded and may not be amended or updated — hence the name CD-ROM: Read Only Memory. It is this aspect which determines the use of the technology as an information delivery medium. It therefore complements the magnetic disk storage systems. The disk would be read in a CD-ROM player that would be attached to a personal computer (PC), or other small computer system. This player differs from the domestic player in that the domestic player converts the digital data into an analogue signal for the hi-fi system whereas the CD-ROM player reads the digital data directly into the PC. Used in this way the 120 cm disk can hold approximately 550 million characters of information equivalent to some 1000 floppy disks or 1000 microfiche or 250 000 text pages in computer character form or 5000 pages in image form. The ‘Patent Information Industry’ served by companies such as Derwent, Pergamon InfoLine, Telesystemes and Internation Computaprint have all recognised the potential of using this technology to complement their current information services and many of them are actively progressing projects to this end. There is a high probability therefore that the ‘patent professional’ will be encouraged to adopt CD-ROM over the coming months. The wide acceptance of the medium would also assist others in using it to deliver data in this ‘intelligent’ form. There is potentially a classic chicken and egg situation. The information providers would be reluctant to adopt the medium until there is a population of CD-ROM players. The users — the patent professionals — will not obtain the players until the information is there in CD-ROM form. Fortunately the information providers believe sufficiently strongly in the technology to break this impasse and produce some disks.