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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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Alph Baer patents his interactive television game. Four years later Magnavox releases Odyssey, the first home video game system, based on his designs.
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Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn of Atari develop an arcade table tennis game. When they test it in Andy Capps Tavern in Sunnyvale, California, it stops working. Why? Because people played it so much it jammed with quarters. Pong, an arcade legend, is born.
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Taito's Space Invaders descends on Japan, causing a shortage of 100-yen coins. Within a year, 60,000 Space Invaders machines in the United States tempt Americans to spend millions of quarters driving back the seemingly unstoppable ranks of attacking aliens.
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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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Nintendo's Game Boy popularizes handheld gaming. Game Boy is not the first handheld system with interchangeable cartridges
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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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Lara Croft debuts as the star of Eidos's adventure game Tomb Raider.
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Valve energizes PC gaming with its release of Steam. The digital distribution platform allows players to download, play, and update 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.
