title: Priest (2011 film)

text: Priest and Hicks arrive at Nightshade Reservation where humans called Familiars, people infected with a pathogen that makes them subservient to the vampires, live alongside a number of the surviving vampires. After a fierce battle, the pair discovers that most of the vampires have taken shelter in Sola Mira, which was thought to have been abandoned after the war. Priestess, one of Priest's team during the failed attack on the Hive, joins them at Sola Mira. The trio destroys a Hive Guardian vampire, then discover that the vampires have bred a new army and dug a tunnel out of the mountain towards a town called Jericho. The other three Priests have arrived at Jericho just as night falls and an armored train arrives, unleashing hundreds of vampires upon the population. The vampires are led by a powerful and mysterious human wearing a black hat (Karl Urban). When the three Priests reject Black Hat's offer to join him, he kills them all.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: The next morning, Priest, Priestess and Hicks arrive in Jericho and discover the town empty and the three dead Priests crucified. Priest and Priestess share an intimate moment when she confesses her feelings for him, hoping that now that Shannon has died, he would no longer feel bound to her. Priest gently refuses. Priest realizes that the vampires have been using the trains to travel by day and attack the free towns by night, with the walled cities at the end of the train line. Hicks believes the cities are likewise protected by the sun, but Priest explains that the cities' massive clouds of smoke and ash have permanently deprived them of sunlight. If the train reaches one of the cities, the attack will be a slaughter.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: Hicks, who is in love with Lucy, threatens Priest, believing that Priest intends to kill her if she has been infected by the vampires. Priestess explains that he cannot do so, because Lucy is actually Priest's daughter, and that Owen stepped in as a husband and a father when Priest was taken by the Church. Lucy was never told the truth about her parentage.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: While Priestess rushes ahead to plant a bomb on the railroad tracks, Priest and Hicks board the train to rescue Lucy. Battling vampires and Familiars, the two are finally overpowered by Black Hat just as they find Lucy. Black Hat is revealed as the priest who was lost in the attack on Sola Mira. After being captured, the vampire Queen gave him her blood, turning him into the first Vampire-Human hybrid who can survive the sun. As Priest fights Black Hat, Lucy discovers the truth about her parentage. On the tracks ahead of the train, Priestess battles several Familiars, but one of them destroys the detonator for the explosives. Instead, she mounts the explosives on her motor bike and drives it into the train engine. The explosion and subsequent derailment kills the vampires and engulfs Black Hat in flames, while Hicks, Priest, Priestess, and Lucy are able to escape.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: Priest returns to the city and confronts Monsignor Orelas during Mass, telling him of the burnt train containing the vampires' bodies, but not the Queen's. He proves this by throwing a vampire head onto the floor and shocking everyone in the room. Orelas still refuses to believe him, declaring that the war is over, while Priest says that it is just beginning. Outside the city Priest meets Priestess, who confirms that other Priests have been notified and will meet them at a rendezvous point. Priest sets off into the sunset.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: "Priest" is directed by Scott Stewart and written by Cory Goodman. The film is based on the supernatural horror and action Korean comics "Priest" by Min-Woo Hyung.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: The project was first announced in March 2005 when the studio Screen Gems bought Goodman's spec script. In January 2006, Andrew Douglas, who directed "The Amityville Horror", was attached to direct "Priest". In June 2006, actor Gerard Butler entered negotiations to star as the title character, and filming was scheduled to start in Mexico on , 2006. Filming did not proceed and, by three years later, director Douglas had been replaced by Stewart, while Butler had been replaced in the starring role by Paul Bettany. Stewart and Bettany had previously worked together in the Screen Gems film "Legion".


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: With a budget of $60 million, filming began in August 2009 in Los Angeles, California, and it concluded in November 2009. The film was the most expensive production from Screen Gems, to that date, and as of 2018 is still tied for third-most expensive, behind only "" and "".


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: Tokyopop flew Min-Woo Hyung to where production was taking place so the comics' creator could visit the art department and discuss the film with Stewart. The film diverges from the comics in following a different timeline of events and adding elements of the sci-fi western, cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic science-fiction genres. The director described "Priest"s vampires as not being human in origin, and humans bitten by vampires became familiars instead. There are different forms of vampires, such as hive drones, guardians, and a queen. Since the vampires were intended to move quickly, they were fully computer-generated for the film. While vampires are harmed by sunlight in most lore, the film's vampires are instead photosensitive, being albino cave-dwellers. Stewart said, "They are the enemy we don't really understand, but we fought them for centuries. They are mysterious and alien, with their own culture. You sense that they think and communicate, but you don't really understand what they are saying." The director also called "Priest" an homage to "The Searchers" with the title character being similar to John Wayne's character and the vampires being similar to the Comanche. The animated prologue for the film was created by American animator and director Genndy Tartakovsky.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: "Priest" was released in the United States and Canada on , 2011. The film's release date changed numerous times in 2010 and 2011. It was originally scheduled for , 2010, but it moved earlier to , 2010, to fill a weekend slot when another Screen Gems film, "", was postponed. When the filmmakers wanted to convert "Priest" from 2D to 3D, the film was newly scheduled for release on , 2011. It was delayed again to , 2011, so the film could attract summertime audiences.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: "Priest" was released outside the United States and Canada on , 2011, in four markets. It grossed an estimated over the weekend, with "decent debuts" of in Russia and in Spain. It performed poorly in the United Kingdom with under $700,000.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: The film was released in the United States and Canada on , 2011, in with 2,006 having 3D screenings. It grossed an estimated over the weekend, ranking fourth at the box office. Its performance was considered subpar compared to similar films in the "Underworld" series and "Resident Evil" series. To date, "Priest" has grossed an estimated , of which was from North America.


title: Priest (2011 film)

text: "Priest" was largely panned by critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 15% based on reviews from 101 critics and reports a rating average of 4.00 out of 10 with a consensus that ""Priest" is admittedly sleek and stylish, but those qualities are wasted on a dull, derivative blend of sci-fi, action, and horror clichés". At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 41 based on 13 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade audiences gave the film was a "C+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: RX 100 (film)

text: RX 100 is a 2018 Indian Telugu-language romantic action drama film written and directed by Ajay Bhupathi. The film stars Kartikeya and Payal Rajput with Rao Ramesh and Ramki playing the supporting roles.


title: RX 100 (film)

text: Siva is a well-behaved man in Atreyapuram, Andhra Pradesh, who meets Indu, the daughter of a local politician Viswanatham and they fall for each other. One day, Indu tells Siva that her father is planning to get her married to the guy named Mahesh and she tells him that they should not meet until she convinces her father.


title: RX 100 (film)

text: Fearing that Vishwanatham wouldn't accept their love, Siva asks Daddy to convince Vishwanatham to get them married. On the way to Viswanatham's house, Daddy meets with an accident and has been admitted in the hospital. Viswanatham disapproves of their love and gets Indu married to Mahesh against her wishes and sends her to US. Siva is also thrashed by Vishwanatham's goons when he tried to stop Indu's wedding. Enraged about losing Indu, Siva develops aggressiveness and starts destroying Vishwanatham's business. Siva learns that Indu has returned from US and creates a ruckus twice in front of her house.


title: RX 100 (film)

text: Daddy tells Siva's friend that when he had gone to Vishwanatham's house, he had overheard the conversation between him and Indu. To his and Vishwanatham's shock, Indu confesses that she was in love with Mahesh. Vishwanatham accepts Indu's love thinking that Mahesh would be better than Siva. After Daddy leaves the place, he met with an accident. It is revealed that Indu is a very self-absorbed woman who uses people for her needs and is predatory in her actions. Even though Vishwanatham knows the truth about Indu and chastises her for it, he still continues to harm Siva for her own good. Vishwanatham sends his men to warn Siva not to see Indu until she and her husband Mahesh leave for US, but Indu bribes them to kill Siva.


title: RX 100 (film)

text: One of Viswanatham's men stabs and reveals about Indu to Siva, who confronts Indu and curses her that her life is on his mercy and she is going to live with guilt forever. After this, Siva dies leaving Daddy devastated.


title: RX 100 (film)

text: Ashok Reddy, in an interview to "The Times of India", said that "Ajay brought us the story of this film during the release of Premato Mee Karthik. We were so impressed with the story because it is different, raw and native. Premato Mee Karthik is a family movie, so this was going to be a huge deviation. But we were confident about the story and Ajay both, so we began shooting in December last year. During the shooting too, the technicians working on the film liked the way the film was shaping up. That's where the positive buzz began."


title: RX 100 (film)

text: The songs were composed by Chaitan Bharadwaj and Smaran. The song "Pillaa Raa" became one of the biggest hits of Telugu. It is sung by Anurag Kulkarni and composed by Chaitan Bharadwaj.


title: RX 100 (film)

text: It became one of the few A-rated films in Tollywood with huge success at the box office. The film has collected a gross of in the first four days. The film collected a total share of .


title: RX 100 (film)

text: Baradwaj Rangan of "Film Companion South" called it "a generic angry young man's generic love story, until a solid twist turns everything on its head". Suhas Yellapantula of "The Times of India" stated "Take away the blood and gore and there's a story here. "RX 100" touches a rather unexplored subject but falters in its execution. You can't help but wonder why the director plays around with so many different camera angles and tries to create a dark setting. "RX 100" has sex, tears and a lot of blood, but the essence of the film is somewhere lost in between. Just like that "RX 100" bike which is in focus all the time, but in reality, is insignificant."


title: RX 100 (film)

text: Srivathsan Nadadhur of "The Hindu" wrote about the film that "Director Ajay Bhupathi's raw storytelling is a plus for "RX 100", the narrative borders on voyeurism at times, but the filmmaker displays enough maturity to not make it seem crass. His inexperience still shows, though, too many moments of nothingness, an indulgent screenplay goes overboard in exploring the angst of the male protagonist. The second hour is inconsistent, the intensity of a full-blown action-romance is amiss despite potent writing. The lead protagonist Karthikeya gets a dream role, yet it's too big a shoe to fill in his debut."


