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

_______________________________ 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

_____________________________ 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

___________________________ 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