 Gaming consoles have come a long way, and have been through many changes. We've had the Atari and the classic Nintendo all the way up to the PS4, but have you heard of the 3DO, or the Vectrex? Well, now you have.
The first ever console The first ever console created is called the “Brown Box”. A german engineer named Ralph Baer and his co-workers designed the first ever video game that works on a television in 1967. The first game on it was what Baer called the “chase game”. They built a tube that connected to the TV, which allowed the players to control their own different blocks. It was called the Chase Game, and it was like a game of tag. They later added in another 11 games and a fake gun, and it was known as the Brown Box technology. From then on, it was all uphill. The earliest successful consoles Baer’s technology was launched in 1972 by Magnavox and was called the odyssey video-game console. However, it was not as successful as Magnavox hoped. But, it was the start of a new generation. Nolan Bushnell and his company, Atari, created the first electronic arcade game called PONG in 1975. The game was so popular, the coin box would get jammed because of all the quarters that went into it. At the time, average arcade machines were making about 10 dollars a day, but PONG was making 40 dollars a day. Nolan Bushnell knew they just started a revolution. Atari later paired up with sears and released a home version of PONG. After that, along came the Japanese brand, Nintendo. The Rise of Nintendo Nintendo started selling consoles in the mid 80s with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It is an 8-bit video-game console that was released in North America in 1985. Later, in 1989, the Nintendo Gameboy was released as the first ever handheld game console. Nintendo has several other versions of the Gameboy including the Gameboy pocket and the Gameboy color. The first 3-Dimensional consoles The first 3D console ever made is the Playstation. This console was launched in 1995 by Sony. It was the start of the more modern consoles. It was a success. 5 years later, in 2000, The PS2 (Playstation 2) was released as the first 128-bit system. You could also put games from the Playstation 1 on it. A year after the PS2 came out, Microsoft released a console called the Xbox. Because of the use of PC technology in the build, the console allowed for greater performance. Xbox later came out with the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 1, and the Xbox 1 S. The Modern Consoles The PS4, Xbox 1 S and the Nintendo switch, the consoles that everyone are playing on right now. The PS4 is the newest available Playstation right now, with a storage size of 500GB. The game Spider-Man just got released on it, and Playstation is selling a Spider-Man bundle. Xbox, on the other hand, is making their money by selling the 1 S. Not a lot of money, though. The Xbox used to be the supreme gaming console, but ever since Sony released the PS4, they have been getting loads of money, selling a PS4 at a max of $400. Then, there is the Nintendo switch. It has many cool features. You can hook it up to your TV to play it at home, or take out the controller to play on it like a tablet. The controller also can cut down into 2 mini controllers, so you can play split-screen with your friends. You can also stick the two mini controllers onto the tablet, and that gives you the handheld mode of it. Future Gaming Consoles Sony is planning on releasing a PS5 one day, and coming out with a brand new controller design too. Microsoft also is one day going to come out with an Xbox 2 (Xbox 1 X). Maybe other brands could make a console in the future, like Verizon or google. Or Nintendo could make another hit. We’ll just have to wait and see. Story by Rowyn Esslinger  If you haven’t heard of Fortnite, you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of months! There are an estimated 125 million people who play Fortnite. And of those 125 million, the average player plays 6-10 hours a week! This article is all about the growth and popularity of Fortnite and how Epic Games, the company that produces Fortnite, makes all of their money.
