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1959 is when students from MIT started making games. They were for the TX-0 machine. They include HAX, Tic Tac Toe, and Mouse in Maze.
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A collection of interactive graphical programs were created on the TX-0 machine at MIT.
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A group of students at MIT, including Steve Russell, programmed a game titled Spacewar! on the DEC PDP-1, a new computer at the time. Spacewar! is credited as the first influential computer game.
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in 1971, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney created a coin-operated arcade version of Spacewar! and called it Computer Space. Nutting Associates bought the game and manufactured 1,500 Computer Space machines, with the release taking place in November 1971.
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Bushnell and Dabney felt they did not receive enough earnings by licensing Computer Space to Nutting Associates and founded Atari, Inc.
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Pong was the first arcade video game with widespread success. The game is loosely based on table tennis: a ball is "served" from the center of the court and as the ball moves towards their side of the court each player must maneuver their paddle to hit the ball back to their opponent. Atari sold over 19,000 Pong machines creating many imitators.
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In the earliest consoles, the computer code for one or more games was hardcoded into microchips. Starting in 1976, video games were found on cartridges with the release of the Fairchild 'Video Entertainment System' (VES).
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Activision was created by disgruntled former Atari programmers "who realized that the games they had anonymously programmed on their $20K salaries were responsible for 60 percent of the company's $100 million in cartridge sales for one year".
