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The First Game, Tennis for Two
Tennis for Two is a incredibly basic tennis simulator that is the grandpa of all modern video games. It was the first major attempt at a proper video game. Dr. William Higinbotham designed this game for Brookhaven National Laboratory's annual exposition where it turned out to be one of the most popular atractions at the show -
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Important Events in The Last Century of Gaming
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The First Game Console, the Magnavox Odyssey
The Magnavox Odyssey, released by Magnavox, was the first home console ever released. The console used cartridges inserted into the console telling the console which game was being played. Then the user had to put a plastic film over their TV to give visuals. The console was power by 6 C batteries, although a A/C adapter was later sold. -
Pong Bar Test Trial
In August, 1972 Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney made a prototype for a little game called pong from a $75 black-and-white TV, a 1.2m wooden cabinet and half a milk bottle to catch the coins. They took this prototype down to a local bar to get a public trial. After a week they were called back to the bar because the machine had broke. on inspection the machine had completely filled up with coins. -
Space Invaders, The Rise of The Arcade
Space Invaders mark the rising popularity of arcades and brought video games from a novelty to a serious market. The game was produced by the Japanese company Taito and released first in Japan in June 1978. It later got a western release where it received an equally positive reception. -
Pacman, Gaming for Women
The iconic game Pacman, developed by Namco, was a game, in the developers own words, a game design to bring gaming to women. The game was a massive success in arcades and made massive amounts of money from merchandise and the arcade machines. Pacman is still popular to this day with modern versions of the game still being made. -
Zork, Adventure From Your Screen
Zork was a text based adventure game developed by Infocom and the game defined the genre. It gave the player an enthralling story of swords and beasts which was a first in the time period. This game still has a cult following to this day, truely showing how much of an impact the game had when it released. -
E.T, The First Major Flop
E.T was the first major game license and was almost the end of video games. The game was rushed and when it did release, the E.T hype was dying off. The game was broken and basically inposible to finish> Copies of the game were taken in truck loads to a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The failure of E.T caused a massive recession in the video game industry that took years to recover from. The game is still to this day considered one of the worst games ever. -
Tetris, The Game for Everyone
Tetris is a Russin game made by Alexey Pajitnov and boy did this game take off. This game released on a few different platform, but was by far the most popular on the Game Boy. In 1997 Tetris got declared the most popular game ever by a popular magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. Even more recently in 2007 IGN declared it the second best game in history. To this day Tetris has sold more than 170 million copies. -
The Little Giant, The Game Boy
The Game Boy was developed and released by Nintendo and it made its own spot in the gaming industry, portable gaming. The Game Boy was the first of its kind and took of like a rocket. When it first released in Japan it sold all 300,000 shipped in 2 week. Then when it Released in the US in July 31, it sold the whole 1 million shipped in a few weeks. The two most popular games on the Game Boy where tetris (which shipped with it) and Pokemon Red and Blue. -
Doom, The Game Your Mom Hated
Doom was developed by id Software and it marked the take off of PvP games. Doom was as popular as it was controversial, due to the games level of graphic violence and a shooting done by an avid player. Despite this, the game made the first major steps in player verses player gameplay and paved the path for the popular competive games today like Counter Strike, Halo and Call of Duty. This game is still popular today with a remake of the game being released next year. -
ESRB, Game Safety
ESRB, The Entertainment Software Ratings Board was brought in after serveral game companies voluntarily got together to support it after the controversies of Doom and Mortal Kombat. The ESRB works similiarly to the movie rating system, it uses 6 age-based ratings and rates the games based on things like nudity, violence and drug use. -
PlayStation and The CD-Rom
Originally Sony and Nintendo were going to work together to add a CD-Rom drive to Nintendo's SNES, but just after the deal announced to the public, Nintendo backed out of the deal. AFter this the chairman man of Sony, Ken Kutaragi, decided instead to make thier own console with the technology which lead to the PlayStation. This console was a huge success and got dubbed 'The First True Living Room Device'. This console has lead onto Sony become one of the three major console developers today. -
E3, The Home of Nerds
E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo is an expo dedicated to gaming were game companies reveal new planned games and new consoles. The first one was in 1995 revealed the PlayStation (with Michael Jordan for some reason). Sega released the Saturn and Nintendo released the Nintendo 64, original called the Ultra 64, and the Virtual Boy,a commercial failure. Overall E3 is an event used to show what to expect in the future for the gaming industry -
The Rise of MMOs
When Sony released EverQuest in 1999, little did they know they would create one of the most dedicated type of gamer, the MMO gamer. EverQuest was a Massively Multiplayer Online game (hence MMO) about magic, wizards and monsters that gained massive popularity with even the developers playing it for days on end because of how addictive and immersive it was. EverQuest lasted for about 5 years until World of Warcraft came out.
