L: Types beginning with L

[Bytor]

LSG: Life Simulation Games are games where for the most part you are living/controlling the life of either a type of human or a pet/animal. You will basically control almost every aspect of your character (sim) including but not limited to social interactions, economic situations, climatic scenarios etc. The idea is to further your sim's growth in pretty much all aspects that would be furthered in real life situations. The basic idea is to keep your sim happy through various tasks and to fulfill it's wishes and desires. Typically these are one player games although with the advent of easy internet access a few, most notably Sims Online has made this into a huge MMO gaming experience. Most believe the first LSG game to be released was Little Computer People (made for the Apple II and Commodore 64 in 1985) however, SimAnt, released in 1991 was what many consider to be one if the original games in the genre which generated interest. Creatures, released in 1995 was perhaps the first true LSG type to come out. Certainly the turning point was in 2000 with the release of The Sims With the continued advent of easy, fast internet connections the distinction between LSG's and MMORPG is quickly becoming blurred, and although the Sims franchise is still alive there are few other true LSG games being promoted with much vigor.

[Bytor]

LGVG:Light Gun Video Games are games which by definition use a gun shaped controller to aim and shoot at various targets on the screen. These targets are typically animated and either some type of animal or vaguely manlike creature (such as zombies). The games also typically have assisted aiming built into the gameplay (referred to as "on rails") but the game itself determines the players various movements. This is, however, varied in different games, as in some the player will have unlimited movement while in others no
movement at all is possible. These games are labeled as light gun shooters because of a very simple reason. The controller emits a light source which causes the game to react in certain ways as defined by the parameters of the game. The genre itself has been around since the 1930's (with the release of the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite). However, the first commercially available system to feature the light gun was the the Magnavox Odyssey (although many other systems also later included one) There were several games released in the late 70's (Battle Shark released by Nintendo and Crossfire by Taito in 1977) being two popular ones. The genre exploded in 1984 with Nintendo's release of Duck Hunt and continued to gain popularity with what is thought to be the first scrolling game Cycle Shooting (released by Taito in 1986) and Starblade (released in 1991 by Namco which introduced 3-D graphics). The genre reached it's pinnacle in the 90's (Virtua Cop released in 94 by Sega) and Time Crisis (released in 95 by Namco and ported to the PSOne) being two fo the most populars. After 2000 few games for the genre were released. America especially has in recent years somewhat lost interest in the genre although Japan kept producing some releases (House of the Dead released in 2006 being one of the most popular) And pretty much in the past few years the genre has pretty much died out, due to compatibility issues with modern televisions and general lack of interest.