What was the first video game ever released?
Early history of video games
Following the 1947 invention of the cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game as well as the first to use an electronic display, the first true video games were created in the early 1950s. Initially created as technology demonstrations, such as the "Bertie the Brain" and Nimrod computers in 1950 and 1951, video games also became the purview of academic research. A series of games, generally simulating real-world board games, were created at various research institutions to explore programming, human–computer interaction, and computer algorithms. These include "OXO" and Christopher Strachey's draughts program in 1952, the first software-based games to incorporate a CRT display, and several chess and checkers programs. Possibly the first video game created simply for entertainment was 1958's "Tennis for Two", featuring moving graphics on an oscilloscope. As computing technology improved over time, computers became smaller and faster, and the ability to work on them was opened up to university employees and undergraduate students by the end of the 1950s. These new programmers began to create games for non-academic purposes, leading up to the 1962 release of "Spacewar!" as one of the earliest known digital computer games to be available outside a single research institute.
List of video game genres
One of the first action-adventure games was the Atari 2600 game "Adventure" (1980). It was directly inspired by the original text adventure, "Colossal Cave Adventure". In the process of adapting a text game to a console with only a joystick for control, designer Warren Robinett created an action-adventure game by incorporating action arcade game elements.
List of best-selling video games
This is a list of the best-selling video games of all time. The best-selling video game to date is "Tetris", a tile-matching puzzle video game originally released for the Electronika 60 in 1984 and then popularised upon its Game Boy release in 1989. The game has been ported to a wide range of platforms and sold in excess of 170 million copies, including 100 million paid mobile game downloads and 35 million Game Boy version sales. "Minecraft" and "Grand Theft Auto V" are the only other games to have sold over 100 million copies. The best-selling game on a single platform is "Wii Sports", with nearly 83 million sales for the Wii console.
Star Wars
The first officially licensed "Star Wars" electronic game was Kenner's 1979 table-top "Star Wars" Electronic Battle Command. In 1982, Parker Brothers published the first "Star Wars" video game for the Atari 2600, "". It was followed in 1983 by Atari's rail shooter arcade game "Star Wars", which used vector graphics and was based on the Death Star trench run scene from the 1977 film. The next game, "" (1984), used more traditional raster graphics, with the following game "" (1985) returning to vector graphics.
Video game development
True commercial design and development of games began in the 1970s, when arcade video games and first-generation consoles were marketed. In 1971, "Computer Space" was the first commercially sold, coin-operated video game. It used a black-and-white television for its display, and the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips. In 1972, the first home console system was released called Magnavox Odyssey, developed by Ralph H. Baer. That same year, Atari released "Pong", an arcade game that increased video game popularity. The commercial success of "Pong" led other companies to develop "Pong" clones, spawning the video game industry.
Cathode-ray tube amusement device
Despite being a game that used a graphical display, the cathode-ray tube amusement device is generally not considered under most definitions to be a candidate for the first video game, as it used purely analog hardware and did not run on a computing device; some loose definitions may still consider it a video game, but it is still usually disqualified as the device was never manufactured. Nevertheless, it is the earliest known interactive electronic game as well as the first to incorporate an electronic display, thus making it a forerunner to other games in the early history of video games. As the device was never manufactured or widely shown it did not directly inspire any other games and had no impact on the future video game industry.
Time Traveler (video game)
Although Time Traveler (video game) was released in 1991 by Sega as the first holographic-like video game, Kathy Nelson (MIT, BSEE 1993) created the world's first true holographic video game in 1993. It was the first video game to use real holograms instead of optical effects, such as concave mirrors. The holograms were created and displayed by Holovideo (see Computer-generated holography), which was developed by members of the MIT Media Lab Spatial Imaging Group.
Kathy Nelson created the holographic video game for her undergraduate thesis in the MIT Media Lab Spatial Imaging Group. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology published her thesis here: style="color:#3366BB;">Real time holographic image rendering : improvements in lighting and realism
History of video games
In 1979, Milton Bradley Company released the first handheld system using interchangeable cartridges, Microvision. While the handheld received modest success in the first year of production, the lack of games, screen size and video game crash of 1983 brought about the system's quick demise.
Christian video game
A Christian video game, or Bible game, is a video game based on teachings of Christianity. Christian video games were first marketed successfully by BibleBytes in the early 1980s on several different microcomputer platforms. Wisdom Tree introduced Christian themes to console games, starting in 1991, with the unlicensed "Bible Adventures" for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Now they are made by many different developers. Most of these new developers meet yearly at the "Christian Games Developers Conference" and build support through the Christian Game Developers Foundation.
History of video games
While most games were created on hardware of limited graphic ability, one computer able to host more impressive games was the PLATO system developed at the University of Illinois. Intended as an educational computer, the system connected hundreds of users all over the United States via remote terminals that featured high-quality plasma displays and allowed users to interact with each other in real time. This allowed the system to host an impressive array of graphical and/or multiplayer games, including some of the earliest known computer RPGs, which were primarily derived, like "Adventure", from "D&D", but unlike that game placed a greater emphasis on combat and character progression than puzzle solving. Starting with top-down dungeon crawls like "The Dungeon" (1975) and "The Game of Dungeons" (1975), more commonly referred to today by their filenames, "pedit5" and "dnd", PLATO RPGs soon transitioned to a first-person perspective with games like "Moria" (1975), "Oubliette" (1977), and "Avatar" (1979), which often allowed multiple players to join forces to battle monsters and complete quests together. Like "Adventure", these games would ultimately inspire some of the earliest personal computer games.