title: RX 100 (film)

text: The film was planned to be remade in Tamil with Aadhi Pinisetty but the film never entered production.


title: RX 100 (film)

text: The film was remade in Odia as "Premo Na Pagalopana". A film, announced to be remade in Hindi starring Tara Sutaria and debutant Ahan Shetty in March 2019, began filming on 6 August with title as "Tadap". Produced by Sajid Nadiadwala, directed by Milan Luthria and presented by Fox Star Studios, it released theatrically on 3 December 2021.


title: RX 100 (film)

text: Another film, which is touted to be a remake, is the Kannada film "Shiva 143", starring Dheeran Ramkumar and Manvita Kamath in the lead roles was released on 26th August 2022 in tehatres. It is produced by Jayanna and Bhogendhra, directed by Anil Kumar. In 2020, Ajay Bhupathi confirmed the sequel of the film.


title: Santhosh Narayanan

text: Santhosh Narayanan was born in Tiruchirappalli, India. He is the younger of two children. He was educated at RSK Higher Secondary School, Tiruchirappalli. Santhosh Narayanan completed his B.E., Computer Science & Engineering at J. J. College of Engineering and Technology, Thiruchirapalli. After completing his education, he worked as a recording engineer, arranger and programmer, before beginning to produce independent music and compose for films. He composed the music including two original songs for the Telugu short film "Advaitham", He was also part of the contemporary folk music band "La Pongal" in which he performed in a few live shows in 2009.


title: Santhosh Narayanan

text: He made his debut as an independent music director in the 2012 Tamil film "Attakathi" directed by Pa. Ranjith. He got the opportunity through its producer C. V. Kumar who saw him working in his studio. Santhosh composed a song in the Gaana genre for the film, "Aadi Pona Aavani", and gave a then-unknown Gana Bala, who had been singing gaana songs at funerals until then, the chance to sing it. Along with "Aadi Pona Aavani", a second gaana song, "Nadukadalula Kappala" was recorded for the film. Both songs went on to become popular, making Gana Bala a star, and were said to have brought back gaana to Tamil cinema. Sify wrote that the gaana songs were "one of the major highlight of the film" and Behindwoods called the "Attakathi" album an "experimental yet fresh attempt". Following "Attakathi", he composed the music for the films "Uyir Mozhi" and "Pizza", the directorial debuts of Raja and Karthik Subbaraj, respectively. All three albums, "Attakathi", "Uyir Mozhi" and "Pizza" were recorded and mastered by Leon Zervos at Studios 301 in Sydney Australia; furthermore, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra had performed for the soundtrack of "Pizza", which also saw Santhosh collaborating with Gana Bala again, albeit on a Blues number this time. For "Uyir Mozhi", some of the songs Santhosh had scored for a private album were used by the director. Santhosh's work in "Pizza" was positively reviewed. According to Sify, Santhosh Narayanan's music was a "major plus" of the film, and IBN Live described the score as "splendid". The song "Mogathirai" from the soundtrack album was also listed by Indiaglitz.com in their Top songs from 2012 list. Behindwoods at the end of 2012 wrote, "Santosh Narayanan brought a different sound to Tamil cinema this year. Even his gaana tracks in "Attakathi" were freshly produced and the soundtrack of "Pizza" was eclectic to say the least". He also won accolades that year: the Jaya TV 2012 award for Sensational Debutant Music Director for "Attakathi", and the Big Tamil Melody Award for Best Debut Music director for "Pizza". He worked on the black comedy film "Soodhu Kavvum" directed by the Director Nalan Kumarasamy next. Gana Bala was given a "gana-rap" in the film, "Kaasu Panam", which went on to become one of the most popular songs of the year. His work in the film earned him the Vijay Award for Best Background Score. His other releases of 2013 were "", a sequel to "Pizza", and "Billa Ranga", his first Telugu and only full-fledged Telugu project until date.


title: Santhosh Narayanan

text: Santhosh Narayanan worked exclusively on Tamil films. He had four soundtracks released that year, the first being the album to the romantic drama "Cuckoo". "Cuckoo"'s soundtrack was highly appreciated by critics who called it an "alluring and immersive album" and "the best soundtrack that composer Santhosh Narayanan has produced yet". The song "Manasula Soora Kaathey" from the album reached number one position in the Tunes all India charts, while Outlook named it one of South India's top songs of the year. The score received equal praise with Baradwaj Rangan terming it as "great", IANS as "life-affirming", Rediff as "sensational" and Sify as "outstanding". The next release was Karthik Subbaraj's second directorial, "Jigarthanda", which was promoted as a "musical gangster story". While "Cuckoo" featured live instrumentation, Santhosh Narayanan used electronic musical instruments for the recording in "Jigarthanda", who recorded almost all the songs in a studio in Sydney, Australia for nearly two months. The soundtrack and score featured a melange and fusion of several genres, including Gangsta rap, folk, electro. His work was well received again; while The Times of India, in its album review, wrote that "Santhosh Narayanan shows, yet again, that he is one of those composers to watch out for — both for his new sounds and tunes", The Hindu's Baradwaj Rangan stated that "his flamboyant score imbues even the weaker scenes with a Tarantinoesque swagger". After "Jigarthanda", he worked on the action-drama film "Madras". The Hindu described his score as "excellent". The soundtrack to "Enakkul Oruvan", the Tamil remake of the Kannada film "Lucia", for which he had composed the score, was his final 2014 release. The album was also lauded by critics. Behindwoods named him the "most promising among the younger composers".


title: Santhosh Narayanan

text: In 2015, he worked on "36 Vayadhinile", the Tamil remake of the Malayalam film "How Old Are You". Upcoming projects of Santhosh Narayanan include the next films of directors Karthik Subbaraj and Nalan Kumarasamy. In 2016, he composed songs for Sudha Kongara's bilingual sports drama "Irudhi Suttru"(filmed simultaneously in Hindi as "Saala Khadoos"). The Hindi adaptation film, "Saala Khadoos" however did not feature background score by Santhosh as Rajkumar Hirani, the co-producer of the film brought in composers Sanjay Wandrekar and Atul Raninga who had worked with him in "3 Idiots" and "PK" to compose the background score. "Kashmora" to be directed by Gokul, and "Manithan" were his other noted released in 2016 apart from "Kabali", the biggest Tamil project so far in his career. In 2016, a music critic from The Hindu labelled Narayanan as one of the three in "the new-age musical trio of Tamil cinema" alongside Sean Roldan and Pradeep Kumar.


title: Santhosh Narayanan

text: The year 2016 was one of the most packed years for Santhosh Narayanan. Six releases during the year including music compositions for "Iruthi Suttru", "Manithan", "Kadhalum Kadanthu Pogum", "Iraivi", "Kabali", "Kaashmora", "Kodi".


title: Santhosh Narayanan

text: In 2017, he composed for the Vijay-starrer "Bairavaa". Santhosh's next release was as a guest composer, in the film"Meyaadha Maan", a production venture of his Karthik Subbaraj. In May 2017, Santhosh signed for "Kaala", his second film for Superstar Rajinikanth. In 2018 he gave scored Karthik Subbarraj's silent thriller film "Mercury" and Vetrimaaran's "Vada Chennai", the latter being Santhosh's 25th as a composer. In 2020 with new projects which were "Kasada Thapara", Jeeva starrer "Gypsy" and "Penguin".


title: Santhosh Narayanan

text: He was involved with Dulquer Salmaan's 2021 Malayalam film "Salute", before being replaced by Jakes Bejoy. He also composed the soundtrack and film's score for Sarpatta Parambarai; It marked the composer's fifth consecutive film with Pa. Ranjith, since his and the director's debut film Attakathi (2012). According to Santhosh, he said that "the film is influenced by the aspects of Madras, as it is mostly about the descriptive and realistic portrayal of North Chennai, while the boxing culture during the 1970s also serve as the subplot".


title: Santhosh Narayanan

text: He worked with Maajja on independent music as "Enjoy Enjami" sung by Arivu, Dhee and himself which clocked 19 million views within one week of release making it the highest watched Tamil music video album and keeping now at 296 million views. Also on the music video Neeye Oli sung by rappers Shan Vincent de Paul, Navz-47 and himself. Neeye Oli also featured in Sarpatta Parambarai as the theme song. His upcoming releases are "Anel Meley Pani Thuli", "Gulu Gulu" and "Buffoon" in Tamil, "Dasara" in Telugu and "Pathonpatham Noottandu" and "Anweshippin Kandethum" in Malayalam.


title: Stained glass

text: Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensional structures and sculpture. Modern vernacular usage has often extended the term "stained glass" to include domestic lead light and "objets d'art" created from foil glasswork exemplified in the famous lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany.


title: Stained glass

text: As a material "stained glass" is glass that has been coloured by adding metallic salts during its manufacture, and usually then further decorating it in various ways. The coloured glass is crafted into "stained glass windows" in which small pieces of glass are arranged to form patterns or pictures, held together (traditionally) by strips of lead and supported by a rigid frame. Painted details and yellow stain are often used to enhance the design. The term "stained glass" is also applied to windows in enamelled glass in which the colours have been painted onto the glass and then fused to the glass in a kiln; very often this technique is only applied to parts of a window.


title: Stained glass

text: Stained glass, as an art and a craft, requires the artistic skill to conceive an appropriate and workable design, and the engineering skills to assemble the piece. A window must fit snugly into the space for which it is made, must resist wind and rain, and also, especially in the larger windows, must support its own weight. Many large windows have withstood the test of time and remained substantially intact since the Late Middle Ages. In Western Europe, together with illuminated manuscripts, they constitute the major form of medieval pictorial art to have survived. In this context, the purpose of a stained glass window is not to allow those within a building to see the world outside or even primarily to admit light but rather to control it. For this reason stained glass windows have been described as "illuminated wall decorations".


title: Stained glass

text: The design of a window may be abstract or figurative; may incorporate narratives drawn from the Bible, history, or literature; may represent saints or patrons, or use symbolic motifs, in particular armorial. Windows within a building may be thematic, for example: within a church – episodes from the life of Christ; within a parliament building – shields of the constituencies; within a college hall – figures representing the arts and sciences; or within a home – flora, fauna, or landscape.


