Character design of Final Fantasy

Although each installment of the Final Fantasy series is generally set in a different fictional world with separate storylines, there are several commonalities when it comes to character design, as certain design themes repeat themselves, as well as specific character names and classes. Within the main series, Yoshitaka Amano was the character designer for Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, Tetsuya Nomura was the character designer for Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIII, Yoshitaka Amano created and did the concept art for the characters while Toshiyuki Itahana was the final character designer for Final Fantasy IX, and Akihiko Yoshida was the character designer for Final Fantasy XII.

Visual character design

The series has often featured male characters with slightly effeminate characteristics, as well as female characters with slightly tomboyish, but still feminine, characteristics. This trend has generally increased as the series evolved. These characters are usually teenagers, which some critics have interpreted as an effort on the part of the designers to ensure the players identify with them. At the same time, some female characters have been increasingly designed to wear very revealing outfits. Square Enix has stated that a more rugged looking hero had been considered for Final Fantasy XII but had ultimately been scrapped in favor of Vaan, another effeminate protagonist. The developers cited scenaristic reasons and target demographic considerations to explain their choice. For Final Fantasy XIII, Square Enix settled on a female main character, described as a "female version of Cloud from FFVII." This aspect of Final Fantasy can also be seen in Sora, the protagonist of Kingdom Hearts, a crossover series featuring Final Fantasy and Disney characters.

Ancient (album)

Ancient is an album by Japanese new age artist, Kitarō, which was released in 2001.

The album was nominated for 44th Grammy Awards New Age Best Album in 2002.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Kitaro. 

Charts and awards

Personnel

References

External links

Power!

Power! (known as Critical Mass in Europe) is a computer game developed by Simon Francis in 1985 for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.

Plot

The player operates a rocket-powered hovercraft whose mission is to destroy an enemy transfer beam that is protected not only by long-distance enemy raiders and mines, but also molecular disorientation that sucks the energy from the player's attack craft.

Gameplay

The player may control the hovercraft in either a normal joystick operational mode or with vectored movement. When the player pushes forward on the joystick, the hovercraft accelerates, and when pulling back on the joystick, speed decreases.

Reception

In 1988, Dragon reviewed Power!, and gave the game 4 out of 5 stars.

References

External links

PoweredUSB

PoweredUSB, also known as Retail USB, USB PlusPower, and USB +Power, is an addition to the Universal Serial Bus standard that allows for higher-power devices to obtain power through their USB host instead of requiring an independent power supply or external AC adapter. It is mostly used in point-of-sale equipment, such as receipt printers and barcode readers.

History

PoweredUSB, as a proprietary variant of USB, was developed and proposed by IBM, Berg (now FCI), NCR and Microsoft between 1998 and 1999, with the last revision (0.8g) issued in 2004. The specification is not endorsed by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). IBM, who owns patents to PoweredUSB, charges a licensing fee for its use.

PoweredUSB was licensed by Hewlett-Packard, Cyberdata, Fujitsu, Wincor and others.

Implementation

PoweredUSB uses a more complex connector than standard USB, maintaining the standard USB 1.x/2.0 interface for data communications and adding a second connector for power. Physically, it is essentially two connectors stacked such that the bottom connector accepts a standard USB plug and the top connector takes a power plug.

Power (social and political)

In social science and politics, power is the ability to influence or control the behavior of people. The term "authority" is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to humans as social beings. In business, power is often expressed as being "upward" or "downward". With downward power, a company's superior influences subordinates. When a company exerts upward power, it is the subordinates who influence the decisions of their leader or leaders.

The use of power need not involve force or the threat of force (coercion). At one extreme, it closely resembles what an English-speaking person might term "influence", although some authors distinguish "influence" as a means by which power is used. One such example include soft power, as compared to hard power.

Much of the recent sociological debate about power revolves around the issue of its means to enable – in other words, power as a means to make social actions possible as much as it may constrain or prevent them. The philosopher Michel Foucault saw power as a structural expression of "a complex strategic situation in a given social setting" that requires both constraint and enablement.