Fortnite has two major versions. “Battle Royale”, one of the versions of Fortnite, is free to play. There’s not much of a storyline in “Battle Royale”. Basically, you and 99 other people battle it out in the alternate universe until there is only one man left. “Battle Royale” was released on July 25, 2017. Initially, Fortnite was only available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Today, Fortnite is also available for Mobile devices and Nintendo Switch. According to Metro, from July 2017 to January 2018, 2 million people have started playing Fortnite. Soon after, in February 2018, there were 3.4 million people playing Fortnite! As you can see, its popularity is growing every day. Fortnite “Save The World” is another version of Fortnite. In this version, 98% of the world turns into zombies and 2% of the world are people. Aside from storyline, the biggest difference between “Battle Royale” and “Save the World” is the price. While “Battle Royale” is free, the cheapest version of Save The World costs $40, says Tom’s Guide. Battle Royale is more popular than Save The World mainly because Battle Royale is free to play. Also, “Battle Royale” is probably more popular because it can be played on mobile devices and Nintendo Switch, but Save The World cannot. So, how does Epic Games make all of their money? Epic Games makes all of their money mainly by in-game purchases, such as different outfits (or skins) and dance moves. A battle pass can be purchased for $10 and comes with a lot of items that can be unlocked depending on how many challenges you complete and how much you play. Fortnite has also just had a new “Support a Creator” event where when you buy V-Bucks, Fortnite “money”, to support the content creator of your choice. A financial education company Lend EDU took a survey of 1,000 Fortnite players and found that 68.8% of players have spent at least some money on Fortnite. The average spending by a player on Fortnite is at least $84.67 or more. Recode says that mobile purchases alone total up to $1.8 million a day! Epic Games makes tons of money. But some of that money goes to a good cause! Epic Game’s founder, Tim Sweeney, spends a lot of his money protecting forests in North Carolina! In fact, according to Money Magazine, he owns and protects 35,000 acres of land in Western North Carolina. Also, Epic Games' main headquarters is in Cary, NC! Tim Sweeney is not only an environmentalist, he’s a car enthusiast too. He owns a Ferarri, a Porsche, a Lamborghini, and a Corvette. Don’t feel bad if you’ve spent a lot of money on Fortnite, just know that at least some the money you are spending is going towards protecting forests! Story by Tate Lloyd Image link: Image  Have you ever wondered why Google is the search engine you use? Or why Google overcame yahoo and other search engines? You may wonder are there any other search engines? There are a lot of factors of why Google is the most popular, but there are a few main factors.
In the beginning of the search engine war, when search engines were being made, Lycos and Alta Vista where the first search engines. They are now severely outdated and look sketchy. But then in 1997 some students at Stanford found google and found it was better than AltaVista and Lycos, according to lowendmac.com. Why, you may ask? Well, Google was much more organized and had less random clutter. Then in 2003, Google and Yahoo were at the peak of their war to be the best search engine. Obviously, there was winner because we use google, so obviously they won. There are a lot of factors why Google won, but a major one was each engines filing system. First of all, filing systems are the things that allow the company to add new stuff and keep it organized. Google made their own, while Yahoo used a thing called Netapp. Netapp was good at first but it caused some inefficiencies, and NetApp was taking a big chunk of revenue, so google was making more money. And so Google won the search engine war. According to lorriballen.com, Google keeps improving and it is the best search engine for small businesses because they are always improving. Google's whole business is built on being the best search engine. I was researching some other search engines, and I found a lot on Bing, which is Microsoft's search engine. To be honest Google and Bing petty much look the same except for a few different little touches and details. Fo one, when you go one bing you get a really cool image like one day I had a picture of the monarch butterflies migrating. Also, one perk about Bing is the video search. So at Google if you search up a video you get 3 videos on bing you can get up to 9 videos. In conclusion, Google won the search engine and war and is still the top on the search engines, and probably will be until Microsoft figures out how to make Bing better than Google. I use bing and google for different things for a lot of different reasons. Story by Garrison Hunt Do you like to draw? Well if you do, this is the month and activity for you. This month is INKTOBER. What is INKTOBER, you may be asking. INKTOBER is a challenge to draw every day of October with the words that mr.Jake parker or agent 44 gives you. Why and who? Mr.jake parker or also known as agent 44 started INKTOBER in 2009; he is a comics short-story creator, animator, illustrator, and concept artist. On the INKTOBER ,website it explains he created INKTOBER as a way to challenge himself and improve his ink skills. What was the outcome? What was the outcome of INKTOBER? Well the outcome of INKTOBER was positive, it is a very popular annual celebration. In its first year over 100,000 inked images were tagged on twitter by participating artists. Why should you try it? You should definitely try it because it is a very good opportunity for a better understanding inking and different inking techniques ,and its just plain fun and artistic. I highly recommend it. Here is the list of words for this year:  Story by Estrella Moreno-Maldonado
 You may have heard of Dippin’ Dots, the sweet ice cream pellets that many people now enjoy. Originally, they were not actually invented by an ice cream company or even someone in the food industry. The sweet treat, believe it or not, was invented by the microbiologist Curt Jones, who was working on a project in 1987 for a biotech company in Kentucky. His job at the time was to figure out more efficient forms of feed for farm animals. Jones eventually came upon the idea that freezing already existing cow feed at 350 degrees below zero would form little cow feed pellets. It may seem off, but cow feed was what led Jones to his discovery. Jones happened to be an avid ice cream lover. When he finished his farm animal feeding project, he took his idea of turning farm animal feed into pellets and applied it to ice cream. When Jones flash froze the ice cream he ended up with tiny pellets just like he did in cow feed. Thus the sweet pellets we now know as Dippin Dots were born.
