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The Colossus (1943) was the first electronically programmed computer developed by British codebreakers to decrypt messages sent during World War 2. Shortly after the war, several universities published the first stored program computers (stores program instructions in electronic memory) and this allowed computers to undertake numerous tasks easily.
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ENIAC ( Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first general use computer. It’s first program was to study how easily a thermonuclear weapon can be made
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In the next decade computers started to be commercialised and adopted by universities
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The first ever gaming computer was starting to be made on December 1, 1950 but launched on April 12, 1951. It was called Nimrod. Nimrod was firstly demonstrated at the Exhibition of Science in the Festival of Britain on May 5th 1951. It played Nim.
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OXO, an adaptation of tic-tac-toe for the EDSAC, debuted in 1952
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Tennis for Two
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In 1961 development of Spacewar on a PDP-1 at MIT for the Science Open House. Made possible by MIT granting students access to the computer. The graphics are made of ASCII text characters.
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Development of the BASIC language for students in fields other than maths and science to program.
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In 1972 The first commercially available home videogame for TV was launched, called Odyssey - complex, with many electronic components, and very expensive.
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IBM 5100 was a desktop computer introduced in September 1975, six years before the IBM PC. It was the expansion of SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable).
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A game by William Crowther and Don Woods, it was developed sometime in 1976. The player would be presented with situations, written in text, and would have to type out their responses (ie. walk forward, attack, take, etc) in order to progress. It was one of the most popular text based games for its time.
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MSX is a standardised home computer architecture, first announced by Microsoft on June 16, 1983. It was created by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice president at Microsoft Japan.
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One of the first text-based adventures that included graphics as well as text, it also was one of the first role playing games. The main character was a bard that could cast spells by singing one of six songs.Originally released on the Apple II, it was later ported to many other systems.
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In 1993, the first person shooter Doom emerged. This is widely regarded as the most influencial video game ever created. It set the standard for many games and created the first person shooter genre. It was ported to many other pc platforms and consoles. It featured breakthrough 3D graphics as well as multiplayer networking.
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With the rise of Windows and hardware accelerated 3D graphics, games like Tomb Raider emerged and revolutionized the market even more. At this time however, video games were still dominated by consoles.
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Founded in 1992 Falchon Northwest added the Falchon Talon to the lineup in 2000. Later the company came out with of line of FragBook laptops.
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Nvidia, the leading company in graphical hardware, had by this time created incredibly powerful and efficient gpu's and cpu's. Around this time pc's began to overtake consoles in terms of hardware, however consoles still held their popularity.
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On November 13, 2007, the first person shooter Crysis was born. This was the first in a trilogy. This game however, was a huge breakthrough in graphics, resolution, rendering techniques, and hardware efficiency. It was released originally for pc, and possibly marked the rise in pc gaming as it proved the potential for pc's and blows most console games out of the water to this day.
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After the release of Crysis, pc games are continuing to become better and better, hardware becomes faster and faster for cheaper, and is even growing in popularity. Pc games are expected to outsell console games in the next few years, as many gamers are realizing that pc's have much more to offer.