PlatinumGames
"MadWorld" was the first game to be released. Produced by Inaba, the game was designed to appeal to a western audience and had a unique art style inspired by that of "Sin City". The original story was written by Yasumi Matsuno, who had previously worked on Square Enix's "Ogre Battle" and "Final Fantasy Tactics", while PlatinumGames and Sega jointly localized the title for the West. The team created the game with a vision of bringing a unique game to the Wii. One of the game's main themes is violence and brutality which led to controversy as it tarnished the family-friendly image of the Wii console. While the game received positive reviews, it was a commercial failure, selling poorly in both Japan and the West, despite Sega's heavy marketing. Though the game was a commercial failure, Sega felt that sales were "encouraging", and said that they would continue to make mature games for the Wii. They released the "Welcome To Violence" pack, which bundles "MadWorld" with "", and "The Conduit", each of which were commercial failures. In 2010, Sega announced that they would cease publishing mature video games for the Wii, citing the disappointing sales of "MadWorld" as a contributing factor. However, PlatinumGames announced several days later that they would like to do a sequel to the game.
List of video game genres
Advergames, in the context of video game genres, refers to promotional software specifically made to advertise a product, organization or viewpoint. The first advergames were distributed on floppy disk by the Chef Boyardee, Coca-Cola, and Samsung brands, while the first cereal box advergame was Chex Quest in 1996. The majority of advergames are found online and mostly include simple and cheaply made Flash games. Some advergames were released to consoles, like Pepsiman for Sony PlayStation.
Video game
In 1971, "Computer Space", created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was the first commercially sold, coin-operated video game. It used a black-and-white television for its display, and the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips. The game was featured in the 1973 science fiction film "Soylent Green". "Computer Space" was followed in 1972 by the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console. Modeled after a late 1960s prototype console developed by Ralph H. Baer called the "Brown Box", it also used a standard television. These were followed by two versions of Atari's "Pong"; an arcade version in 1972 and a home version in 1975 that dramatically increased video game popularity. The commercial success of "Pong" led numerous other companies to develop "Pong" clones and their own systems, spawning the video game industry.
Video game industry
In 1971, the arcade game, "Computer Space was released." The following year, Atari, Inc. released the first commercially successful video game, "Pong", the original arcade version of which sold over 19,000 arcade cabinets. That same year saw the introduction of video games to the home market with the release of the early video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. However, both the arcade and home markets would be dominated by "Pong" clones, which flooded the market and led to the video game crash of 1977. The crash eventually came to an end with the success of Taito's "Space Invaders", released in 1978, sparking a renaissance for the video game industry and paving the way for the golden age of video arcade games. The game's success inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants and convenience stores during the golden age. "Space Invaders" would go on to sell over 360,000 arcade cabinets worldwide, and by 1982, generate a revenue of $2 billion in quarters, equivalent to $4.6 billion in 2011.
Olympic video games
They are one of the older video game genres, having first appeared with the 1983 arcade classic "Track & Field". Since then, numerous titles have been released, usually in the immediate run up to the Olympic Games each game is intended to cover. Official IOC licenses became a norm since the first official game, "Olympic Gold", was released in time for the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Bertie the Brain
"Bertie" was created only three years after the 1947 invention of the cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game, and while non-visual games had been developed for research computers such as Alan Turing and Dietrich Prinz's chess program for the Ferranti Mark 1 at the University of Manchester, "Bertie" was the first computer-based game to feature a visual display of any sort. "Bertie" is considered under some definitions in contention for the title of the first video game. While definitions vary, the prior cathode-ray tube amusement device was a purely analog electrical game, and while "Bertie" did not feature an electronic screen it did run on a computer. Another special-purpose computer-based game, "Nimrod", was built in 1951, while the software-based tic-tac-toe game "OXO" and a draughts program by Christopher Strachey were in 1952 the first computer games to display visuals on an electronic screen rather than light bulbs.
Adventure game
The first interactive movie game was Nintendo's "Wild Gunman", a 1974 electro-mechanical arcade game that used film reel projection to display live-action full-motion video (FMV) footage of Wild West gunslingers. In the 1970s, Kasco (Kansei Seiki Seisakusho) released a hit electro-mechanical arcade game with live-action FMV, projecting car footage filmed by Toei.
Tomohiro Nishikado
Game designer Shigeru Miyamoto considers "Space Invaders" a game that revolutionized the video game industry; he was never interested in video games before seeing it, and it would inspire him to produce video games. Several publications ascribe the expansion of the video game industry from a novelty into a global industry to the success of the game, attributing the shift of video games from bars and arcades to more mainstream locations like restaurants and department stores to "Space Invaders". The game's success is also credited for ending the video game crash of 1977 and beginning the golden age of video arcade games. The launch of the arcade phenomenon in North America was in part due to "Space Invaders". "Game Informer" considers it, along with "Pac-Man", one of the most popular arcade games that tapped into popular culture and generated excitement during the golden age of arcades. The game also played an important role during the second generation of consoles, when it became the Atari 2600's first killer app, establishing Atari as the market leader in the home video game market at the time. "Space Invaders" is today regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time.
Video game controversies
Video game addiction is the excessive or compulsive use of computer and video games that interferes with daily life. Instances have been reported in which users play compulsively, isolating themselves from family and friends or from other forms of social contact, and focus almost entirely on in-game achievements rather than broader life events. The first video game to attract political controversy for its "addictive properties" was the 1978 arcade game "Space Invaders". One study from Chung Ang University observed that other structures affected by the use of video games include the anterior cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex. The results from this experiment suggest an increase in stimulation of these areas, resembling a pattern similar to those with substance dependence. Researchers interpreted their results of this increase in activity of the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortices to be an indication of an early stage of video game addiction.