title: Stained glass

text: During the late medieval period, glass factories were set up where there was a ready supply of silica, the essential material for glass manufacture. Silica requires a very high temperature to melt, something not all glass factories were able to achieve. Such materials as potash, soda, and lead can be added to lower the melting temperature. Other substances, such as lime, are added to rebuild the weakened network and make the glass more stable. Glass is coloured by adding metallic oxide powders or finely divided metals while it is in a molten state. Copper oxides produce green or bluish green, cobalt makes deep blue, and gold produces wine red and violet glass. Much of modern red glass is produced using copper, which is less expensive than gold and gives a brighter, more vermilion shade of red. Glass coloured while in the clay pot in the furnace is known as pot metal glass, as opposed to flashed glass.


title: Stained glass

text: Using a blow-pipe, a "gather" (glob) of molten glass is taken from the pot heating in the furnace. The gather is formed to the correct shape and a bubble of air blown into it. Using metal tools, molds of wood that have been soaking in water, and gravity, the gather is manipulated to form a long, cylindrical shape. As it cools, it is reheated so that the manipulation can continue. During the process, the bottom of the cylinder is removed. Once brought to the desired size it is left to cool. One side of the cylinder is opened. It is put into another oven to quickly heat and flatten it, and then placed in an annealer to cool at a controlled rate, making the material more stable. "Hand-blown" cylinder (also called muff glass) and crown glass were the types used in ancient stained-glass windows. Stained glass windows were normally in churches and chapels as well as many more well respected buildings.


title: Stained glass

text: This hand-blown glass is created by blowing a bubble of air into a gather of molten glass and then spinning it, either by hand or on a table that revolves rapidly like a potter's wheel. The centrifugal force causes the molten bubble to open up and flatten. It can then be cut into small sheets. Glass formed this way can be either coloured and used for stained-glass windows, or uncoloured as seen in small paned windows in 16th- and 17th-century houses. Concentric, curving waves are characteristic of the process. The centre of each piece of glass, known as the "bull's-eye", is subject to less acceleration during spinning, so it remains thicker than the rest of the sheet. It also has the pontil mark, a distinctive lump of glass left by the "pontil" rod, which holds the glass as it is spun out. This lumpy, refractive quality means the bulls-eyes are less transparent, but they have still been used for windows, both domestic and ecclesiastical. Crown glass is still made today, but not on a large scale.


title: Stained glass

text: Rolled glass (sometimes called "table glass") is produced by pouring molten glass onto a metal or graphite table and immediately rolling it into a sheet using a large metal cylinder, similar to rolling out a pie crust. The rolling can be done by hand or by machine. Glass can be "double rolled", which means it is passed through two cylinders at once (similar to the clothes wringers on older washing machines) to yield glass of a specified thickness (typically about 1/8" or 3mm). The glass is then annealed. Rolled glass was first commercially produced around the mid-1830s and is widely used today. It is often called cathedral glass, but this has nothing to do with medieval cathedrals, where the glass used was hand-blown.


title: Stained glass

text: Architectural glass must be at least of an inch (3 mm) thick to survive the push and pull of typical wind loads. However, in the creation of red glass, the colouring ingredients must be of a certain concentration, or the colour will not develop. This results in a colour so intense that at the thickness of inch (3 mm), the red glass transmits little light and appears black. The method employed is to laminate a thin layer of red glass to a thicker body of glass that is clear or lightly tinted, forming "flashed glass".


title: Stained glass

text: A lightly coloured molten gather is dipped into a pot of molten red glass, which is then blown into a sheet of laminated glass using either the cylinder (muff) or the crown technique described above. Once this method was found for making red glass, other colours were made this way as well. A great advantage is that the double-layered glass can be engraved or abraded to reveal the clear or tinted glass below. The method allows rich detailing and patterns to be achieved without needing to add more lead-lines, giving artists greater freedom in their designs. A number of artists have embraced the possibilities flashed glass gives them. For instance, 16th-century heraldic windows relied heavily on a variety of flashed colours for their intricate crests and creatures. In the medieval period the glass was abraded; later, hydrofluoric acid was used to remove the flash in a chemical reaction (a very dangerous technique), and in the 19th century sandblasting started to be used for this purpose.


title: Stained glass

text: There are a number of glass factories, notably in Germany, the United States, England, France, Poland and Russia, which produce high-quality glass, both hand-blown (cylinder, muff, crown) and rolled (cathedral and opalescent). Modern stained-glass artists have a number of resources to use and the work of centuries of other artists from which to learn as they continue the tradition in new ways. In the late 19th and 20th centuries there have been many innovations in techniques and in the types of glass used. Many new types of glass have been developed for use in stained glass windows, in particular Tiffany glass and Dalle de verre.


title: Stained glass

text: The primary method of including colour in stained glass is to use glass, originally colourless, that has been given colouring by mixing with metal oxides in its melted state (in a crucible or "pot"), producing glass sheets that are coloured all the way through; these are known as "pot metal" glass. A second method, sometimes used in some areas of windows, is flashed glass, a thin coating of coloured glass fused to colourless glass (or coloured glass, to produce a different colour). In medieval glass flashing was especially used for reds, as glass made with gold compounds was very expensive and tended to be too deep in colour to use at full thickness.


title: Stained glass

text: Another group of techniques give additional colouring, including lines and shading, by treating the surfaces of the coloured sheets, and often fixing these effects by a light firing in a furnace or kiln. These methods may be used over broad areas, especially with silver stain, which gave better yellows than other methods in the Middle Ages. Alternatively they may be used for painting linear effects, or polychrome areas of detail. The most common method of adding the black linear painting necessary to define stained glass images is the use of what is variously called "glass paint", "vitreous paint", or "grisaille paint". This was applied as a mixture of powdered glass, iron or rust filings to give a black colour, clay, and oil, vinegar or water for a brushable texture, with a binder such as gum arabic. This was painted on the pieces of coloured glass, and then fired to burn away the ingredients giving texture, leaving a layer of the glass and colouring, fused to the main glass piece.


title: Stained glass

text: "Silver stain", introduced soon after 1300, produced a wide range of yellow to orange colours; this is the "stain" in the term "stained glass". Silver compounds (notably silver nitrate) are mixed with binding substances, applied to the surface of glass, and then fired in a furnace or kiln. They can produce a range of colours from orange-red to yellow. Used on blue glass they produce greens. The way the glass is heated and cooled can significantly affect the colours produced by these compounds. The chemistry involved is complex and not well understood. The chemicals actually penetrate the glass they are added to a little way, and the technique therefore gives extremely stable results. By the 15th century it had become cheaper than using pot metal glass and was often used with glass paint as the only colour on transparent glass. Silver stain was applied to the opposite face of the glass to silver paint, as the two techniques did not work well one on top of the other. The stain was usually on the exterior face, where it appears to have given the glass some protection against weathering, although this can also be true for paint. They were also probably fired separately, the stain needing a lower heat than the paint.


title: Stained glass

text: "Sanguine", "carnation", "Rouge Jean Cousin" or "Cousin's rose", after its supposed inventor, is an iron-based fired paint producing red colours, mainly used to highlight small areas, often on flesh. It was introduced around 1500. Copper stain, similar to silver stain but using copper compounds, also produced reds, and was mainly used in the 18th and 19th centuries.


title: Stained glass

text: "Cold paint" is various types of paint that were applied without firing. Contrary to the optimistic claims of the 12th century writer Theophilus Presbyter, cold paint is not very durable, and very little medieval paint has survived.


title: Stained glass

text: As well as painting, scratched sgraffito techniques were often used. This involved painting a colour over pot metal glass of another colour, and then before firing selectively scratching the glass paint away to make the design, or the lettering of an inscription. This was the most common method of making inscriptions in early medieval glass, giving white or light letters on a black background, with later inscriptions more often using black painted letters on a transparent glass background.


title: Stained glass

text: Ordinary soda-lime glass appears colourless to the naked eye when it is thin, although iron oxide impurities produce a green tint which becomes evident in thick pieces or with the aid of scientific instruments. A number of additives are used to reduce the green tint, particularly if the glass is to be used for plain window glass, rather than stained glass windows. These additives include manganese dioxide which produces sodium permanganate, and may result in a slightly mauve tint, characteristic of the glass in older houses in New England. Selenium has been used for the same purpose.


title: Stained glass

text: While very pale green is the typical colour of transparent glass, deeper greens can be achieved by the addition of Iron(II) oxide which results in a bluish-green glass. Together with chromium it gives glass of a richer green colour, typical of the glass used to make wine bottles.


title: Stained glass

text: The addition of chromium yields dark green glass, suitable for flashed glass. Together with tin oxide and arsenic it yields emerald green glass.


title: Stained glass

text: The first stage in the production of a window is to make, or acquire from the architect or owners of the building, an accurate template of the window opening that the glass is to fit.


title: Stained glass

text: The subject matter of the window is determined to suit the location, a particular theme, or the wishes of the patron. A small design called a "Vidimus" (from Latin "we have seen") is prepared which can be shown to the patron. A scaled model maquette may also be provided. The designer must take into account the design, the structure of the window, the nature and size of the glass available and his or her own preferred technique.


title: Stained glass

text: A traditional narrative window has panels which relate a story. A figurative window could have rows of saints or dignitaries. Scriptural texts or mottoes are sometimes included and perhaps the names of the patrons or the person to whose memory the window is dedicated. In a window of a traditional type, it is usually left to the discretion of the designer to fill the surrounding areas with borders, floral motifs and canopies.


title: Stained glass

text: A full-sized cartoon is drawn for every "light" (opening) of the window. A small church window might typically have two lights, with some simple tracery lights above. A large window might have four or five lights. The east or west window of a large cathedral might have seven lights in three tiers, with elaborate tracery. In medieval times the cartoon was drawn directly on the surface of a whitewashed table, which was then used as a pattern for cutting, painting and assembling the window. The cartoon is then divided into a patchwork, providing a template for each small glass piece. The exact position of the lead which holds the glass in place is also noted, as it is part of the calculated visual effect.