Jones was born and raised on a farm near Grand Chain, Illinois. Even as a kid, Jones was a bit of a businessman. At a young age, Jones had begun a small business by fixing radios, tending to other peoples' barns, and sometimes even broom making with his grandpa’s tools and equipment. After graduating high school, Jones went to college at Shawnee community college and received a BA and a MA in microbiology. After Jones established the company, he realized that the treat could not be sold in grocery stores due to the fact that they would melt in the freezers because they were not cold enough to house the frozen treat. So, Jones decided to sell the treat at fairs and other events like baseball games so the Dippin Dots could still be sold to the public. In 2002 the company started selling both the ice cream and their merchandise online. In 2002 the company was also said to be the fastest growing franchise and was voted number one for new franchise company. These accomplishments may seem small compared to the idea of ice cream pellets, but for the company these were huge! So whether or not you think this sweet treat is the ice cream of the future or not, you have to admit their past is pretty interesting. Story by Stella Coffey Sources: history.com and CNN  Throughout history, women have been the considered the “second sex”, objects, and were told to “stay back and let the men do it”. Oppression like that was more apparent and obvious decades ago, and even more so, centuries ago. Today it isn’t as easy to see, but it is still there, and it still affects women everywhere.
A century ago, women's day to day lives looked a lot different. Back then, women weren’t, “ considered a ‘person’ in the eyes of the law,” says The Telegraph. Women weren’t allowed to vote, serve in a jury, or become a lawyer. “For centuries, women were told to stay at home, take care of the cooking and cleaning, and not to push the boundaries,” a quote from the Women's National History Museum claims. However, women’s rights movements, peaceful protests, and changes in legislation have made a huge difference in the injustices women face. Today, women have achieved and are able to do astounding things as social norms. Two years ago, Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be nominated as a presidential candidate by a major party, and even won the majority vote for president. But our past still lingers in the lives of women - especially young women. Sexualizing women has been one of the main challenges a lot of women have to face, especially teens. In school, dress coding is something teen girls face almost daily. So is being called derogatory names by peers, like slut, hoe, and whore. Feeling ashamed of your body, or embarrassed by wearing a shirt or shorts that are too short is something girls feel all the time. It isn’t right for society to be teaching young girls that they are a distraction to others, namely boys. Girls also aren’t just called out in school, even just walking down a street, sometimes women are catcalled and even harassed. Even though times have changed, from women not being allowed to vote to women winning the majority vote for president, there is still a lot more that needs to change. The sexualization of young women is real and felt by millions of girls, and change needs to come. Story by Olivia Agan  Hurricane Florence Hurricanes played a big role in the exploration of the new world, and caused the colonies damage all over the Caribbean plus the east coast. The first recorded reference or sighting of a hurricane was actually made by Christopher Columbus off the coast of Hispaniola, when he encountered a tropical storm. But one of the first reference to a hurricane was in greek mythology after Poseidon supposedly lost Athens to Athena, and a cyclone came, witch is what a hurricane is called over there.
In two instances a hurricane destroyed Spanish and French fleets, which slowed the exploration of the new world down. In 1635, the new colonial hurricane hit right in between Plymouth and Boston and destroyed a lot of houses and trees according to sun-sentinal.com, no further number on how many is given. Another example of the wreckage on the east coast happened in Virginia in 1749; a hurricane wrecked where present day Fort Monroe is. Then in 1752, a hurricane destroyed over 500 homes. Then last of the early hurricane references is the great hurricane of 1780, which killed an estimated 22,000 people in the Caribbean. There is a Greek myth about these things called ANEMOI THUELLAI, they are spirits of violent winds so that must be the greeks reason for hurricanes, They're also known as harpies (female) and dominoes (male), they are the sons and daughters of the hurricane giant Typhoeus, according to theoi.com. Huracan is a Mayan god. His name is where the word hurricane came from. He is the Mayan god of natural disaster, they thought that he usef natural elements to cause disasters, according to mayansandtikal.com So over all, hurricanes have really affected the development of the world. With hurricanes like Harvey and Florence, we know the damage that they cause and they are not something to be reckoned with in our current world. Story by Garrison Hunt Sources: https://www.dogonews.com/2018/9/20/tropical-storm-florence-causes-widespread-flooding-in-the-carolinas Ever since I was a little kid, I thought that playing certain video games was bad because it would make me violent. Now that I’m older and most kids my age play violent video games, I know this to be not true. I believed it was true because social media was giving me the wrong information. I myself play violent games like Fortnite and I am not a violent person. In a Study in 2018 done by the University of York with over 3,000 participants, They found that video games do not start aggressive behaviors/tendencies. This isn't the only study done with these sort of results. A Study by Whitney Decamp, A professor at Western Michigan University, says “the evidence points to either no relationship between playing video games and violent behavior or an insignificant link between the two.” He also says that the reason some studies come up with the result of violent video games causing aggression is because aggressive people tend to play them in the first place. Not that the game is making them violent. Most parents don't let their kids play violent video games like Fortnite or Call of Duty because of the violence, but almost all video games have some sort of violence. For example, Pokemon has violence. In Pokemon, you are putting 2 creatures up to fight until one is knocked out. Another example is Mario. In every Mario game, Mario runs and crushes goomba after goomba. Then he fights bowser, most of the time knocking him into lava and in the newest Mario game Super Mario odyssey, Mario takes control of Bowser then leaves him on the moon. Those are just a few examples of games that you wouldn't think have violence. Most Parents let their kids play those games and you don't see people who play those games having aggressive behaviors.