Magnavox Odyssey
The idea for a video game console was thought up by Baer in August 1966, and over the next three years he, along with Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch, created seven successive prototype consoles. The seventh, known as the Brown Box, was shown to several manufacturers before Magnavox agreed to produce it in January 1971. After releasing the console in September 1972 through their dealerships, Magnavox sold between 69,000 and 100,000 units by the end of the year, and 350,000 by the time the console was discontinued in 1975. The console spawned the Magnavox Odyssey series of dedicated consoles, as well as the 1978 Magnavox Odyssey². One of the 28 games made for the system, a ping pong game, was an inspiration for Atari's successful "Pong" arcade game, in turn driving sales of the console. Baer's patents for the system and the games, including what was termed by a judge as "the pioneering patent of the video game art", formed the basis of a series of lawsuits spanning 20 years, earning Sanders and Magnavox over US$100 million. The release of the Odyssey marked the end of the early history of video games, and the rise of the commercial video game industry along with the start of the first generation of video game consoles.
Video game development
The history of game making begins with the development of the first video games, although which video game is the first depends on the definition of "video game". The first games created had little entertainment value, and their development focus was separate from user experience—in fact, these games required mainframe computers to play them. "OXO", written by Alexander S. Douglas in 1952, was the first computer game to use a digital display. In 1958, a game called "Tennis for Two", which displayed its output on an oscilloscope, was made by Willy Higinbotham, a physicist working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1961, a mainframe computer game called "Spacewar!" was developed by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students led by Steve Russell.
List of video game genres
Hideo Kojima's "Metal Gear" was the first mainstream stealth game, with the player starting the game unarmed, and sold over a million copies in the United States. "" evolved the stealth gameplay of its predecessor. "Metal Gear" and "Metal Gear 2" are credited with pioneering stealth mechanics. "Metal Gear Solid", which debuted at the 1996 Tokyo Game Show, was the first 3D stealth game, and is credited with popularizing the stealth game genre, as well as the hiding-behind-cover mechanic.
Spacewar!
In the early 1970s, "Spacewar" migrated from large computer systems to a commercial setting as it formed the basis for the first two coin-operated video games. While playing "Spacewar" at Stanford sometime between 1966 and 1969, college student Hugh Tuck remarked that a coin-operated version of the game would be very successful. While the high price of a minicomputer prevented such a game from being feasible then, in 1971 Tuck and Bill Pitts created a prototype coin-operated computer game, "Galaxy Game", with a US$20,000 PDP-11. Around the same time, a second prototype coin-operated game based on "Spacewar", "Computer Space", was developed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, which would become the first commercially sold arcade video game and the first widely available video game of any kind. Though Tuck felt that "Computer Space" was a poor imitation of "Spacewar" and his game a superior adaptation, many players believed both of the games to be upgraded variants of "Spacewar".
Wild Arms (video game)
Wild Arms is a Western-themed role-playing video game developed by Japanese company Media.Vision. Originally released in Japan in 1996 for the PlayStation, it was later translated and released in North America in 1997 and Europe in 1998 by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is noteworthy for being one of the first role-playing video games on the PlayStation, as well as one of the few to feature a Western American setting and motif. The game features 2D computer graphics for normal gameplay, while battle sequences are rendered in 3D.
Casual game
Chris Kohler considers Namco's arcade game "Pac-Man" (1980), which debuted during the golden age of video arcade games, to be the first "casual game". It is estimated to have been played more than ten billion times during the 20th century, making it the highest-grossing video game of all time.
Music of Japan
When the first electronic games were sold, they only had rudimentary sound chips with which to produce music. As the technology advanced, the quality of sound and music these game machines could produce increased dramatically. The first game to take credit for its music was "Xevious", also noteworthy for its deeply (at that time) constructed stories. Though many games have had beautiful music to accompany their gameplay, one of the most important games in the history of the video game music is "Dragon Quest". Koichi Sugiyama, a composer who was known for his music for various anime and TV shows, including "Cyborg 009" and a feature film of "Godzilla vs. Biollante", got involved in the project out of pure curiosity and proved that games can have serious soundtracks. Until his involvement, music and sounds were often neglected in the development of video games and programmers with little musical knowledge were forced to write the soundtracks as well. Undaunted by technological limits, Sugiyama worked with only 8 part polyphony to create a soundtrack that would not tire the player despite hours and hours of gameplay.
History of video games
The term "video game" has evolved over the decades from a purely technical definition to a general concept defining a new class of interactive entertainment. Technically, for a product to be a video game, there must be a video signal transmitted to a cathode ray tube (CRT) that creates a rasterized image on a screen. This definition would preclude early computer games that outputted results to a printer or teletype rather than a display, any game rendered on a vector-scan monitor, any game played on a modern high definition display, and most handheld game systems. From a technical standpoint, these would more properly be called "electronic games" or "computer games."
Pong
"Pong" was the first commercially successful video game, which helped to establish the video game industry along with the first home console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Soon after its release, several companies began producing games that copied its gameplay, and eventually released new types of games. As a result, Atari encouraged its staff to produce more innovative games. The company released several sequels which built upon the original's gameplay by adding new features. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a home version of "Pong" exclusively through Sears retail stores. It also was a commercial success and led to numerous copies. The game has been remade on numerous home and portable platforms following its release. "Pong" is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. due to its cultural impact.