title: Stained glass

text: Each piece of glass is selected for the desired colour and cut to match a section of the template. An exact fit is ensured by "grozing" the edges with a tool which can nibble off small pieces. Details of faces, hair and hands can be painted onto the inner surface of the glass using a special glass paint which contains finely ground lead or copper filings, ground glass, gum arabic and a medium such as wine, vinegar or (traditionally) urine. The art of painting details became increasingly elaborate and reached its height in the early 20th century.


title: Stained glass

text: From 1300 onwards, artists started using "silver stain" which was made with silver nitrate. It gave a yellow effect ranging from pale lemon to deep orange. It was usually painted onto the outside of a piece of glass, then fired to make it permanent. This yellow was particularly useful for enhancing borders, canopies and haloes, and turning blue glass into green glass. By about 1450, a stain known as "Cousin's rose" was used to enhance flesh tones.


title: Stained glass

text: In the 16th century, a range of glass stains were introduced, most of them coloured by ground glass particles. They were a form of enamelled glass. Painting on glass with these stains was initially used for small heraldic designs and other details. By the 17th century a style of stained glass had evolved that was no longer dependent upon the skilful cutting of coloured glass into sections. Scenes were painted onto glass panels of square format, like tiles. The colours were then annealed to the glass before the pieces were assembled.


title: Stained glass

text: A method used for embellishment and gilding is the decoration of one side of each of two pieces of thin glass, which are then placed back to back within the lead came. This allows for the use of techniques such as Angel gilding and Eglomise to produce an effect visible from both sides but not exposing the decorated surface to the atmosphere or mechanical damage.


title: Stained glass

text: Once the glass is cut and painted, the pieces are assembled by slotting them into H-sectioned lead cames. All the joints are then soldered together and the glass pieces are prevented from rattling and the window made weatherproof by forcing a soft oily cement or mastic between the glass and the cames. In modern windows, copper foil is now sometimes used instead of lead. For further technical details, see Came glasswork.


title: Stained glass

text: Traditionally, when a window was inserted into the window space, iron rods were put across it at various points to support its weight. The window was tied to these rods with copper wire. Some very large early Gothic windows are divided into sections by heavy metal frames called "ferramenta". This method of support was also favoured for large, usually painted, windows of the Baroque period.


title: Stained glass

text: Coloured glass has been produced since ancient times. Both the Egyptians and the Romans excelled at the manufacture of small colored glass objects. Phoenicia was important in glass manufacture with its chief centres Sidon, Tyre and Antioch. The British Museum holds two of the finest Roman pieces, the Lycurgus Cup, which is a murky mustard color but glows purple-red to transmitted light, and the cameo glass Portland vase which is midnight blue, with a carved white overlay.


title: Stained glass

text: In early Christian churches of the 4th and 5th centuries, there are many remaining windows which are filled with ornate patterns of thinly-sliced alabaster set into wooden frames, giving a stained-glass like effect.


title: Stained glass

text: Evidence of stained-glass windows in churches and monasteries in Britain can be found as early as the 7th century. The earliest known reference dates from 675 AD when Benedict Biscop imported workmen from France to glaze the windows of the monastery of St Peter which he was building at Monkwearmouth. Hundreds of pieces of coloured glass and lead, dating back to the late 7th century, have been discovered here and at Jarrow.


title: Stained glass

text: In the Middle East, the glass industry of Syria continued during the Islamic period with major centres of manufacture at Raqqa, Aleppo and Damascus and the most important products being highly transparent colourless glass and gilded glass, rather than coloured glass.


title: Stained glass

text: The creation of stained glass in Southwest Asia began in ancient times. One of the region's earliest surviving formulations for the production of colored glass comes from the Assyrian city of Nineveh, dating to the 7th-century BC. The "Kitab al-Durra al-Maknuna", attributed to the 8th century alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān, discusses the production of colored glass in ancient Babylon and Egypt. The "Kitab al-Durra al-Maknuna" also describes how to create colored glass and artificial gemstones made from high-quality stained glass. The tradition of stained glass manufacture has continued, with mosques, palaces, and public spaces being decorated with stained glass throughout the Islamic world. The stained glass of Islam is generally non-pictorial and of purely geometric design, but may contain both floral motifs and text.


title: Stained glass

text: Stained glass creation had flourished in Persia (now Iran) during the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736 A.D.), and Zand dynasty (1751–1794 A.D.). In Persia stained glass sash windows are called Orosi windows (or transliterated as Arasi, and Orsi), and were once used for decoration, as well as controlling the incoming sunlight in the hot and semi-arid climate.


title: Stained glass

text: Stained glass, as an art form, reached its height in the Middle Ages when it became a major pictorial form used to illustrate the narratives of the Bible to a largely illiterate populace.


title: Stained glass

text: In the Romanesque and Early Gothic period, from about 950 to 1240, the untraceried windows demanded large expanses of glass which of necessity were supported by robust iron frames, such as may be seen at Chartres Cathedral and at the eastern end of Canterbury Cathedral. As Gothic architecture developed into a more ornate form, windows grew larger, affording greater illumination to the interiors, but were divided into sections by vertical shafts and tracery of stone. This elaboration of form reached its height of complexity in the Flamboyant style in Europe, and windows grew still larger with the development of the Perpendicular style in England and Rayonnant style in France.


title: Stained glass

text: Integrated with the lofty verticals of Gothic cathedrals and parish churches, glass designs became more daring. The circular form, or rose window, developed in France from relatively simple windows with openings pierced through slabs of thin stone to wheel windows, as exemplified by the west front of Chartres Cathedral, and ultimately to designs of enormous complexity, the tracery being drafted from hundreds of different points, such as those at Sainte-Chapelle, Paris and the "Bishop's Eye" at Lincoln Cathedral.


title: Stained glass

text: While stained glass was widely manufactured, Chartres was the greatest centre of stained glass manufacture, producing glass of unrivalled quality.


title: Stained glass

text: Probably the earliest scheme of stained glass windows that was created during the Renaissance was that for Florence Cathedral, devised by Lorenzo Ghiberti. The scheme includes three ocular windows for the dome and three for the facade which were designed from 1405 to 1445 by several of the most renowned artists of this period: Ghiberti, Donatello, Uccello and Andrea del Castagno. Each major ocular window contains a single picture drawn from the Life of Christ or the Life of the Virgin Mary, surrounded by a wide floral border, with two smaller facade windows by Ghiberti showing the martyred deacons, St Stephen and St Lawrence. One of the cupola windows has since been lost, and that by Donatello has lost nearly all of its painted details.


title: Stained glass

text: In Europe, stained glass continued to be produced; the style evolved from the Gothic to the Classical, which is well represented in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, despite the rise of Protestantism. In France, much glass of this period was produced at the Limoges factory, and in Italy at Murano, where stained glass and faceted lead crystal are often coupled together in the same window. The French Revolution brought about the neglect or destruction of many windows in France.


title: Stained glass

text: At the Reformation in England, large numbers of medieval and Renaissance windows were smashed and replaced with plain glass. The Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII and the injunctions of Thomas Cromwell against "abused images" (the object of veneration) resulted in the loss of thousands of windows. Few remain undamaged; of these the windows in the private chapel at Hengrave Hall in Suffolk are among the finest. With the latter wave of destruction the traditional methods of working with stained glass died, and were not rediscovered in England until the early 19th century. See Stained glass – British glass, 1811–1918 for more details.


title: Stained glass

text: In the Netherlands a rare scheme of glass has remained intact at Grote Sint-Jan Church, Gouda. The windows, some of which are 18 metres (59 feet) high, date from 1555 to the early 1600s; the earliest is the work of Dirck Crabeth and his brother Wouter. Many of the original cartoons still exist.


title: Stained glass

text: The Catholic revival in England, gaining force in the early 19th century with its renewed interest in the medieval church, brought a revival of church building in the Gothic style, claimed by John Ruskin to be "the true Catholic style". The architectural movement was led by Augustus Welby Pugin. Many new churches were planted in large towns and many old churches were restored. This brought about a great demand for the revival of the art of stained glass window making.


title: Stained glass

text: Among the earliest 19th-century English manufacturers and designers were William Warrington and John Hardman of Birmingham, whose nephew, John Hardman Powell, had a commercial eye and exhibited works at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876, influencing stained glass in the United States of America. Other manufacturers included William Wailes, Ward and Hughes, Clayton and Bell, Heaton, Butler and Bayne and Charles Eamer Kempe. A Scottish designer, Daniel Cottier, opened firms in Australia and the US.


title: Stained glass

text: In France there was a greater continuity of stained glass production than in England. In the early 19th century most stained glass was made of large panes that were extensively painted and fired, the designs often being copied directly from oil paintings by famous artists. In 1824 the Sèvres porcelain factory began producing stained glass to supply the increasing demand.


title: Stained glass

text: In France many churches and cathedrals suffered despoliation during the French Revolution. During the 19th century a great number of churches were restored by Viollet-le-Duc. Many of France's finest ancient windows were restored at that time. From 1839 onwards much stained glass was produced that very closely imitated medieval glass, both in the artwork and in the nature of the glass itself. The pioneers were Henri Gèrente and André Lusson.


title: Stained glass

text: Other glass was designed in a more Classical manner, and characterised by the brilliant cerulean colour of the blue backgrounds (as against the purple-blue of the glass of Chartres) and the use of pink and mauve glass.


title: Stained glass

text: During the mid- to late 19th century, many of Germany's ancient buildings were restored, and some, such as Cologne Cathedral, were completed in the medieval style. There was a great demand for stained glass. The designs for many windows were based directly on the work of famous engravers such as Albrecht Dürer. Original designs often imitate this style. Much 19th-century German glass has large sections of painted detail rather than outlines and details dependent on the lead. The Royal Bavarian Glass Painting Studio was founded by Ludwig I in 1827. A major firm was Mayer of Munich, which commenced glass production in 1860, and is still operating as "Franz Mayer of Munich, Inc.". German stained glass found a market across Europe, in America and Australia. Stained glass studios were also founded in Italy and Belgium at this time.


