Blast Corps is an action video game for the Nintendo 64, released
worldwide on December 22, 1997, in which the player uses vehicles to
destroy buildings in the path of a runaway nuclear missile carrier.
Through the game's 57 levels, the player solves puzzles by moving
objects and bridging gaps with the vehicles. The game was developed at
Rare by a small team of recent graduates over the course of a year. They
were inspired, in part, by the puzzle elements of Donkey Kong (1994).
Nintendo published and released Blast Corps to critical acclaim in March
1997 in Japan and North America, with a wider release at the year's end.
The game received several editor's choice awards and Metacritic's second
highest Nintendo 64 ratings of 1997, but sold below the team's
expectations at one million copies. Reviewers praised the game's
originality, variety, and graphics, but some critiqued its controls and
repetition. Reviewers of the 2015 Rare Replay retrospective compilation
noted Blast Corps as a standout title.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_Corps>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
856:
An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.9 struck the
eastern Alborz mountains of Persia, causing 200,000 deaths.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/856_Damghan_earthquake>
1769:
Having been soundly defeated in battle, the Qing dynasty agreed
to terms of truce, ending the Sino-Burmese War.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Burmese_War_(1765%E2%80%9369)>
1937:
The Lincoln Tunnel, connecting New York City to Weehawken, New
Jersey, opened.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Tunnel>
1987:
The Zimbabwe African National Union and Zimbabwe African
People's Union agreed to merge, bringing an end to the Gukurahundi, the
suppression of predominantly Ndebele civilians by the 5th Brigade.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gukurahundi>
1997:
Hussein Farrah Aidid relinquished the disputed title of
President of Somalia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_Farrah_Aidid>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
etendue:
(optics) A conserved property of the light in an optical system which
characterizes how "spread out" the light is in terms of angle and area:
it is the product of its cross-sectional area (normal to the direction
of propagation) and the solid angle it subtends.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/etendue>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I think each of us knows his own mystery with a knowing that
precedes the origins of all knowledge. None of us ever gives it away. No
one can. We envelop it with talk and hide it with deeds. Yet we always
hope that somehow the others will know it is there, that a mystery in
the other we cannot know will respond to a mystery in the self we cannot
understand. The only full satisfaction life offers us is this sense of
communion. We seek it constantly. Sometimes we find it. As we grow older
we learn that it is never complete and sometimes it is entirely
illusory.
--Kenneth Rexroth
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rexroth>