Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the first Age of Empires video game released?
Age of Empires is a series of historical real-time strategy video games, originally developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Studios. The first title of the series was Age of Empires, released in 1997. Seven titles and three spin-offs have been released.
Empire Earth is a real-time strategy video game developed by Stainless Steel Studios and released on November 23, 2001. It is the first game in the "Empire Earth" series.
BioWare was given the opportunity to work on another popular intellectual property, "Star Wars", when LucasArts approached them at the turn of the millennium.
"" released first on Microsoft's Xbox video game console in 2003. While it was not BioWare's first console game, it helped the studio break into the console market since Microsoft Game Studios wanted to partner with them on console exclusive titles, such as "Jade Empire" (2005) and "Mass Effect" (2007). In March 2006, BioWare expanded their operations and opened a new studio in Austin, Texas, to helm the development of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). In October 2007, American publisher Electronic Arts (EA) announced that it had acquired BioWare. Under EA, BioWare established the fantasy RPG series "Dragon Age", continued to release games in their science fiction RPG series "Mass Effect", and opened a new studio in Montreal. They also revisited the "Star Wars" franchise with BioWare Austin's MMORPG "" (2011).
Vinyl recordings of video game music find their origins in the 1970s with early experiments by Kraftwerk and albums such as Yellow Magic Orchestra's self-titled 1978 release sampling electronic music from the games "Circus", "Space Invaders", and "Gun Fight". In 1984, Haruomi Hosono released the first generally recognized video game soundtrack album, "Video Game Music", and the practice experienced its "golden age" in the mid-to-late 1980s with hundreds of releases including Buckner & Garcia's "Pac-Man Fever", Namco's "Video Game Graffiti", and Koichi Sugiyama's orchestral covers of the "Dragon Quest" series. The 1990s saw many fewer commercial releases and a shift to promo releases with increasing use of video game samples in rap and hip hop.
"Age of Empires" was a hit in the German market, where it debuted at #1 on 's sales rankings for the latter half of October 1997. After holding this position in the first half of November, it remained in Media Control's top 5 through the end of 1997. The following year, "Age of Empires" placed consistently in the top 3 through March, when it rose again to #1 in the last two weeks of the month. By the end of May, it had spent 28 consecutive weeks in Media Control's top rankings, with placements of fifth and eighth that month. "Age of Empires" proceeded to become the fourth-best-selling computer game in the German market during 1998's first nine months. It received a "Gold" award from the (VUD) in August, for sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Sales in the German market totaled 115,000 units by the end of September, and the VUD raised "Age of Empires" to "Platinum" status, for 200,000 sales, by November. At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, "Age of Empires" took home a "Gold" prize for revenues above €15 million in the European Union during 1998. It remained at 14th on Media Control's charts for the German region by January 1999, continuing a 60-week streak on the charts.
Prior to the completion of "Age of Empires", Ensemble Studios had signed a contract with Microsoft for a sequel. The design team chose to set "The Age of Kings" in the Middle Ages as a logical progression from the ancient era setting of "Age of Empires". The design team was conscious of attempting to capture the broad appeal of the first game without making the game's design too similar. Nonetheless, they attempted to appeal to the vast demographic who played "Age of Empires". "The Age of Kings"s design team intended to complete the game within a year by using code from the original and reusing the Genie game engine. Several months into the process they found they would not be able to complete a game of the quality they sought in that time. Ensemble Studios informed Microsoft they would need another year and instead created "", an easily developed expansion pack of "Age of Empires", as a compromise which could be released for Christmas 1998. To help meet the next year's deadline, additional programmers, artists, and designers were employed. To overcome another significant objection to "Age of Empires"—that of path finding—the team completely redesigned the game engine's movement system.
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is a video game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in . It is the sequel the original "Star Wars" for the NES. This is the second of three video games released under the "Empire Strikes Back" title for home video game systems. It was preceded by a and succeeded by "" for the Super NES.
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is a scrolling shooter video game written by Rex Bradford for the Atari 2600 and published by Parker Brothers in 1982. It was the first licensed "Star Wars" video game. The game was released in 1983 for the Intellivision.
The team was less successful in resolving other issues; programmer Matt Pritchard complained following the release of "Age of Empires" that there was still no process by which patches could be issued. Extensive cheating in multiplayer games of "Age of Empires" came as a result of several bugs in the game, which resulted in Microsoft promising Ensemble Studios there would be a patch process for "The Age of Kings". On release, there were several bugs that needed immediate attention, but the patch process was not yet ready. The first patch was released 11 months later.
Ensemble Studios developed the "Age of Empires" game series of real-time strategy titles, comprising "Age of Empires", "" and "Age of Empires III". They also released "Age of Mythology", a spin-off from the original series. Expansion packs were also released for all their games including two for "Age of Empires III". Their last release was the real-time strategy game called "Halo Wars" for Xbox 360.
Reception of "The Age of Kings" was highly positive. The significant number of new features was praised, as were the gameplay improvements. The Age of Kings received "universal acclaim", according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. Three months after its release, two million copies of "The Age of Kings" had been shipped, and it topped sales charts in seven countries. The game won multiple awards and is today considered a classic of its type, having had a significant impact on future games in its genre. Both the original "Age of Empires II" and the expansion pack were later released as "The Gold Edition".
Age of Empires (AoE) is a history-based real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, and the first game in the "Age of Empires" series. The game uses the Genie Engine, a 2D sprite-based game engine. The game allows the user to act as the leader of an ancient civilization by advancing it through four ages (the Stone, Tool, Bronze, and Iron Ages), gaining access to new and improved units with each advance.
