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Edward Condon - Nimatron
Condon designed a computer for the World’s Fair that played the traditional game Nim in which players tried to avoid picking up the last match. Later named "Nimatron," tens of thousands of people played it, and the computer won at least 90% of the games. -
Alexander S. Douglas - OXO
Programmed for the EDSAC computer as part of his Ph.D, The program simulates a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. The game was controlled using a rotary telephone controller -
Arthur Samuel - Checkers
The IBM employee developed a checkers program that could learn from it's own mistakes, the first appication of machine learning. It was also the first computer game to be featured on television. -
NSS Chess Program
Developed at Carnegie Mellon University, it was the first chess program sophisticated enough to defeat a novice human opponent. -
Steve Russel - Spacewar!
Programmed for the PDP-1 ,Spacewar! was included as a test program for the new PDP-1 computer, and thereby became the first nationally distributed computer game. -
Sega - Periscope
Periscope was one of the first acade games. It used a mostly mechanical display but a computerised back end behind the scenes -
Magnavox Odessy
The first ever home games console, the Odessy failed to catch on in a big way due to bad marketing, but sold 140,000 units at $100 each. It came loaded with 6 games, and had more available to purchase. -
Pong
Based on a game on the magnavox odessy, this game was simply a training exercise for Allan alcorn of the new company Atari. Atari sold 19,000 pong machines spawning many imitations. -
Gun fight
This game depicted game characters, violence and human to human combat, using dual-stick controls. It was adapted for an american release (it was originally japanese) to use the intel 8080 microprocesser, making it the first game to make use of one. -
Cartridge Games and the VCS
Before this point, games were hardwired, rather than written with software, and this meant people had to buy a new device for every game. But by the mid 70's, general purpose microchips came into use, most notably by the VCS, later known as the Atari 2600. At release it had 9 games, and later boomed with a port of Space Invaders. -
Space Invaders
An arcade video game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games -
Pacman
This now famous arcade game was the first game to achieve popularity in mainstream culture, and the first character to be popular in his own right. -
Donkey Kong
The orignal arcade game was released by Nintendo, and is an early example of the platformer genre. Mario was originally named 'Jumpman' and Peach 'Pauline'. -
Mario Bros.
This usage of Jumpman from the Donkey Kong game introduced two player co-operative play to the gaming industry, as well as spawning the Mario franchise. -
Karate Champ
Said to have popularised the ono-on-one fighting genre, this game pitted two players against eachother, or one against the AI, in a karate battle. -
The Legend Of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda is an action-adventure game released by Nintendo, and is often said to be one of the greatest or most influential games of all time. It was sold as a launch title for Nintendo's new console, the Famicom Disk System. -
Final Fantasy
This game, released by Square, was the first to make use of a side on, turn based battle system, later imitated by many other RPGs. The game spawned an entire franchise which continues to this day. -
Gameboy
The Nintendo Gameboy was the first handheld console since the flop of the Microvision 10 years prior, and was released with such launch games as Super Mario Land, Baseball and Tetris.