title: Stained glass

text: In the Austrian Empire and later Austria-Hungary, one of the leading stained glass artists was Carl Geyling, who founded his studio in 1841. His son would continue the tradition as Carl Geyling's Erben, which still exists today. Carl Geyling's Erben completed numerous stained glass windows for major churches in Vienna and elsewhere, and received an Imperial and Royal Warrant of Appointment from emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.


title: Stained glass

text: Among the most innovative English designers were the Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris (1834–1898) and Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), whose work heralds the influential Arts and Crafts Movement, which regenerated stained glass throughout the English-speaking world. Amongst its most important exponents in England was Christopher Whall (1849-1924), author of the classic craft manual 'Stained Glass Work' (published London and New York, 1905), who advocated the direct involvement of designers in the making of their windows. His masterpiece is the series of windows (1898-1910) in the Lady Chapel at Gloucester Cathedral. Whall taught at London's Royal College of Art and Central School of Arts and Crafts: his many pupils and followers included Karl Parsons, Mary Lowndes, Henry Payne, Caroline Townshend, Veronica Whall (his daughter) and Paul Woodroffe. The Scottish artist Douglas Strachan (1875-1950), who was much influenced by Whall's example, developed the Arts & Crafts idiom in an expressionist manner, in which powerful imagery and meticulous technique are masterfully combined. In Ireland, a generation of young artists taught by Whall's pupil Alfred Child at Dublin's Metropolitan School of Art created a distinctive national school of stained glass: its leading representatives were Wilhelmina Geddes, Michael Healy and Harry Clarke.


title: Stained glass

text: Art Nouveau or Belle Epoque stained glass design flourished in France, and Eastern Europe, where it can be identified by the use of curving, sinuous lines in the lead, and swirling motifs. In France it is seen in the work of Francis Chigot of Limoges. In Britain it appears in the refined and formal leadlight designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.


title: Stained glass

text: J&R Lamb Studios, established in 1857 in New York City, was the first major decorative arts studio in the United States and for many years a major producer of ecclesiastical stained glass.


title: Stained glass

text: Notable American practitioners include John La Farge (1835–1910), who invented opalescent glass and for which he received a U.S. patent on 24 February 1880, and Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933), who received several patents for variations of the same opalescent process in November of the same year and he used the copper foil method as an alternative to lead in some windows, lamps and other decorations. Sanford Bray of Boston patented the use of copper foil in stained glass in 1886, However, a reaction against the aesthetics and technique of opalescent windows - led initially by architects such as Ralph Adams Cram - led to a rediscovery of traditional stained glass in the early 1900s. Charles J. Connick (1875-1945), who founded his Boston studio in 1913, was profoundly influenced by his study of medieval stained glass in Europe and by the Arts & Crafts philosophy of Englishman Christopher Whall. Connick created hundreds of windows throughout the US, including major glazing schemes at Princeton University Chapel (1927-9) and at Pittsburgh's Heinz Memorial Chapel (1937-8). Other American artist-makers who espoused a medieval-inspired idiom included Nicola D'Ascenzo of Philadelphia, Wilbur Burnham and Reynolds, Francis & Rohnstock of Boston and Henry Wynd Young and J. Gordon Guthrie of New York.


title: Stained glass

text: Many 19th-century firms failed early in the 20th century as the Gothic movement was superseded by newer styles. At the same time there were also some interesting developments where stained glass artists took studios in shared facilities. Examples include the Glass House in London set up by Mary Lowndes and Alfred J. Drury and An Túr Gloine in Dublin, which was run by Sarah Purser and included artists such as Harry Clarke.


title: Stained glass

text: A revival occurred in the middle of the century because of a desire to restore thousands of church windows throughout Europe destroyed as a result of World War II bombing. German artists led the way. Much work of the period is mundane and often was not made by its designers, but industrially produced.


title: Stained glass

text: Other artists sought to transform an ancient art form into a contemporary one, sometimes using traditional techniques while exploiting the medium of glass in innovative ways and in combination with different materials. The use of slab glass, a technique known as Dalle de Verre, where the glass is set in concrete or epoxy resin, was a 20th-century innovation credited to Jean Gaudin and brought to the UK by Pierre Fourmaintraux. One of the most prolific glass artists using this technique was the Dominican Friar Dom Charles Norris OSB of Buckfast Abbey.


title: Stained glass

text: Gemmail, a technique developed by the French artist Jean Crotti in 1936 and perfected in the 1950s, is a type of stained glass where adjacent pieces of glass are overlapped without using lead cames to join the pieces, allowing for greater diversity and subtlety of colour.


title: Stained glass

text: Many famous works by late 19th- and early 20th-century painters, notably Picasso, have been reproduced in gemmail. A major exponent of this technique is the German artist Walter Womacka.


title: Stained glass

text: Among the early well-known 20th-century artists who experimented with stained glass as an Abstract art form were Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. In the 1960s and 1970s the Expressionist painter Marc Chagall produced designs for many stained glass windows that are intensely coloured and crammed with symbolic details. Important 20th-century stained glass artists include John Hayward, Douglas Strachan, Ervin Bossanyi, Louis Davis, Wilhelmina Geddes, Karl Parsons, John Piper, Patrick Reyntiens, Johannes Schreiter, Brian Clarke, Paul Woodroffe, Jean René Bazaine at Saint Séverin, Sergio de Castro at Couvrechef- La Folie (Caen), Hamburg-Dulsberg and Romont (Switzerland), and the Loire Studio of Gabriel Loire at Chartres. The west windows of England's Manchester Cathedral, by Tony Hollaway, are some of the most notable examples of symbolic work.


title: Stained glass

text: In Germany, stained glass development continued with the inter-war work of Johan Thorn Prikker and Josef Albers, and the post-war achievements of Joachim Klos, Johannes Schreiter and Ludwig Shaffrath. This group of artists, who advanced the medium through the abandonment of figurative designs and painting on glass in favour of a mix of biomorphic and rigorously geometric abstraction, and the calligraphic non-functional use of leads, are described as having produced "the first authentic school of stained glass since the Middle Ages". The works of Ludwig Schaffrath demonstrate the late 20th-century trends in the use of stained glass for architectural purposes, filling entire walls with coloured and textured glass. In the 1970s young British stained-glass artists such as Brian Clarke were influenced by the large scale and abstraction in German twentieth-century glass.


title: Stained glass

text: In the UK, the professional organisation for stained glass artists has been the British Society of Master Glass Painters, founded in 1921. Since 1924 the BSMGP has published an annual journal, The Journal of Stained Glass. It continues to be Britain's only organisation devoted exclusively to the art and craft of stained glass. From the outset, its chief objectives have been to promote and encourage high standards in stained glass painting and staining, to act as a locus for the exchange of information and ideas within the stained glass craft and to preserve the invaluable stained glass heritage of Britain. See www.bsmgp.org.uk for a range of stained glass lectures, conferences, tours, portfolios of recent stained glass commissions by members, and information on courses and the conservation of stained glass. Back issues of The Journal of Stained Glass are listed and there is a searchable index for stained glass articles, an invaluable resource for stained glass researchers.


title: Stained glass

text: After the First World War, stained glass window memorials were a popular choice among wealthier families, examples can be found in churches across the UK.


title: Stained glass

text: In the United States, there is a 100-year-old trade organization, The Stained Glass Association of America, whose purpose is to function as a publicly recognized organization to assure survival of the craft by offering guidelines, instruction and training to craftspersons. The SGAA also sees its role as defending and protecting its craft against regulations that might restrict its freedom as an architectural art form. The current president is Kathy Bernard. Today there are academic establishments that teach the traditional skills. One of these is Florida State University's Master Craftsman Program, which recently completed a high stained-glass windows, designed by Robert Bischoff, the program's director, and Jo Ann, his wife and installed to overlook Bobby Bowden Field at Doak Campbell Stadium. The "Roots of Knowledge" installation at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah is long and has been compared to those in several European cathedrals, including the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, Sainte-Chapelle in France, and York Minster in England. There are also contemporary stained glass artists in the US who are creating stained glass windows based on grids, rather than reconizable images.


title: Stained glass

text: Stained glass windows were commonly used in churches for decorative and informative purposes. Many windows are donated to churches by members of the congregation as memorials of loved ones. For more information on the use of stained glass to depict religious subjects, see Poor Man's Bible.


title: Stained glass

text: In addition to Christian churches, stained glass windows have been incorporated into Jewish temple architecture for centuries. Jewish communities in the United States saw this emergence in the mid-19th century, with such notable examples as the sanctuary depiction of the Ten Commandments in New York's Congregation Anshi Chesed. From the mid-20th century to the present, stained glass windows have been a ubiquitous feature of American synagogue architecture. Styles and themes for synagogue stained glass artwork are as diverse as their church counterparts. As with churches, synagogue stained glass windows are often dedicated by member families in exchange for major financial contributions to the institution.


title: Stained glass

text: Mausolea, whether for general community use or for private family use, may employ stained glass as a comforting entry for natural light, for memorialization, or for display of religious imagery.


title: Stained glass

text: Stained glass windows in houses were particularly popular in the Victorian era and many domestic examples survive. In their simplest form they typically depict birds and flowers in small panels, often surrounded with machine-made "cathedral glass" which, despite what the name suggests, is pale-coloured and textured. Some large homes have splendid examples of secular pictorial glass. Many small houses of the 19th and early 20th centuries have leadlight windows.


