What was the first video game?
7225705#14
In 1972, the first commercially available video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, had a light gun accessory, the Shooting Gallery. This was the first involvement of Nintendo in video games. According to Martin Picard in the "International Journal of Computer Game Research": "in 1971, Nintendo had -- even before the marketing of the first home console in the United States -- an alliance with the American pioneer Magnavox to develop and produce optoelectronic guns for the Odyssey (released in 1972), since it was similar to what Nintendo was able to offer in the Japanese toy market in 1970s".
History of Nintendo
19992532#15
That same year saw the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console which could be connected to a television set. The inventor, Ralph H. Baer, had initially had the idea in 1951 to make an interactive game on a television set. Unable to do so with the technological constraints at the time, he began work on a device that would attach to a television set and display games in 1966, and the "Brown Box", the last prototype of seven, was licensed to Magnavox to adapt and produce. They announced the console in May 1972, and it went on sale that September. The console and its games featured numerous innovations beyond being the first video game device for home consumers: it was the first game to use a raster-scan video display, or television set, directly displayed via modification of a video signal; it was also the first video gaming device to be displayed in a television commercial. It sold for US$100 and shipped with several games, including "Table tennis", which Bushnell had seen a demo of and which "Pong" had been based on. The Odyssey sold over 100,000 units in 1972, and more than 350,000 by the end of 1975, buoyed by the popularity of the table tennis game, in turn driven by the success of "Pong". "Pong" and the Odyssey kicked off a new era of video gaming, with numerous other competitors starting up in the video game industry as it grew in popularity.
Early history of video games
19992532#0
The history of video games spans a period of time between the invention of the first electronic games and today, covering a long period of invention and changes. Video gaming reached mainstream popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since then, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern culture in most parts of the world. The early history of video games, therefore, covers the period of time between the first interactive electronic game with an electronic display in 1947, the first true video games in the early 1950s, and the rise of early arcade video games in the 1970s ("Pong" and the beginning of the first generation of video game consoles with the Magnavox Odyssey, both in 1972). During this time there were a wide range of devices and inventions corresponding with large advances in computing technology, and the actual first video game is dependent on the definition of "video game" used.
Early history of video games
700265#13
The history of game making begins with the development of the first video games, although which video game is the first depends on the definition of "video game". The first games created had little entertainment value, and their development focus was separate from user experience—in fact, these games required mainframe computers to play them. "OXO", written by Alexander S. Douglas in 1952, was the first computer game to use a digital display. In 1958, a game called "Tennis for Two", which displayed its output on an oscilloscope, was made by Willy Higinbotham, a physicist working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1961, a mainframe computer game called "Spacewar!" was developed by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students led by Steve Russell.
Video game development
19992532#2
Throughout the rest of the 1960s, digital computer games were created by increasingly numerous programmers and sometimes sold commercially in catalogs. As the audience for video games expanded to more than a few dozen research institutions with the falling cost of computers, and programming languages that would run on multiple types of computers were created, a wider variety of games began to be developed. Video games transitioned into a new era in the early 1970s with the launch of the commercial video game industry in 1971 with the display of the coin-operated arcade game "Galaxy Game" and the release of the first arcade video game "Computer Space", and then in 1972 with the release of the immensely successful arcade game "Pong" and the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, which launched the first generation of video game consoles.
Early history of video games
27965355#2
Anthropy's first book, "Rise of the Videogame Zinesters", was published in 2012. In an interview at the time of its release, Anthropy said it promotes the idea of "small, interesting, personal experiences by hobbyist authors ... "Zinesters" exists to be a kind of ambassador for that idea of what video games can be." The book also deals with a detailed analysis of the mechanics and potentialities of digital games, including the idea that games can be more usefully compared to theater than film (Anthropy: "There is always a scene called World 1-2, although each performance of World 1-2 will be different") and the role of chance in games. Anthropy also criticizes what she refers to as the video game industry being run by the corporate "elite" which design video games to be formulaic and do not take creative risks. "Zinester" wants consumers to see video games as having "cultural and artistic value" similar to artistic mediums such as comic books. The video game industry being run by "elites" does not allow for a diverse cast of voices, such as queer voices, to give their input in game development and design and stifles the creative process. As Anthropy puts it, "I have to strain to find any game that's about a queer woman, to find any game that resembles my own experience."