"MiG Alley" was developed by Rowan Software and published by Empire Interactive in 1999. In 2001, when Rowan was shut down by Empire Interactive, the developers released the source code to allow the community to continued the game's support on their own. The release happened with permission from Empire Interactive under the "Empire Interactive License", and didn't include the textures and landscape detailing.
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh, it is the second game in the "Age of Empires" series. An expansion, "", was released in 2000.
The first game in the series is based on the video game "Age of Empires III", and was originally titled Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery before being renamed to Glenn Drover's Empires: The Age of Discovery in 2011 following the loss of the naming rights to the "Age of Empires" series. It was originally published in 2007 by Tropical Games, and is currently distributed by Drover's own publishing company, Eagle Games. The game may be played by up to five players, though pieces for a sixth player were available in limited supply, and are included in the "Builders Expansion", released in 2011 along with the renaming of the series.
Age of Empires: The Age of Kings is a turn-based strategy video game developed by Backbone Entertainment and published by Majesco Entertainment for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console.
Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs is the first expansion pack for the real-time strategy game "Age of Empires III". It was released on October 17, 2006 in the United States. The expansion pack was bundled with the full game of "Age of Empires III", called "Age of Empires III Gold Edition" on October 23, 2007. The Mac version was ported over, developed and published by Destineer's MacSoft. The full game for Mac was released on June 12, 2007 in the United States. It was followed by a second expansion pack to the original game called "".
Galactic Empire is a strategy video game written by Doug Carlston for the TRS-80 and released 1980. It is the first game in the "Galactic Saga" and became first game published by Brøderbund which was, in fact, created for the purpose of publishing the game. "Galactic Empire" was ported to the Apple II and the Atari 8-bit family and followed by three sequels. The game was also published by Adventure International.
In June 2017, Adam Isgreen, creative director of Microsoft Studios announced "Age of Empires: Definitive Edition" at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017. It features overhauled graphics with support for 4K resolution, a remastered soundtrack, and other gameplay improvements, and was planned to be released on October 19, 2017, but was delayed until February 20, 2018. "Age of Empires: Definitive Edition" was released through the Windows store and was met with mixed or average reviews and weighted score of 70 out of 100 in Metacritic. PC Gamer gave the game 60/100, calling the game "solid remake of a game past its time". GameSpot gave the game 6/10, praising its 4K graphics and upgraded soundtrack but criticizing old problems still persisting.
The game quickly achieved cult status after it went out of print when SPI folded and was bought by TSR. A DOS computer version of the board game was released around 1990 under the name "Rise of the West". TSR and its subsequent owners have sold the rights to a number of games to other publishers; Decision Games bought the rights to Empires of the Middle Ages, and updated and re-released the game in 2004.
Age of Empires, released on October 26, 1997,[1] was the first game in the series, as well as the first major release from Ensemble Studios.[2] It was one of the first history-based real-time strategy games made,[3] utilizing the Genie game engine. GameSpot described it as a mix of Civilization and Warcraft.[4] The game gives players a choice of 12 civilizations to develop from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. The expansion pack, The Rise of Rome, published by Microsoft on October 31, 1998, introduced new features and four new civilizations, including the Romans. Although the two games had contained many software bugs, patches resolved many of the problems.[5][6]
"Age of Empires" was also successful worldwide, according to Microsoft. It was released in 55 countries during its first four months, and over 650,000 copies were shipped globally by December 12. Microsoft reported that it was consistently the top-selling computer strategy title in the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom through January 1998. Globally, the game sold-through 850,000 units by February. 
Bill Jackson was an engineer and producer at Ensemble Studios and worked on the hit PC real-time strategy games "Age of Mythology" and "Age of Empires III" as well as the pioneering console strategy game "Halo Wars" (where he got his first producer credit). When Ensemble shut down after releasing "Halo Wars", Jackson co-founded a new company called Bonfire Studios with David Rippy, Scott Winsett, and Stephen Rippy. Jackson took a senior creative role at the developer. Bonfire created the mobile game "We Farm" for mobile publisher ngmoco.
In the 2000s, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) owned the license for all "Star Wars"' collectible card and roleplaying games. When the license expired in May 2010, WotC declined the offer to renew it. In August 2011 Fantasy Flight Games acquired the license to produce "Star Wars" related games from Lucasfilm Ltd. Upon acquisition, Fantasy Flight announced two "Star Wars" gaming products: the miniatures game "X-Wing" and the card game "Star Wars: The Card Game". A role-playing game was rumored to be in the works until a year later, in August 2012, when the Fantasy Flight announced the publication of "Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. Edge of the Empire" was to be the first standalone game in a series of three, constituting the Fantasy Flight Games "Star Wars" Roleplaying Game. The first installment of the "trilogy" was first sold in a beta version ("Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beta") in late 2012. The completed version of "Edge of the Empire", nearly double the size of the beta, was released on June 25, 2013. "Age of Rebellion"s beta version was released in October 2013, a beginner set released on April 25, 2014, and the final version of the game, the "Age of Rebellion" core rulebook, released on July 3, 2014. The third line of products, "Star Wars: Force and Destiny", for playing Jedi characters, was released in beta in September 2014.
Originally touted as "Civilization" meets "Warcraft", some reviewers felt that the game failed to live up to these expectations when it was released. Despite this, it received generally good reviews, and an expansion pack, titled "", was released in 1998. Both the original "Age of Empires" and the expansion pack were later released as "The Gold Edition". A sequel, "Age of Empires II", was released in 1999. "Age of Empires: Definitive Edition", a remastered version of the game, was released on February 20, 2018.