title: Stained glass

text: Stained glass has often been used as a decorative element in public buildings, initially in places of learning, government or justice but increasingly in other public and commercial places such as banks, retailers and railway stations. Public houses in some countries make extensive use of stained glass and leaded lights to create a comfortable atmosphere and retain privacy.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: "Final Fantasy IV" has been ported to several other platforms with varying differences. An enhanced remake, also called "Final Fantasy IV", with 3D graphics was released for the Nintendo DS in 2007 and 2008. The game was re-titled "Final Fantasy II" during its initial release outside Japan as the original "Final Fantasy II" and "Final Fantasy III" had not been released outside Japan at the time. All later localizations of "Final Fantasy IV", which began to appear after "Final Fantasy VII" (released worldwide under that title), used the original title.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The various incarnations of the game have sold more than four million copies worldwide. A sequel, "", was released for Japanese mobile phones in 2008, and worldwide via the Wii Shop Channel on June 1, 2009. In 2011, both "Final Fantasy IV" and "The After Years" were released for the PlayStation Portable as part of the compilation "", which also included a new game, set between the two; "Final Fantasy IV: Interlude". Ports of the Nintendo DS remake were released for iOS in 2012, for Android in 2013 and for Windows in 2014.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Retrospectively, "Final Fantasy IV" is often regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time, noting that it pioneered many now common console role-playing game features, including the concept of dramatic storytelling in an RPG. It has been included in various lists of the best games of all time, by IGN (at #9 in 2003) as the highest-ranking RPG, as well as "Famitsu" in 2006 reader poll among the best games ever made. It also appeared in various rankings for Best Games of All Time for "Electronic Gaming Monthly" in 2001 and 2006, "Game Informer" in 2001 and 2009, GameSpot in 2005, and GameFAQs in 2005, 2009 and 2014.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: In "Final Fantasy IV", the player controls a large cast of characters and completes quests to advance the story. Characters move and interact with people and objects on a field map, which may represent a variety of settings, such as towers, caves, and forests. Travel between areas occurs on the overworld. The player can use towns to replenish strength, buy equipment, and discover clues about their next destination. Conversely, the player fights monsters at random intervals on the overworld and in dungeons. In battle, the player has the option to fight, use magic or an item, retreat, change character positions, parry, or pause. Certain characters have special abilities. The game was the first in the series to allow the player to control up to five characters in their party; previous games had limited the party to four.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Player characters and monsters have hit points (HP), with the characters' HP captioned below the main battle screen. Attacks reduce remaining HP until none are left, at which point the character faints or the monster dies. If all characters are defeated, the game must be restored from a saved game file. The player can restore the characters' hit points by having them sleep in an inn or use items in the party's inventory, such as potions, as well as using healing magic spells. Equipment (such as swords and armor) bought in towns or found in dungeons can be used to increase damage inflicted on monsters or minimize damage received. The player can choose whether characters appear on the front line of a battle or in the back. A character's placement impacts damage received and inflicted depending on the type of attack.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: "Final Fantasy IV" introduced Square's Active Time Battle (ATB) system, which differed from the turn-based designs of previous RPGs. The ATB system centers on the player inputting orders for the characters in real time during battles. The system was used in many subsequent Square games.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Each character has certain strengths and weaknesses; for instance, a strong magic user may have low defense, while a physical fighter may have low agility. Like other "Final Fantasy" games, characters gain new, more powerful abilities with battle experience. Magic is classified as either "White" for healing and support; "Black" for offense; or "Summon" (or "call") for summoning monsters to attack or carry out specialized tasks. A fourth type, "Ninjutsu," consists of support and offensive magic and is available to only one character. Magic users, who account for eight of the twelve playable characters, gain magic spells at preprogrammed experience levels or fixed story events. The game includes balanced point gains, items, and rewards to eliminate long sessions of grinding. Due to the Super NES' greater processing power, "Final Fantasy IV" contains improved graphics when compared to previous "Final Fantasy" titles, all of which were released on the NES. The game employs the Super NES' Mode 7 technology to give enhanced magic spell visuals and to make airship travel more dramatic by scaling and tilting the ground for a bird's eye view.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Most of "Final Fantasy IV" takes place on Earth, also known as the Blue Planet, which consists of a surface world (or Overworld), inhabited by humans, and an underground world (or Underworld), inhabited by the Dwarves. An artificial moon orbits the planet, upon which the Lunarians live. The Lunarians are a race of beings originally from a world which was destroyed, becoming the asteroid belt surrounding the Blue Planet, and are identified by a moon-shape crest on their foreheads. They created the artificial moon, resting until a time when they believe their kind can co-exist with humans. A second, natural moon orbits the Blue Planet as well, although it is never visited in the game.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: "Final Fantasy IV" offers twelve playable characters, each with a unique, unchangeable character class. During the game, the player can have a total of five, or fewer, characters in the party at any given time. The main character, Cecil Harvey, is a dark knight and the captain of the Red Wings, an elite air force unit of the kingdom of Baron. He serves the king alongside his childhood friend Kain Highwind, the commander of the Dragoons. Rosa Farrell is a white mage and archer, as well as Cecil's love interest. The Red Wings' airships were constructed by Cecil's friend, the engineer Cid Pollendina.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: During his quest, Cecil is joined by others, including Rydia, a young summoner from the village of Mist; Tellah, a legendary sage; Edward Chris von Muir, the prince of Damcyan who is a bard as well as the husband of Tellah's daughter Anna; Yang Fang Leiden, the head of the monks of Fabul; Palom and Porom, a black mage and a white mage, twin apprentices from the magical village of Mysidia; Edward "Edge" Geraldine, the ninja prince of Eblan; and Fusoya, the guardian of the Lunarians during their long sleep.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Zemus is the main antagonist of the game. He is a Lunarian who wishes to destroy the human race so that his people can populate the earth. He uses Golbez to do this by controlling him and Kain with his psychic powers to activate the Giant of Babil, a huge machine created to carry out the genocide and take over the world.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The Red Wings attack the city of Mysidia to steal their Water Crystal, and return to the Kingdom of Baron. When Cecil, Captain of the Red Wings, afterwards questions the king's motives, he is stripped of his rank and sent with Kain, his friend and Captain of the Dragoons, to deliver a ring to the Village of Mist. There, Kain and Cecil watch in horror as monsters burst forth from inside the ring and lay waste to the village. A young girl, Rydia, is the only survivor and summons a monster named Titan in anger. This monster causes an earthquake, separating Cecil and Kain. Cecil awakens afterward and takes the wounded Rydia to a nearby inn. Baron soldiers come for Rydia but Cecil defends her, and she joins him on his journey.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: It is revealed that Rosa, Cecil's love interest, had followed him and is extremely ill with a fever. Soon after this, Cecil and Rydia meet Tellah, who is going to Damcyan Castle to retrieve his eloping daughter, Anna. However, Anna is killed when the Red Wings bomb the castle. Edward, Anna's lover and the prince of Damcyan, explains that the Red Wings' new commander, Golbez, did this to steal the Fire Crystal for Baron as they had stolen the Water Crystal from Mysidia. Tellah leaves the party to exact revenge on Golbez for Anna's death. After finding a cure for Rosa, the party decides to go to Fabul to protect the Wind Crystal. On the way there they meet Master Yang, a warrior monk serviced to the kingdom and the protection of the crystal. The Red Wings attack Fabul, and Kain reappears as one of Golbez's servants. He attacks and defeats Cecil; when Rosa intervenes, Golbez kidnaps her and Kain takes the crystal. On the way back to Baron, the party is attacked by Leviathan and separated.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Cecil awakes alone near Mysidia. When he enters the town, he finds that its residents deeply resent him for the prior attack on their town. Through the Elder of Mysidia, he learns that to defeat Golbez, he must climb Mt. Ordeals and become a Paladin. Before embarking on his journey, he is joined by the twin mages, Palom and Porom. On the mountain he encounters Tellah, who is searching for the forbidden spell Meteor to defeat Golbez. After defeating the fiend Scarmiglione and casting aside the darkness within himself, Cecil becomes a Paladin, while Tellah learns the secret of Meteor. Upon reaching Baron, the party discovers an amnesiac Yang and return him to his senses. The party then confronts the King, only to discover that he is an imposter and one of Golbez's minions, Cagnazzo. After defeating him, Cid arrives and takes them to one of his airships, the "Enterprise". On the way, the party enters a room booby-trapped by Cagnazzo, where Palom and Porom sacrifice themselves to save Cecil, Tellah, Cid, and Yang.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: On the airship, Kain appears and demands Cecil retrieve the final crystal in exchange for Rosa's life, which the party obtains with assistance from a bedridden Edward. Kain then leads the party to the Tower of Zot, where Rosa is imprisoned. At the tower's summit, Golbez takes the crystal and attempts to flee. Tellah casts Meteor to stop Golbez, sacrificing his own life in the process. However, the spell only weakens Golbez, ending his mind control of Kain. Kain helps Cecil rescue Rosa, and defeat Barbariccia another fiend before Rosa teleports the party out of the collapsing tower to Baron.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: In Baron, Kain reveals that Golbez must also obtain four subterranean "Dark Crystals" to achieve his goal of reaching the Moon. The party travels to the underworld and encounter the Dwarves, who are currently fighting the Red Wings. They defeat Golbez thanks to a sudden appearance by Rydia, now a young woman due to her time spent in the Feymarch, the home of the Eidolons. However, the party ultimately fails to prevent Golbez from stealing the Dwarves' crystal. With the help of the Dwarves, they enter the Tower of Babil in order to obtain the crystals Golbez has stored there, only to find that they have been moved to a surface portion of the tower. Yang later sacrifices himself in order to stop the tower's cannons from firing on the Dwarves (though he's later revealed to have survived). After escaping a trap set by Golbez, the party flees the underworld aboard the "Enterprise", with Cid sacrificing himself to reseal the passage between the two worlds and to prevent the Red Wings from continuing their pursuit. The party, now joined by Edge, the prince of Eblan, travels back to the Tower of Babil in order to take back the stolen crystals and revenge himself upon Rubicante the last of the fiends. Upon reaching the crystal room, however, the party falls through a trap door to the underworld. Meeting with the Dwarves once again and finding Cid to be alive, the party sets out to retrieve the eighth crystal before Golbez can. When the crystal is obtained, Golbez appears and reveals he still has control over Kain, while taking the crystal for himself. After learning of the "Lunar Whale", a ship designed to take travelers to and from the moon, the party return to Mysidia where the town's Elder and mages summon the ship.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Arriving on the Moon, the party meets the sage Fusoya, who explains that Cecil's father was a Lunarian. Fusoya also explains that a Lunarian named Zemus plans to destroy life on the Blue Planet so that the Lunarians can take over, using Golbez to summon the Giant of Babil, a colossal robot. The party returns to Earth and the forces of the two worlds attack the Giant, including Palom and Porom, who have been revived. After the party breaks the robot, Golbez and Kain confront them, only to have Fusoya break Zemus' control over Golbez, in turn releasing Kain. Cecil learns that Golbez is his older brother. Golbez and Fusoya head to the core of the Moon to defeat Zemus, and Cecil's party follows. In the Moon's core, the party witnesses Golbez and Fusoya kill Zemus, but then quickly fall to an evil spirit named Zeromus, the embodiment of all of Zemus' hatred and rage. Back on Earth, the Elder of Mysidia entreats all of Cecil's allies and friends to pray for the party, which gives Cecil and his allies the strength to fight and destroy Zeromus. Following the battle, Fusoya and Golbez opt to leave Earth with the moon. Cecil, at last accepting the truth, acknowledges Golbez as his brother, and bids him farewell.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: During the epilogue, most of the cast reunites to celebrate Cecil and Rosa's wedding and their coronation as Baron's new king and queen, while Kain is seen atop Mount Ordeals, having vowed to atone for his misdeeds.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: After completing "Final Fantasy III" in 1990, Square planned to develop two "Final Fantasy" games—one for the Famicom and the other for the forthcoming Super Famicom, to be known as "Final Fantasy IV" and "Final Fantasy V" respectively. Due to financial and scheduling constraints, Square dropped plans for the Famicom game and continued development of the Super Famicom version, retitled "Final Fantasy IV". A mock-up screenshot of the cancelled title was produced for a Japanese magazine, but little other information exists about it. Series creator and director Hironobu Sakaguchi has stated that the Famicom version was approximately 80% complete and certain ideas were reused for the Super Famicom version.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: "Final Fantasy IV" was lead designer Takashi Tokita's first project at Square as a full-time employee. Before this, Tokita wanted a career as a theater actor, but working on the game made him decide to become a "great creator" of video games. Initially Hiromichi Tanaka, the main designer of "Final Fantasy III", was also involved in the development of the game. However, Tanaka wanted to create a seamless battle system that had no separate battle screen and was not menu-driven, and since "Final Fantasy IV" was not going in that direction, he changed development teams to work on the action RPG "Secret of Mana" instead. According to Tanaka, he originally wanted "Final Fantasy IV" to have a "more action-based, dynamic overworld" but it "wound up not being" "Final Fantasy IV" anymore, instead becoming a separate project that eventually became "Seiken Densetsu 2" ("Secret of Mana"), which was codenamed ""Chrono Trigger"" during development. The development team of "Final Fantasy IV" contained 14 people in total, and the game was completed in roughly one year.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Initial ideas were contributed by Sakaguchi, including the entire story and the name of Baron's royal air force, the "Red Wings". The Active Time Battle (ATB) system was conceived and designed by Hiroyuki Ito when he was inspired while watching a Formula One race and seeing racers pass each other at different speeds. This gave him the idea of different speed values for the individual characters. The system was developed by Kazuhiko Aoki, Ito and Akihiko Matsui. As the game's lead designer, Tokita wrote the scenario and contributed pixel art. He stated that there was a lot of pressure and that the project would not have been completed if he did not work diligently on it. According to Tokita, "Final Fantasy IV" was designed with the best parts of the previous three installments in mind: the job system of "Final Fantasy III", the focus on story of "Final Fantasy II", and the four elemental bosses acting as "symbols for the game" as in the first installment. Other influences include "Dragon Quest II". The themes of "Final Fantasy IV" were to go "from darkness to light" with Cecil, a focus on family and friendship among the large and diverse cast, and the idea that "brute strength alone isn't power." Tokita feels that "Final Fantasy IV" is the first game in the series to really pick up on drama, and the first Japanese RPG to feature "such deep characters and plot."


