History of Computer Gaming

Timeline created by facebooker_55004233 in Science and Technology

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Event Date:	Event Title:	Event Description:
04/11/1958	Tennis for Two	William Higinbotham created the first video game ever called Tennis for Two
12/11/1966	Chase system invented	In 1966, Ralph Baer (then at Sanders Associates) created a simple video game called Chase that could be displayed on a standard television set.
04/20/1970	First Mouse patented	1970, describing it in the patent application as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system," the mouse was patented.
06/07/1972	Pong Released to the public	The first version of Pong was mass released to the world.
06/10/1972	First Handheld Game system	The first portable, handheld electronic game was Tic Tac Toe, made in 1972 by a company called Waco.
11/14/1972	The Odyssey	In 1972, the first commercial video game console that could be played in the home, the Odyssey was invented.
05/06/1976	Fairchaild Video Entertainment System	In 1976, Fairchild released the first programmable home game console called the Fairchild Video Entertainment System.
01/05/1977	Atari released	In 1977, Atari released its cartridge-based console called the Video Computer System (VCS), later called Atari 2600. This revolutionized home gaming.
11/26/1978	Space Invaders Released	The arcade game industry entered its Golden Age in 1978 with the release of Space Invaders by Taito.
04/30/1980	Defender Game released	Defender (1980) established the scrolling shooter and was the first to have events taking place outside the player's view, displayed by a radar view showing a map of the whole playfield.
10/11/1980	Mystery House released - first graphic adventure game	Also published in 1980 was Roberta Williams' Mystery House, for the Apple II. It was the first graphic adventure on home computers.
01/11/1984	First gaming PC's introduced	The personal computer became a competitive gaming platform with IBM's PC/AT in 1984.
01/10/1991	Major modern game companies come to be	In the early 1990s, shareware distribution was a popular method of publishing games for smaller developers, including then-fledgling companies such as Apogee (now 3D Realms), Epic Megagames (now Epic Games), and id Software.
09/10/1993	Myst released	Published in 1993, Myst itself was one of the first computer games to make full use of the new high-capacity CD-ROM storage format.
10/11/1993	Shareware becomes popular	Shareware was also the distribution method of choice of early modern first-person shooters (FPS) like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.
05/02/1995	Third Person Shooters developed	The first third-person shooter games were created such as Grand Theft Auto, Splinter Cell and Hitman
03/06/1996	Quake - first online FPS	Id Software's 1996 game Quake pioneered play over the Internet in first-person shooters.
10/10/1996	Voodoo 3DFX card released	In 1996, 3dfx released the Voodoo chipset, leading to the first affordable 3D accelerator cards for personal computers.
02/07/1997	Java/Flash become popular	Developments in web browser plugins like Java and Macromedia Flash allowed for simple browser-based games.
12/10/2000	Playstation 2 released	Sony released the PlayStation 2.
08/11/2004	Major games released	During this year Doom 3, Halo 2, and Half-Life 2 were released and achieved Gold status in sales.
11/22/2005	X-Box 360 released	Microsoft releases their second video game console, the Xbox 360
02/11/2008	Social Networking games become popular	Facebook games such as YoVille, Mob Wars, Mafia Wars, and FrontierVille, and FarmVille gain significant popularity.
11/09/2010	Call of Duty: Black Ops Released	Call of Duty: Black Ops changes the way people play FPS's online and single player
11/11/2010	GeForce GTX 500 series is released	GeForce GTX 500 series is created and marketed to public