Anna Anthropy
3157091#6
The first video game to use pre-rendering was the 1982 arcade game "Xevious". The Sharp X68000 enhanced remake of "", released in 1991, used 3D pre-rendered graphics for the boss sprites, though this ended up creating what is considered "a bizarre contrast" with the game's mostly 2D graphics. One of the first games to extensively use pre-rendered graphics along with full motion video was "The 7th Guest". Released in 1992 as one of the first PC games exclusively on CD-ROM, the game was hugely popular, although reviews from critics were mixed. The game featured pre-rendered video sequences that were at a resolution of 640x320 at 15 frames per second, a feat previously thought impossible on personal computers. Shortly after, the release of "Myst" in 1993 made the use of pre-rendered graphics and CD-ROMs even more popular; most of the rendered work of "Myst" became the basis for the re-make "realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition" with its free-roaming real-time 3D graphics. The most graphically advanced use of entirely pre-rendered graphics in games is often claimed to be "", released in 2004.
Pre-rendering
44383806#1
The first magazine to cover the arcade game industry which is still in continuous publication is the subscription-only trade periodical, "Play Meter" magazine, which began publication in 1974 and covered the entire coin-operated entertainment industry (including the video game sector). Consumer-oriented video game journalism began during the golden age of arcade video games, soon after the success of 1978 hit "Space Invaders", leading to hundreds of favourable articles and stories about the emerging video game medium being aired on television and printed in newspapers and magazines. In North America, the first regular consumer-oriented column about video games, "Arcade Alley" in "Video" magazine, began in 1979 and was penned by Bill Kunkel along with Arnie Katz and Joyce Worley. The late 1970s also marked the first coverage of video games in Japan, with columns appearing in personal computer and manga magazines. The earliest journals exclusively covering video games emerged in late 1981, but early column-based coverage continued to flourish in North America and Japan with prominent examples like video game designer Yuji Horii's early 1980s column in "Weekly Shōnen Jump" and Rawson Stovall's nationally syndicated column, "The Vid Kid" running weekly ran from 1982 to 1992.
Video game journalism
6336052#4
Development of "Space Race" began soon after the founding of Atari in Summer 1972 under the name "Asteroid". Co-founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney had the initial idea for the game while developing the 1971 "Computer Space", the first arcade video game, but felt the more complicated "Computer Space" was a better first game. After leaving Nutting Associates and founding Atari in May 1972, Bushnell spent a few days designing "Asteroid", but soon had to drop the project to focus on running the company. After the release of "Pong", Atari's first game, development resumed on the title in Spring 1973. Dabney has claimed credit for the game's final design, though "Pong" designer Allan Alcorn has stated that he and Bushnell may have been involved as well. "Asteroid", codenamed VP-2, was designed to be a racing game that would be simple to create to fulfill an earlier contract with Bally Midway; Atari had initially offered "Pong" during its development to fulfill the contract, but had been rejected. The company was also interested in producing a very different game from their previous success, as they felt that innovative design was what would separate them from their competitors, which they saw as flooding the market with "Pong" clones rather than making new video games.
Space Race (video game)
55181434#0
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and video game console and home computer development company which operated between 1972 and 1984. During its years of operation, it developed and produced over 350 arcade, console, and computer games for its own systems, and almost 100 ports of games for home computers such as the Commodore 64. Atari began its operations by developing and producing some of the first arcade video games; the first commercial arcade video game, "Computer Space", was released in November 1971 by Atari founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in partnership as Syzygy Engineering. The game in part marked the end of the early history of video games and the start of the rise of the commercial video game industry. After its founding in 1972, Atari released "Pong", believed to be the third arcade video game after "Computer Space" and a clone game and the first commercially successful arcade video game machine, and thereafter produced numerous arcade games, including video games and pinball machines.
List of Atari, Inc. games
74337#23
The game—and references to it—has appeared in numerous facets of popular culture. Soon after the game's release, hundreds of favorable articles and stories about the emerging video game medium popularized by "Space Invaders" aired on television and were printed in newspapers and magazines. The Space Invaders Tournament, held by Atari in 1980 and won by Bill Heineman, was the first electronic sports event and attracted more than 10,000 participants, establishing video gaming as a mainstream hobby. The Arcade Awards ceremony was created that same year to honor the best video games, with "Space Invaders" winning the first Game of the Year award. The impact of "Space Invaders" on the video game industry has been compared to that of The Beatles in the pop music industry. Considered "the first blockbuster video game," "Space Invaders" became synonymous with video games worldwide for some time.
Space Invaders