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The game's script had to be reduced to one fourth of its original length due to cartridge storage limits, but Tokita made sure only "unnecessary dialogue" was cut, rather than actual story elements. As the graphical capacities of the Super Famicom allowed regular series character designer Yoshitaka Amano to make more elaborate character designs than in the previous installments, with the characters' personalities already evident from the images, Tokita felt the reduced script length improved the pacing of the game. Still, he acknowledges that some parts of the story were "unclear" or were not "looked at in depth" until later ports and remakes. One of the ideas not included, due to time and space constraints, was a dungeon near the end of the game where each character would have to progress on their own—this dungeon would only be included in the Game Boy Advance version of the game, as the Lunar Ruins.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The score of "Final Fantasy IV" was written by longtime series composer Nobuo Uematsu. Uematsu has noted that the process of composing was excruciating, involving trial and error and requiring the sound staff to spend several nights in sleeping bags at Square's headquarters. His liner notes were humorously signed as being written at 1:30 AM "in the office, naturally." The score was well received; reviewers have praised the quality of the composition despite the limited medium. The track "Theme of Love" has even been taught to Japanese school children as part of the music curriculum. Uematsu continues to perform certain pieces in his "Final Fantasy" concert series.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Three albums of music from "Final Fantasy IV" have been released in Japan. The first album, "", was released on June 14, 1991, and contains 44 tracks from the game. The second album, "", was released on October 24, 1991, and contains a selection of tracks from the game, arranged and performed by Celtic musician Máire Breatnach. Lastly, "Final Fantasy IV Piano Collections", an arrangement of tracks for solo piano performed by Toshiyuki Mori, was released on April 21, 1992, and began the "Piano Collections" trend for each successive "Final Fantasy" game. Several tracks have appeared on "Final Fantasy" compilation albums produced by Square, including "The Black Mages" and "". Independent but officially licensed releases of "Final Fantasy IV" music have been orchestrated by such groups as Project Majestic Mix, which focuses on arranging video game music. Selections also appear on Japanese remix albums, called dōjin music, and on English remixing websites such as OverClocked ReMix.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Because the previous two installments of the "Final Fantasy" series had not been localized and released in North America at the time, "Final Fantasy IV" was distributed as "Final Fantasy II" to maintain naming continuity. This remained the norm until the release of "Final Fantasy VII" in North America (after the release of "Final Fantasy VI" under the title of "Final Fantasy III") and subsequent releases of the original "Final Fantasy II" and "III" on various platforms. "Final Fantasy II" has since gone under the title "Final Fantasy IV".


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The English localization of "Final Fantasy IV" retains the storyline, graphics, and sound of the original, but the developers significantly reduced the difficulty for beginning gamers. Square was worried that western fans would find it difficult to adjust to the game's complexity due to not having played the previous two entries, so decreased the overall depth considerably. Other changes include the removal of overt Judeo-Christian religious references and certain potentially objectionable graphics. For example, the magic spell "Holy" was renamed "White", and all references to prayer were eliminated; the Tower of Prayers in Mysidia was renamed the Tower of Wishes. Direct references to death were also omitted, although several characters clearly die during the course of the game. The translation was changed in accordance with Nintendo of America's censorship policies (at a time before the formation of the ESRB and its rating system).


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: In addition to its original release, "Final Fantasy IV" has been remade into many different versions. The first of these was "Final Fantasy IV Easy Type", a modified version of the game which was released for the Super Famicom in Japan. In this version, the attack powers of weapons have been enhanced, while the protective abilities of certain spells and pieces of armor are amplified. The American release is partially based on "Easy Type".


