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giant anteater

 
Dictionary: giant anteater

n.
A large tropical American anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) having an elongated narrow snout, long sticky tongue, and large shaggy tail.


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Games: Anteater
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Game Description

A precursor of Oil's Well, Anteater is an obscure, though delightfully addicting game in which players control an anteater's sticky tongue as it winds its way around a series of trickier and trickier underground anthill mazes, gobbling up ant larvae, ants, worms and queen ants. Eating a queen ant destroys all onscreen enemies. What sets this title apart from Pac-Man and other maze games is that the tongue stays tethered to the anteater, and players will lose a life if an enemy touches any part of the elongated tongue other than the tip. To avoid this, press the button to zip the tongue back into the anteater's mouth. When the game progresses from day to night (a visually cool scene), a spider will travel along the tongue toward the tip. Players should gobble up a queen ant before the spider reaches the tip of the tongue. Objects and characters are recognizable, but decidedly ordinary. The musical intro sounds like a synthesized keyboard, but the sound effects are merely adequate. Shear gameplay is definitely Anteater's best asset.
~ Brett Alan Weiss, All Game Guide

Roots & Influences

Ant Eater spawned many imitators such as Oil's Well, but this title probably stole many of its ideas from the gaming classic Pac-Man.
~ Paul Biondich, All Game Guide

Review: Overall

While games like Q-Bert were capturing people's imagination with gee-whiz special effects and graphics toward the front of the Arcade, Anteater sat in a back corner, hopeful for someone to pass by and pop in a quarter. Heaven help the player who ultimately did spend that twenty-five cents though, because one try of Anteater and you were hooked. It was such a gaming success because it focused on the important fundamentals of good design.

The tension inherent in the rules of the game makes all the difference. Tremendously straightforward in its concept, all of the permutations of what your tongue could or could not do forces you to really stay on top of the action on the screen. You can eat the ants with the tip of your tongue, but they can't touch any other part of it. You can only eat worms if you approach them from behind. Extending your tongue in the wrong direction blocks you from getting to other larvae.

All the while you're work against the clock, in this case is the rising and setting sun, to avoid having to deal with the pesky spiders. The game so addictive because it appears to be so easy and straightforward, yet is so hard to completely master. Your frustration compels you to try "just one more game," because you know there's a better effort awaiting if you just try this or that new technique.

This game could have been an all-time classic if it had adopted the traits of two of its contemporaries, Pac-Man and Q-Bert: great graphics and audio. The graphics in Anteater, while standard for their time, are nothing spectacular. The same can be said for the sound -- it's decent but not memorable. Anteater needed more of a personality, or a cameo character such as Q-Bert or Pac-Man. It's one of those games that only got the important part right: the gameplay itself.
~ Paul Biondich, All Game Guide

Review: Enjoyment

Lord, this game is addicting.
~ Paul Biondich, All Game Guide

Review: Graphics

Fairly standard fare. Psychedelic colors seem somewhat out of place.
~ Paul Biondich, All Game Guide

Review: Sound

Does the job adequately but doesn't extend much beyond that.
~ Paul Biondich, All Game Guide

Review: Replay Value

I could never get myself to spend just one quarter on this game, it beckons repeat plays.
~ Paul Biondich, All Game Guide

Review: Documentation

Standard fare.
~ Paul Biondich, All Game Guide

Production Credits

Designed and Programmed by: Chris Oberth
~ Paul Biondich, All Game Guide
WordNet: giant anteater
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: large shaggy-haired toothless anteater with long tongue and powerful claws; of South America
  Synonyms: ant bear, great anteater, tamanoir, Myrmecophaga jubata


Wikipedia: Anteater
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Anteaters
Northern Tamandua
(Tamandua mexicana)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Superorder: Xenarthra
Order: Pilosa
Suborder: Vermilingua
Illiger, 1811
Families

Cyclopedidae
Myrmecophagidae

Anteaters are the four mammal species of the suborder Vermilingua[1] commonly known for eating ants and termites.[2] Together with the sloths, they compose the order Pilosa. The name "anteater" is also colloquially applied to the unrelated aardvark, numbat, echidna, and pangolin.

Species include the Giant Anteater Myrmecophaga tridactyla, about 1.8 m (6 ft) long including the tail; the tamandua or collared Anteater Tamandua tetradactyla, about 90 cm (3 ft) long; and the Silky Anteater Cyclopes didactylus, about 35 cm (14 in.) long.

Contents

Classification

Order Pilosa

The Anteaters are more closely related to the armadillos than they are to any other group of mammals. There are three genera still living: the Giant Anteater, the Silky Anteater, and the Northern and Southern carnivore anteaters. There are also several extinct genera.

Evolution

Anteaters are one of the surviving families of mammals that occupied South America while it was geographically isolated from an invasion of animals from North America.

At one time, it was assumed that anteaters were related to aardvarks and pangolins because of their physical similarities to those animals, but it has since been determined that these similarities are not a sign of a common ancestor, but of convergent evolution. This is most evident through their powerful digging forearms and long, toothless tube-like snouts and tongues in order to make a living by raiding termite mounds. This similarity is the reason aardvarks are also commonly called "anteaters"; the pangolin has been called the "scaly anteater"; and the word "antbear" is a common term for both the aardvark and the giant anteater.

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References


 
 

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Games. Copyright © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Game Guide ® , a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Anteater" Read more