 Image from TalkSpace.com Have you heard of the feminist movement? In 2018, you could ask anyone what a feminist is and they would know. The definition of feminism is “the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes,” or in simpler terms, somebody who supports the fight for women to be treated equally. Throughout time, feminism has always been present, but in the past decade, society has become more familiar with the idea.
One of the biggest causes for the sudden growth of feminists was the #metoo movement. Social media has always been a platform used to share and connect, but after Alyssa Milano shared the hashtag “me too” in support of friend Rose McGowan’s allegations of sexual harassment against Harvey Weinstein, the social world was forever changed. Women used this form of communication to reach out and share stories about how they were mistreated by men in power. This was the day when feminism had a positive major uprising. Twitter immediately blew up with posts using the hashtag “me too”. An article I read about the Me Too movement, written by a social media company called Envi, said, “For the first time, we are able to "call out" politicians, companies, and leaders about their shortcomings.” Today the #metoo movement has gotten men fired and charged for their crimes. #Metoo is still present and helping women worldwide speak up for their rights. Social media has changed the world of feminism, but what was this idea before it could be shared on the web in seconds? Society believes that we have had 4 waves of feminism. With each wave, the movement has taken huge steps and grown dramatically. The first wave lasted from the 1830’s to the early 1900’s. This was the period of time when women realized that they should have the same voting rights as men. When the second wave started, World War 2 was in full swing and women had to take over the recruit’s jobs. Women finally had the opportunity to be employed and paid! The third wave took place from 1990’s to the early 2000’s. Feminism branches out into multiple categories. They all focused on the same outlook; women earning equal pay to men. The fourth wave of feminism is ever present. Social media is influencing our world and spreading messages of equality. Story by Lily Crum Sources: https://www.envimarketing.com/blog-interface/2017/10/31/how-social-media-is-changing-the-feminist-movement https://www.instyle.com/news/who-started-me-too-movement https://www.dictionary.com/browse/feminism?s=t https://www.progressivewomensleadership.com/a-brief-history-the-four-waves-of-feminism/ IMAGE: https://www.talkspace.com/blog/2017/08/mental-health-feminist-issue  90s fashion trends Over the decades clothing has changed drastically. For example, in the 1980s style was widely and heavily influenced by music. According to The Jerusalem Post, “style in the 1980s was influenced a lot by music.” Over the years along with the time, the trends have changed too. In the 1980s the heavy influence was music, including punk rock, rap, and heavy metal music. Women's trends were much different. They wore big hair and big jewelry. Surely lots of bright colors as well. Another example of how music influenced clothing trends was, in the 1980s, if you were involved and interested in punk rock, then you may like to wear a lot of black. Also, men and women would be a lot of fitness clothing which is similar to the present day where many people wear fitness clothing.
In the 90s, the trends were fun! In the 90s people liked to wear a lot of different fun things including mood rings and roller blades. Girls clothing trends included plaid and barbie dresses. These trends are similar today because people love to wear plaid and love to bring back the trends of the past. Girls and adult clothing have changed and even fitness clothing has trends that are coming back. In the 1990s fitness trends included bike shorts which are coming back, just look at Kylie Jenner! Even celebrities are bringing back the great trends of the 90s. The trends from the past are clearly coming back, let's take a look at some of the trends in the 90s that are popular today. For example, mom jeans are so popular today, I even have a pair! Could you imagine someone walking around with mom jeans and a plaid shirt, then going to work out in bike shorts? Of course, I could! But really all those things are trends out of other decades that are coming back to the current day. So overall fashion trends have changed from some decades but the trends of the present day are a spin-off of other decades like the 90s that are coming back around! Story by Brooke Darby Sources: https://www.jpost.com/Israeli-women/How-Grunge-influenced-the-way-we-dress-477886 https://www.complex.com/style/the-90-greatest-90s-fashion-trends/ |