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: A PlayStation port debuted in Japan on March 21, 1997. Ported by Tose and published by Square, it was designed and directed by Kazuhiko Aoki, supervised by Fumiaki Fukaya, and produced by Akihiro Imai. This version is identical to the original game, although minor tweaks introduced in the "Easy Type" are present. The most notable changes in the PlayStation release are the inclusion of a full motion video opening and ending sequence, the ability to move quickly in dungeons and towns by holding the Cancel button, and the option of performing a "memo" save anywhere on the world map. On March 11, 1999, this version was released a second time in Japan as part of the "Final Fantasy Collection" package, which also included the PlayStation versions of "Final Fantasy V" and "Final Fantasy VI". Fifty-thousand limited edition copies of the collection were also released and included a "Final Fantasy"-themed alarm clock.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The PlayStation port was later released with "Chrono Trigger" in North America as part of "Final Fantasy Chronicles" in 2001 and with "Final Fantasy V" in Europe and Australia as part of "Final Fantasy Anthology" in 2002. The English localizations feature a new translation, although certain translated lines from the previous localization by Kaoru Moriyama, such as "You spoony bard!", were kept, as they had become fan favorites. A remake for the WonderSwan Color, with few changes from the PlayStation version, was released in Japan on March 28, 2002. Character sprites and backgrounds were graphically enhanced through heightened details and color shading.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: "Final Fantasy IV" was ported again by Tose for the Game Boy Advance and published as . It was released in North America by Nintendo of America on December 12, 2005; in Japan by Square Enix on December 15, 2005; in Australia on February 23, 2006; and in Europe on June 2, 2006. In Japan, a special version was available which included a limited edition Game Boy Micro with a themed face plate featuring artwork of Cecil and Kain. The enhanced graphics from the WonderSwan Color port were further improved, and minor changes were made to the music. The localization team revised the English translation, improving the flow of the story, and restoring plot details absent from the original. The abilities that were removed from the original North American release were re-added, while spells were renamed to follow the naming conventions of the Japanese version, changing "Bolt2" to "Thundara" for example. A new cave at Mt. Ordeals was added featuring powerful armor and stronger weapons for five additional characters, as was the Lunar Ruins, a dungeon accessible only at the end of the game.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The game was remade with 3D graphics for the Nintendo DS as part of the "Final Fantasy" series' 20th anniversary, and was released as "Final Fantasy IV" in Japan on December 20, 2007, in North America on July 22, 2008, and in Europe on September 5, 2008. The remake adds a number of features not present in the original, such as voice acting, minigames, and some changes to the basic gameplay. The game was developed by Matrix Software, the same team responsible for the "Final Fantasy III" DS remake, and was supervised by members of the original development team: Takashi Tokita served as executive producer and director, Tomoya Asano as producer and Hiroyuki Ito as battle designer. Animator Yoshinori Kanada storyboarded the new cutscenes.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The original version of the game was released on the Wii Virtual Console in Japan on August 4, 2009, and in PAL regions on June 11, 2010. An enhanced port for i-mode compatible phones was released in Japan on October 5, 2009. It retains features introduced in the Wonderswan Color and Game Boy Advance ports, while incorporating enhanced character graphics on par with those found in "The After Years", as well as an exclusive "extra dungeon" available after completing the game.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Along with "", the game was released for the PlayStation Portable as part of the compilation "". This version used updated 2D graphics, as opposed to the 3D graphics seen in the DS remake. The collection also includes a new episode called "Final Fantasy IV: Interlude", which takes place between the original game and "The After Years". Masashi Hamauzu arranged the main theme for the game. It was released in Japan on March 24, 2011, in North America on April 19, 2011, in Europe on April 21, 2011, and in Australia on April 28, 2011. On December 18, 2012, the PlayStation port was re-released as part of the "Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Ultimate Box" Japanese package.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: In December 2012, the Nintendo DS version of "Final Fantasy IV" was released for the iOS and Android (June 2013) mobile platforms, introducing an optional easier difficulty level. On September 17, 2014, with no prior advertisement, "Final Fantasy IV" was also released for Microsoft Windows.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The PlayStation version was released as a PSOne Classic in Japan on June 27, 2012, compatible with PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation Portable.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The Super Famicom version was released on the Wii U Virtual Console in Japan on February 19, 2014, while the Game Boy Advance version was released on April 13, 2016.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The game received positive reviews upon release. "Famitsu"s panel of four reviewers gave it ratings of 9, 9, 10, and 8, adding up to an overall score of 36 out of 40, one of the highest scores it awarded to any game in 1991, second only to "". In its November 1991 issue, "Nintendo Power" proclaimed it set a "new standard of excellence" for role-playing games. They praised the battles as being "more interesting than in previous RPGs" because the player "must make snap decisions" and the "enemies don't wait for you to make up your mind," and concluded that the "story, graphics, play and sound will keep fans riveted." "Electronic Gaming Monthly" panel of four reviewers gave it ratings of 8, 9, 7, and 8, out of 10, adding up to 32 out of 40 overall. In its December 1991 issue, Ed Semrad, who gave it a 9, stated that "Square has just redefined what the ultimate RPG should be like," noting the "spectacular Mode 7 effects, outstanding graphics and a quest unequalled in a video game," concluding that it "makes use of all the Super NES has to offer" and is "the best made to date!" Ken Williams (as Sushi-X), who gave it an 8, stated that it is "a totally awesome RPG," the "storyline is actually coherent and the plot moves along with a combination of speaking sequences and battles." On the other hand, Martin Alessi, who disliked role-playing games, gave it a 7. They gave the game an award for 1991's Best RPG Video Game, stating that the "Mode 7 is great here and Square does a spectacular job in using it to zoom in and away from the planet" and that the "quest is huge and also one of the most difficult ever attempted in a video game."


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: "GamePro" rated it a perfect 5.0 out of 5 in all five categories (graphics, sound, control, fun factor, and challenge) in its March 1992 issue. The reviewer Monty Haul stated that it "truly redefines the standards for fantasy adventure games," proclaiming that "one-dimensional characters, needless hack 'em combat, and linear gameplay will be things of the past if other RPGs learn a lesson or two from this cart," concluding that it "is one small step for Square Soft, and one giant leap for SNES role-playing games." In the November 1993 issue of "Dragon", Sandy Petersen gave it an "Excellent" rating. He criticized the "stylized" combat system and the graphics as "inferior" to "Zelda", but praised how every "spell has a different on-screen effect" and the difficulty for being "just about right" where bosses "nearly beat you every time" unlike other RPGs such as "Ultima" where enough "adventuring" makes it possible to "trash" enemies "with ease." He praised the "great" music, preferring it over "Zelda", stating what it "lacks in graphics, it more than makes up for in sound." He praised the story in particular, noting that, in a departure from other RPGs where the party always "sticks together through thick and thin," the characters have their own motives for joining and leaving the group, with one that "even betrays" them. He stated that it is like "following the storyline of a fantasy novel," comparing it to "The Lord of the Rings" and "Man in the Iron Mask", concluding that, because "the characters often spoke up for themselves," he "got much more attached" to the party "than in any other computer game."


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Retrospectively, major reviewers have called "Final Fantasy IV" one of the greatest video games of all time, noting that it pioneered many now common console role-playing game features, including the concept of dramatic storytelling in an RPG. In a 1997 retrospective, "GamePro" credited it as "the first game where a turn-based combat system allowed you to change weapons, cast spells, and use items during a battle, and it featured some of the most exciting villains to date". Reviewers have praised the game for its graphics, gameplay and score, and have noted that "Final Fantasy IV" was one of the first role-playing games to feature a complex, involving plot. However, some retrospective reviews have criticized the game's original English-language translation.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: It has been included in various lists of the best games of all time. "Nintendo Power" included it in the "100 Greatest Nintendo Games" lists, placing it ninth in 1997's issue 100, and twenty-eighth in 2005's issue 200. IGN included it in its top 100 lists of the greatest games of all time, ranking it #9 in 2003, as the highest-ranking RPG, and at #26 in 2005, as the highest rated "Final Fantasy" title on the list. In 2007, it was ranked at #55, behind "Final Fantasy VI" and "Final Fantasy Tactics". "Famitsu" released a reader poll in 2006 ranking it as the sixth best game ever made. It was also listed among the best games of all time by "Electronic Gaming Monthly" in 2001 and 2006, "Game Informer" in 2001 and 2009, GameSpot in 2005, and GameFAQs in 2005, 2009 and 2014.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: "Weekly Famitsu" gave "Final Fantasy Collection" a score of 54 out of 60 points, scored by a panel of six reviewers. The Game Boy Advance version, "Final Fantasy IV Advance", was met with praise from reviewers, although a few noted the game's graphics do not hold up well to current games, especially when compared to "Final Fantasy VI". Reviewers noted that some fans may still nitpick certain errors in the new translation. The Nintendo DS version of the game was praised for its visuals, gameplay changes and new cutscenes. It was a nominee for Best RPG on the Nintendo DS in IGN's 2008 video game awards.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: Upon release in Japan, "Final Fantasy IV" sold about cartridges on its first day, about less than what "Final Fantasy V" sold on its first day a year later. The Super Famicom version of "Final Fantasy IV" went on to sell copies in Japan.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: The PlayStation version sold an additional 261,000 copies in Japan in 1997. By March 31, 2003, the game, including the PlayStation and WonderSwan Color remakes, had shipped 2.16 million copies worldwide, with 1.82 million of those copies being shipped in Japan and 340,000 abroad. The Game Boy Advance version of the game sold over 219,000 copies in Japan by the end of 2006. As of 2007, just before the release of the Nintendo DS version, nearly 3 million copies of the game had been sold around the world. By May 2009, the DS version of the game had sold 1.1 million copies worldwide. According to Steam Spy, another 190,000 copies of the PC version were sold by April 2018.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: In addition, "Final Fantasy Collection", which includes "Final Fantasy IV", sold over 400,000 copies in 1999. This makes it the 31st best selling release of that year in Japan.


title: Final Fantasy IV

text: "Final Fantasy IV: The After Years", the sequel to "Final Fantasy IV", is set seventeen years after the events of the original. The first two chapters of the game were released in Japan in February 2008 for NTT DoCoMo FOMA 903i series phones, with a release for au WIN BREW series phones slated for Spring 2008. The game revolves around Ceodore, the son of Cecil and Rosa, with most of the original cast members returning, some of whom are featured in more prominent roles than before, among other new characters. After the mobile release, it was hinted that "The After Years" would be released outside Japan. On March 25, 2009, an announcement was made by Satoru Iwata during Nintendo's GDC 2009 Keynote speech that the U.S. would see "The After Years" released later that year on the Wii's WiiWare service. The first two chapters were released on June 1, 2009, in North America and June 5, 2009, in PAL territories, with the additional chapters being released in the following months.


title: Dirtbag left

text: The dirtbag left is a style of left-wing politics that eschews civility to convey a left-wing populist and anti-capitalist message using vulgarity. It is most closely associated with American left-wing media that emerged in the mid-2010s, such as the podcast "Chapo Trap House".


title: Dirtbag left

text: The term was coined by Amber A'Lee Frost and is associated with her essay "The Necessity of Political Vulgarity", published in "Current Affairs" in 2016. While the essay does not directly use the term "dirtbag left", it mounts a defense of politics that uses "vulgarity as a tool for fighting the powerful", citing "libelles" used to slander Marie Antoinette, "Cohen v. California", and N.W.A's protest song "Fuck tha Police", among others. Frost writes that vulgarity in itself is not "inherently subversive", but argues that the left must reclaim vulgarity "from the Trumps of the world", lest it be "handicapped by [its] own civility."


title: Dirtbag left

text: The dirtbag left is most closely associated with the American politics podcast "Chapo Trap House", which Frost co-hosted. "Chapo" emerged in 2016 in the context of the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries and subsequent presidential election. It combines political analysis and punditry from a socialist perspective with elements of comedy and irony, in the style of a shock jock. "Chapo" gained attention for its criticism of both the Republican and Democratic parties, particularly what the podcast claimed was the Democratic Party's complicity with a conservative agenda.


title: Dirtbag left

text: Beyond "Chapo", media outlets that have been alternately linked to or described as dirtbag left include the podcasts "Street Fight Radio", "TrueAnon", "Red Scare", "Cum Town", the publications "The Baffler" and "Current Affairs", and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. These outlets are noted as presenting comedy as "applied to an ideological reading of the news of the day, with a particular focus on political feeling or style."


title: Dirtbag left

text: The dirtbag left has been described as an anti-fascist, anti-conservative, anti-centrist, and anti-liberal ideology. It has been linked to a variety of political stances, including anti-political correctness; anti-inequality; a disregard for civility; opposition to the wealthy and support for redistributive economic policies; and support for both the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders.