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A. S. Douglass creates OXO
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Programmers at New Mexico's Los Alamos laboratories, develop the first blackjack program on an IBM-701 computer
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The U.S. military designs Hutspiel, in which Red and Blue players (representing NATO and Soviet commanders) wage war.
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Willy Higinbotham creates a tennis game on an oscilloscope and analog computer for public demonstration at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958.
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Students at MIT create Mouse in the Maze on MIT's TX-0 computer
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MIT student Steve Russell invents Spacewar!, the first computer-based video game.
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John Kemeny and Keith Bellairs had created the first computer game in BASIC
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Ralph Baer develops his "Brown Box", the video game prototype that lets users play tennis and other games.
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Magnavox releases Odyssey, the first home video game system
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Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn of Atari develop an arcade table tennis game.
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Atari introduces its home version of Pong. Atari's founder, Nolan Bushnell, cannot find any partners in the toy business, so he sells the first units through the Sears Roebuck sporting goods department
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Atari releases the Video Computer System, more commonly known as Atari 2600.
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Space Invaders machines tempts driving back the seemingly unstoppable ranks of attacking aliens.
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Intellivision has better graphics and more sophisticated controls than Atari 2600, and players love its sports games. Mattel sells three million Intellivision units.
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A missing slice of pizza inspires Namco’s Toru Iwatani to create Pac-Man, which goes on sale in July 1980. That year a version of Pac-Man for Atari 2600 becomes the first arcade hit to appear on a home console.
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Video game fans go ape over Nintendo’s Donkey Kong, featuring a character that would become world-famous: Jumpman.
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Disney taps into the video game craze by releasing the movie Tron
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Multiplayer play takes a huge step forward with Dan Bunten's M.U.L.E. In the game, players compete to gather the most resources while saving their colony on the planet of Irata.
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Russian mathematician Alexey Pajitnov creates Tetris, a simple but addictive puzzle game
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It's a good year for fantasy Role Playing Games, as Shigeru Miyamoto creates Legend of Zelda
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Nintendo's Game Boy popularizes handheld gaming. Game Boy is not the first handheld system with interchangeable cartridges
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Microsoft bundles a video game version of the classic card game solitaire with Windows 3.0.
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Sega needs an iconic hero for its Genesis (known as Mega Drive in Japan) system and finds it in Sonic the Hedgehog.
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Sony releases PlayStation in the United States, selling for $100 less than Sega Saturn
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Microsoft enters the video game market with Xbox and hit games like Halo: Combat Evolved.
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Nintendo maintains its dominance of the handheld market with the Nintendo DS
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Microsoft's Xbox 360 brings high-definition realism to the game market, as well as even better multiplayer competitions on Xbox Live and popular titles such as Alan Wake.
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Nintendo Wii gets gamers off the couch and moving with innovative, motion-sensitive remotes. Not only does Nintendo make gaming more active, it also appeals to millions of people who never before liked video games.
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The indie game movement comes of age with the tremendous popularity of Minecraft, the addictive brick-building game from Swedish developer Markus Persson.
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Crowdfunding site Kickstarter enables game creators to raise millions of dollars to produce new and experimental play platforms such as the OUYA console and the Oculus Rift.
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One year after being acquired by Amazon, online video streaming service Twitch fuels the growth of eSports.
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Nintendo’s Switch introduces the first hybrid mobile/home video game console into a game market dominated by smartphones and tablets
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Millions of players tune in to watch a virtual asteroid destroy the map of Epic Games’ massively popular online battle royale game Fortnite
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