History of video games
In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, the first handheld game console since the ill-fated Microvision ten years before. The design team headed by Gunpei Yokoi had also been responsible for the Game & Watch systems. Included with the system was "Tetris", which became one of the best sold video games of all time and was ported to a large variety of systems. Several rival handhelds made their debut in the early 90s, including the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx (the first handheld with color LCD display). Although these systems were more technologically advanced, they were hampered by higher battery consumption and less third-party developer support. While some of the other systems remained in production until the mid-1990s, the Game Boy, and its successive incarnations the Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, would be virtually unchallenged for dominance in the handheld market, until the PlayStation Portable was released in 2004 to compete with Nintendo's successor to the Game Boy line, the Nintendo DS.
Video game console
The first video games appeared in the 1960s. They were played on massive computers connected to vector displays, not analog televisions. Ralph H. Baer conceived the idea of a home video game in 1951. In the late 1960s, while working for Sanders Associates, Baer created a series of video game console designs. One of these designs, which gained the nickname of the 1966 "Brown Box", featured changeable game modes and was demonstrated to several TV manufacturers, ultimately leading to an agreement between Sanders Associates and Magnavox. In 1972, Magnavox released the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console which could be connected to a TV set. Ralph Baer's initial design had called for a huge row of switches that would allow players to turn on and off certain components of the console (the Odyssey lacked a CPU) to create slightly different games like tennis, volleyball, hockey, and chase. Magnavox replaced the switch design with separate cartridges for each game. Although Baer had sketched up ideas for cartridges that could include new components for new games, the carts released by Magnavox all served the same function as the switches and allowed players to choose from the Odyssey's built-in games.
List of video game genres
Adventure games were some of the earliest games created, beginning with the text adventure "Colossal Cave Adventure" in the 1970s. That game was originally titled simply "Adventure," and is the namesake of the genre. Over time, graphics have been introduced to the genre and the interface has evolved.
Hot Wheels (video game)
Hot Wheels is a racing video game developed by A. Eddy Goldfarb & Associates, and published by Epyx for the Commodore 64. The game was unveiled in June 1984, at Chicago's Summer Consumer Electronics Show, and was released later that year. "Hot Wheels" is the first video game to be based on the Hot Wheels toyline, and was marketed by Epyx as part of their Computer Activity Toys series, consisting of video games based on popular toylines.
Video game console
The first handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges was the Microvision designed by Smith Engineering, and distributed and sold by Milton-Bradley in 1979. Crippled by a small, fragile LCD display and a very narrow selection of games, it was discontinued two years later. The Epoch Game Pocket Computer was released in Japan in 1984. The Game Pocket Computer featured an LCD screen with 75 X 64 resolution and could produce graphics at about the same level as early Atari 2600 games. The system sold very poorly, and as a result, only five games were made for it. Nintendo's Game & Watch series of dedicated game systems proved more successful. It helped to establish handheld gaming as popular and lasted until 1991. Many Game & Watch games were later re-released on Nintendo's subsequent handheld systems.
Adventure game
The first known graphical adventure game was "Mystery House" (1980), by Sierra On-Line, then at the time known as On-Line Systems. The game featured static vector graphics atop a simple command line interface, building on the text adventure model. Sierra would continue to produce similar games under the title "Hi-Res Adventure". Vector graphics would give way to bitmap graphics which also enabled for simple animations to show the player-character moving in response to typed commands. Here, Sierra's "King's Quest" (1984), though not the first game of its type, is recognized as a commercially successful graphical adventure game, enabling Sierra to expand on more titles. Other examples of early games include Koei's "Night Life" and "Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku" (1982), "Sherwood Forest" (1982), Yuji Horii's "Portopia Serial Murder Case" (1983), "The Return of Heracles" (which faithfully portrayed Greek mythology) by Stuart Smith (1983), Dale Johnson's "Masquerade" (1983), Antonio Antiochia's "Transylvania" (1982, re-released in 1984), and "Adventure Construction Set" (1985), one of the early hits of Electronic Arts.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The first console video game based on the franchise, titled "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) by Konami under their "Ultra Games" label in 1989 and later ported to home computers and eventually for the Wii on the Virtual Console. Also released by Konami in 1989 was an arcade game, also titled simply "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", later ported to the NES as "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game", leading to an NES-only sequel, "", which used the look of the arcade game, as opposed to the first NES game. The next Turtles game, "", was released in 1991 as an arcade game, and was later ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super NES) in 1992, titled "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time", with a sequel numbering to the NES titles appended. "" was also created for the Sega Genesis in the same year, and used many of the art assets from "TMNT IV". There was also a trilogy of TMNT video games for the original Game Boy system made by Konami, consisting of: "", "", and "". As the video game series progressed, and the Ninja Turtles' popularity began to decline in the mid-1990s, the video games changed direction. "" was released as a set of one-on-one fighting game similar to the "Street Fighter" series; versions were released for the NES, SNES, and Genesis, each a distinct game.
Konami also acquired the license to adapt the 2003 TV series into a video game franchise, resulting in a new series of games with 3D gameplay inspired by the old TMNT beat 'em up games, consisting of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 video game)", "", "", and ".
In 2006, Ubisoft acquired the rights for TMNT games, beginning with a game based on the 2007 animated feature film, along with a distinct game for the Game Boy Advance similar in style to the Konami arcade games. A beat 'em up game "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Attack" was released for the Nintendo DS in 2009, to coincide with the series' 25th anniversary. In 2013, Activision released the downloadable game "", based on the 2012 TV series and developed by Red Fly Studio for the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Steam.
Space Invaders
The game—and references to it—has appeared in numerous facets of popular culture. Soon after the game's release, hundreds of favorable articles and stories about the emerging video game medium popularized by "Space Invaders" aired on television and were printed in newspapers and magazines. The Space Invaders Tournament, held by Atari in 1980 and won by Bill Heineman, was the first electronic sports event and attracted more than 10,000 participants, establishing video gaming as a mainstream hobby. The Arcade Awards ceremony was created that same year to honor the best video games, with "Space Invaders" winning the first Game of the Year award. The impact of "Space Invaders" on the video game industry has been compared to that of The Beatles in the pop music industry. Considered "the first blockbuster video game," "Space Invaders" became synonymous with video games worldwide for some time.
Computer Space
Computer Space is a space combat arcade game developed in 1971 as one of the last games created in the early history of video games. Created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in partnership as Syzygy Engineering, it was the first arcade video game as well as the first commercially available video game. "Computer Space" is a derivative of the 1962 computer game "Spacewar!", possibly the first video game to spread to multiple computer installations. It features a rocket, controlled by the player, engaged in a missile battle with a pair of flying saucers set against a background starfield. The goal is to score more hits than the enemy spaceships within a set time period, which awards a free round of gameplay. The game is enclosed in a custom fiberglass cabinet in one of four colors, which Bushnell designed himself to be futuristic.
History of video games
One of the early games was "Spacewar!", which was developed by computer scientists. Early arcade video games developed from 1972 to 1978. During the 1970s, the first generation of home consoles emerged, including the popular game "Pong" and various "clones". The 1970s was also the era of mainframe computer games. The golden age of arcade video games was from 1978 to 1982. Video arcades with large, graphics-decorated coin-operated machines were common at malls and popular, affordable home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and Intellivision enabled people to play games on their home TVs. During the 1980s, gaming computers, early online gaming and handheld LCD games emerged; this era was affected by the video game crash of 1983. From 1976 to 1992, the second generation of video consoles emerged.
Video game industry
Magnavox is credited for releasing the first video game console, the Odyssey. Activision was the first developer to create independent/third-party video games. Once the fastest-growing American company, Atari crashed in spectacular fashion, resulting in the North American video game crash of 1983. This resulted in the domination of the Japanese video game industry worldwide throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
History of video games
The computer games of the 1950s can generally be divided into three categories: training and instructional programs, research programs in fields such as artificial intelligence, and demonstration programs intended to impress or entertain the public. Because these games were largely developed on unique hardware in a time when porting between systems was difficult and were often dismantled or discarded after serving their limited purposes, they did not generally influence further developments in the industry. For the same reason, it is impossible to be certain who developed the first computer game or who originally modeled many of the games or play mechanics introduced during the decade, as there are likely several games from this period that were never publicized and are thus unknown today.
Early history of video games
That game was "Computer Space", developed by Bushnell and Ted Dabney. They had found the Data General Nova, a US$4,000 computer that they thought would be powerful enough to run four games of "Spacewar" at once; the computer turned out to not actually be powerful enough for the project. While investigating the concept of replacing some of the computer with purpose-built hardware, however, the pair discovered that making a system explicitly for running such a game, rather than general programs, would be much less expensive: as low as $100. By 1971 when Bushnell met with Pitts and Tuck, a prototype version had been successfully displayed for a short time in August 1971 in a local bar, the design was nearly finished, and the pair had founded a company around it called Syzygy. Bushnell had also found a manufacturer for the game, Nutting Associates, who would make the final game cabinets and sell them to distributors. Bushnell felt that "Galaxy Game" was not a real competitor to "Computer Space", due to its high price. Pitts and Tuck believed, however, that despite the economic argument their game was superior, as they felt that "Galaxy Game" was a true expansion of "Spacewar", while "Computer Space" just a pale imitation. Some players at the time, however, believed "Galaxy Game" to actually be just a version of "Spacewar!". "Galaxy Game"s prototype installation was very popular, though at a low price-per-game, and the pair developed a second version to display at the same location; they were never able to enter production, though, as they eventually had to abandon the idea after spending US$65,000 developing it due to the high cost and lack of business plan.
Around the same time as "Galaxy Game"s prototype installation, "Computer Space" was released. It was the first coin-operated video game to be commercially sold (and the first widely available video game of any kind). While it did well in its initial locations near college campuses, it performed very poorly in bars and arcades where pinball and other arcade games were typically placed; while it was commercially successful and made over US$1,000,000, it did not meet the high expectations of Nutting, who had expected to sell more than 1,500 units. Bushnell and Dabney immediately started work on another game, using the same television set design as "Computer Space", as well as founding their own company Atari, Inc. to back their projects. While initially this game was to be a driving game that Bushnell planned to design, their first employee, Allan Alcorn, took a prototype ping-pong game suggestion of Bushnell's and expanded on it to create a game the company immediately seized on. They were unable to find a manufacturer, but on the evidence of the success of their prototype installation, decided to produce the game cabinets themselves. "Pong" was released in 1972, a year after "Computer Space". It was immensely commercially successful, selling over 8,000 units. It inspired copycat games to be sold in America, Europe, and Japan, and led to the popularization of the medium.
Video game addiction
The first video game to attract political controversy was the 1978 arcade game "Space Invaders". In 1981, a political bill called the "Control of Space Invaders (and other Electronic Games) Bill" was drafted by British Labour Party MP George Foulkes in an attempt to ban the game for its "addictive properties" and for causing "deviancy." The bill was debated and only narrowly defeated in parliament by 114 votes to 94 votes.
History of video games
In 1972, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney decided to strike out on their own and incorporated their preexisting partnership as Atari. After seeing a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey ahead of its release, Bushnell charged new hire Allan Alcorn to create a version of that system's table tennis game as a practice project to familiarize himself with video game design. Alcorn's version ended up being so fun that Atari decided to release it as "Pong". Available in limited quantities in late 1972, "Pong" began reaching the market in quantity in March 1973, after which it ignited a new craze for ball-and-paddle video games in the coin-operated amusement industry. The success of "Pong" did not result in the displacement of traditional arcade amusements like pinball, but did lay the foundation for a successful video arcade game industry. Roughly 70,000 video games, mostly ball-and-paddle variants, were sold in 1973 by a combination of recent startups like Atari, Ramtek, and Allied Leisure and established Chicago firms like Williams, Chicago Coin, and the Midway subsidiary of Bally Manufacturing.
Edson Hendricks
As an undergraduate, Hendricks visited the MIT student employment center where he was offered the position of computer operator, running an IBM System/360 model 65 computer. 
Hendricks was rapidly promoted to systems programmer. When IBM added a 2250 video display to the 360/65, Hendricks looked for a project to learn how to program it. Upstairs in the same building, Steve Russell had created “Spacewar!,” the first computer game, using a DEC PDP-1 computer. Hendricks wrote his own game, also named “Spacewar!,” which was the first computer video game to run on an IBM Computer. For several years, MIT used Hendricks version of “Spacewar!” at their Annual Open House, making it possibly the first video game ever to be seen (and played) by the general public.
History of video games
Starting with PCs, a new trend in casual games, with limited complexity and designed for shortened or impromptu play sessions, began to draw attention from the industry. Many were puzzle games, such as Popcap's "Bejeweled" and PlayFirst's "Diner Dash", while others were games with a more relaxed pace and open-ended play. The biggest hit was "The Sims" by Maxis, which went on to become the best selling computer game of all time, surpassing "Myst".
Second generation of video game consoles
The Fairchild VES was released by Fairchild Semiconductor in November 1976 and was the first console of the second generation. It was the world's first CPU-based video game console, introducing the cartridge-based game code storage format. When Atari released their VCS the following year, Fairchild renamed the VES to the Fairchild Channel F. The console featured a pause button which allowed players to freeze a game so they could take a break without the need to reset or turn off the console so they did not lose their current game progress. Fairchild released twenty-six different cartridges for the system, with up to four games being on each cartridge and the console came with two pre-installed games, "Hockey" and "Tennis".
Spider-Man (1982 video game)
Spider-Man is a vertically scrolling action game written by Laura Nikolich for the Atari 2600 and released in 1982 by Parker Brothers. It was both the first video game to feature Spider-Man and the first Marvel Comics based video game.
Strategy video game
The origin of strategy video games is rooted in traditional tabletop strategy games like Chess and Go, as well as board and miniature wargaming. The first console strategy game was a "Risk"-like game called "Invasion," released in 1972 for the Magnavox Odyssey. Strategic Simulations (SSI)'s "Computer Bismarck", released in 1980, was the first historical computer wargame. Companies such as SSI, Avalon Hill, MicroProse, and Strategic Studies Group released many strategy titles throughout the 1980s. "Reach for the Stars" from 1983 was one of the first 4X strategy games, which expanded upon the relationship between economic growth, technological progress, and conquest. That same year, "Nobunaga's Ambition" was a conquest-oriented grand strategy wargame with historical simulation elements. "The Lords of Midnight" combined elements of adventure, strategy and wargames, and won the Crash magazine award for Best Adventure game of 1984, as well as Best Strategy Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards
Video game
A flood of "Pong" clones eventually led to the video game crash of 1977, which came to an end with the mainstream success of Taito's 1978 shooter game "Space Invaders", marking the beginning of the golden age of arcade video games and inspiring dozens of manufacturers to enter the market. The game inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants, and convenience stores. The game also became the subject of numerous articles and stories on television and in newspapers and magazines, establishing video gaming as a rapidly growing mainstream hobby. "Space Invaders" was soon licensed for the Atari VCS (later known as Atari 2600), becoming the first "killer app" and quadrupling the console's sales. This helped Atari recover from their earlier losses, and in turn the Atari VCS revived the home video game market during the second generation of consoles, up until the North American video game crash of 1983. The home video game industry was revitalized shortly afterwards by the widespread success of the Nintendo Entertainment System, which marked a shift in the dominance of the video game industry from the United States to Japan during the third generation of consoles.
Quest for Camelot
The first video game was titled "Quest for Camelot" and is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Titus Interactive with assistance from Nintendo for the Game Boy Color in 1998. A Nintendo 64 version of the game was planned but was scrapped due to the film's performance at the box office.
The second video game was titled "Quest for Camelot: Dragon Games" is a computer game developed by Knowledge Adventure, it gives the player the ability to explore Camelot after the events of the film. In addition to exploring the world, the player gets to raise a dragon egg and watch it grow.
Early history of video games
The history of video games spans a period of time between the invention of the first electronic games and today, covering a long period of invention and changes. Video gaming reached mainstream popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since then, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern culture in most parts of the world. The early history of video games, therefore, covers the period of time between the first interactive electronic game with an electronic display in 1947, the first true video games in the early 1950s, and the rise of early arcade video games in the 1970s ("Pong" and the beginning of the first generation of video game consoles with the Magnavox Odyssey, both in 1972). During this time there were a wide range of devices and inventions corresponding with large advances in computing technology, and the actual first video game is dependent on the definition of "video game" used.
History of video games
The earliest known chess computer program was developed by Alan Turing and David Champernowne called "Turochamp", which was completed in 1950 but not actually implemented by them on a computer. The earliest known idea for a fully electronic game is a "Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device" in US patent #2,455,992.
List of Family Guy video games
Video games based on the series have been on multiple platforms since the first game's debut in 2006. The first video game, "Family Guy Video Game!" was developed by High Voltage Software and published by 2K Games for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and PlayStation Portable. Since then, another video game has been made for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows called "" developed by Heavy Iron Studios and published by Activision.
Marienbad (video game)
"Marienbad" is considered one of the first Polish video games, developed almost 20 years before later candidates "OiX" (1984), "Gąsienica" (1985), and "Puszka Pandory" (1986), and well before the first well-known Polish game, "Tajemnica Statuetki" (1993). Łódź game historian Bartek Kluska made this assertion in his foundational book on the Polish video gaming industry, "Polish Bytes"; his research uncovered the game as 24 years older than the game that previously held the title. Kluska notes, however, that it was preceded by "Kółko i krzyżyk", a version of tic-tac-toe written by Department of Mathematical Apparatus programmer Bogdan Miś in 1960 for the computer, using a chess-sized grid. Michał Nowicki of Gram.pl asserted that Kluska's research, in contrast with the previous and more imprecise Polish video gaming text "Dawno temu w grach (Once upon a time in games)", allows Marienbad's claim as the first Polish computer or video game to be made with almost 100% certainty. An article by retailer Empik further asserts that "Marienbad"s simplicity and lack of video output means that the term "computer game" is a somewhat exaggerated term to describe it, much less "video game".
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game)
"E.T." is one of the earliest video games based on a movie. "GamePro", GameTrailers, and Bowen cite the game as the first poor quality-film–video-game tie-in. Patrick O'Luanaigh of SCi Games called it the most famous disaster story among film-inspired video games as well as within the industry. Describing it as one of the "games that changed the world", "GamePro" stated that "E.T." established a standard of subpar quality video games based on movies. They further commented that other publishers adopted similar marketing and production practices with licensed movie properties. The publication listed the game as the second "worst movie game ever", citing it as an example of how poor gameplay can bring negative reception to strong licenses. Surviving copies of the game are commonly found on eBay selling for low prices – the appeal for some collectors comes from the often-designated title of "the worst video game of all time".
Video game
Early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a "Cathode ray tube Amusement Device" was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on 14 December 1948, as U.S. Patent 2455992. Inspired by radar display technology, it consisted of an analog device that allowed a user to control a vector-drawn dot on the screen to simulate a missile being fired at targets, which were drawings fixed to the screen. Other early examples include: The Nimrod computer at the 1951 Festival of Britain; "OXO" a tic-tac-toe Computer game by Alexander S. Douglas for the EDSAC in 1952; "Tennis for Two", an electronic interactive game engineered by William Higinbotham in 1958; "Spacewar!", written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen's on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961; and the hit ping pong-style "Pong", a 1972 game by Atari. Each game used different means of display: NIMROD used a panel of lights to play the game of Nim, OXO used a graphical display to play tic-tac-toe "Tennis for Two" used an oscilloscope to display a side view of a tennis court, and "Spacewar!" used the DEC PDP-1's vector display to have two spaceships battle each other.
History of video games
In the early days of the programmable market, all of the games for a given system were developed by the firm that released the console. That changed in 1979 when four Atari programmers, seeking greater recognition and financial reward for their contributions, struck out on their own to form Activision, the first third-party developer. The company went on to develop a string of hits including "Kaboom!" (1981), "River Raid" (1982), and "Pitfall!" (1982), recognized as one of the foundational games of the scrolling platformer genre. In 1981, another group of Atari employees joined with ex-Mattel staff to form Imagic and experienced success with games like "Demon Attack" (1982) and "Atlantis" (1982).
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat is a video game franchise originally developed by Midway Games' Chicago studio in 1992. The development of the first game was originally based on an idea that Ed Boon and John Tobias had of making a video game starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, but as that idea fell through, a horror-fantasy themed fighting game titled "Mortal Kombat" was created instead. The original game has spawned many sequels and spin-offs consisting of several action-adventure games, films (animated and live-action with its own ), and television series ( and ), as well as a comic book series, a card game and a . Along with "Street Fighter" and "Tekken", "Mortal Kombat" has become one of the most successful fighting franchises in the history of video games and one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
Alan Kotok
Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell and Wayne Wiitanen conceived the computer game "Spacewar!" while working at Harvard University in 1961. Inspired by Marvin Minsky's "Three Position Display" (which they dubbed the "Minskytron"), they had the first version running, with help from their MIT classmates Dan Edwards, Kotok, Stephen D. Piner, Samson and Saunders, by early 1962. Coded by Russell, "Spacewar!" was one of the earliest interactive computer games and is sometimes called the first video game.
Video game music
While this allowed for inclusion of music in early arcade video games, it was usually monophonic, looped or used sparingly between stages or at the start of a new game, such as the Namco titles "Pac-Man" (1980) composed by Toshio Kai or "Pole Position" (1982) composed by Nobuyuki Ohnogi. The first game to use a continuous background soundtrack was Tomohiro Nishikado's "Space Invaders", released by Taito in 1978. It had four descending chromatic bass notes repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and interacted with the player, increasing pace as the enemies descended on the player. The first video game to feature continuous, melodic background music was "Rally-X", released by Namco in 1980, featuring a simple tune that repeats continuously during gameplay. The decision to include any music into a video game meant that at some point it would have to be transcribed into computer code by a programmer, whether or not the programmer had musical experience. Some music was original, some was public domain music such as folk songs. Sound capabilities were limited; the popular Atari 2600 home system, for example, was capable of generating only two tones, or "notes", at a time.
Video gaming in the United States
The 1970s included the birth of the video game console. The first console released was titled "Magnavox Odyssey" and the foundation of Atari occurred around the same time, marking the start of "Pong's" development. Upon "Pong's" completion it become the hottest selling Christmas product of 1975. The evolution of the console was incredibly rapid. A few years after their invention, consoles received microprocessors and programmable ROM cartridge based games, allowing users the ability to change games by simply switching cartridges. Important consoles released at this time were the "Telstar, Fairchild Channel F., "and "Atari 2600." Arcade games also received advances with the game "Space Invaders", which allowed high scores to be tracked and displayed. A year later the game "Asteroids "built on the idea and gave high scorers the ability to enter initials by their scores.
Adventure game
The first interactive movie laserdisc video game was Sega's "Astron Belt", unveiled in 1982 and released in 1983, though it was more of a shooter game presented as an action movie using full motion video. A more story-driven interactive movie game was "Bega's Battle", released in 1983, which combined shooting stages with interactive anime cutscenes, where player input had an effect on the game's branching storyline. "Time Gal" (1985), in addition to featuring quick time events, added a time-stopping feature where specific moments in the game involve Reika stopping time; during these moments, players are presented with a list of three options and have seven seconds to choose one.
Spacewar!
"Spacewar" is one of the most important and influential games in the early history of video games. It was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely ported to other computer systems at the time. It has also been recreated in more modern programming languages for PDP-1 emulators. It directly inspired many other electronic games, such as the first commercial arcade video games, "Galaxy Game" and "Computer Space" (1971), and later games such as "Asteroids" (1979). In 2007, "Spacewar" was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, which formed the start of the game canon at the Library of Congress.
Timeline of United States inventions (1946–1991)
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or electronic device that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device such as a television to display a video game. A joystick or control pad is often used to simulate and play the video game. It was not until 1972 that Magnavox released the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph H. Baer.
Bleach (manga)
A number of video games have been created featuring characters from the "Bleach" series, primarily though not exclusively fighting games. The first video game to be released from the "Bleach" series was "Bleach: Heat the Soul", which debuted on March 24, 2005, for the Sony PlayStation Portable. Currently, the majority of the games have only been released in Japan, though Sega has localized the first three Nintendo DS games and the first Wii game for North America. So far, all dedicated "Bleach" games released for Sony's consoles have been developed and published by SCEI, whereas the games for Nintendo consoles are developed and published by Sega, and the Nintendo DS games are developed by Treasure Co. Ltd.. Two mobile games had also been released in 2014 and 2016 for the series, which are available for iOS and Android. In 2017, Line announced the release of a game exclusive for their communication app called "Bleach: Paradise Lost".
OXO
Douglas used the EDSAC to simulate a game of noughts and crosses, and display the state of the game on the screen. Like other early video games, after serving Douglas's purpose, the game was discarded. Douglas did not give the game a name beyond "noughts and crosses"; the name "OXO" first appeared as the name of the simulation file created by computer historian Martin Campbell-Kelly while creating a simulation of the EDSAC several decades later. Around the same time that "OXO" was completed, Christopher Strachey expanded a draughts program he had originally written in 1951 and ported it to the Ferranti Mark 1, which showed the state of the game on a CRT display. "OXO" and Strachey's draughts program are the earliest known games to display visuals on an electronic screen, though it is unclear which of the two games was displayed first. As it ran on a computing device and used a graphical display, "OXO" is considered under some definitions to be a contender for the first video game, though under others it does not due to its lack of moving graphics or graphics which update continuously.
Home video game console
In 1972 Magnavox released the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home "video game console" which could be connected to a TV set. Ralph Baer's initial design had called for a huge row of switches that would allow gamers to turn on and off certain components of the console (the Odyssey lacked a Central processing unit) to create slightly different games like tennis, volleyball, hockey, and chase. Magnavox replaced the switch design with separate cartridges for each game. Although Baer had sketched up ideas for cartridges that could include new components for new games, the carts released by Magnavox all served the same function as the switches and allowed gamers to choose from the Odyssey's built-in games.
Early history of video games
Throughout the rest of the 1960s, digital computer games were created by increasingly numerous programmers and sometimes sold commercially in catalogs. As the audience for video games expanded to more than a few dozen research institutions with the falling cost of computers, and programming languages that would run on multiple types of computers were created, a wider variety of games began to be developed. Video games transitioned into a new era in the early 1970s with the launch of the commercial video game industry in 1971 with the display of the coin-operated arcade game "Galaxy Game" and the release of the first arcade video game "Computer Space", and then in 1972 with the release of the immensely successful arcade game "Pong" and the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, which launched the first generation of video game consoles.
BioShock (series)
In February 2011 the Smithsonian Institution announced it would be holding an exhibit dedicated to the art of video games. Several games were chosen initially and the public could vote for which games they felt deserved to be displayed via a poll on the exhibit's website. "BioShock" was considered a front runner to be displayed because of its status as a game that demonstrated how artistic the medium can be. John Lanchester of the "London Review of Books" recognized "BioShock" as one of the first video games to break into coverage of mainstream media to be covered as a work of art arising from its narrative aspects, whereas before video games had failed to enter into the "cultural discourse", or otherwise covered due to moral controversies they created. Peter Suderman for "Vox" in 2016 wrote that "BioShock" was the first game that demonstrated that video games could be a work of art, particularly highlighting that the game plays on the theme of giving the illusion of individual control.
Qwak!
"Qwak!" was released in a standard upright arcade cabinet with a black and white raster television monitor inset, with the rifle holster and start button below as the only controls. The reeds and tree branch overlay is screen printed in color onto a clear panel in front of the monitor, and is backlit by the screen; the screen is lit with a gray background instead of a black one in order to produce this effect. When the gun is triggered, the duck additionally flashes white briefly, so as to be detected by the light gun; the relative brightness of the screen makes this effect less obvious than with other similar light gun games. "Qwak!" was not the first light gun video game; it was preceded by the arcade game "Balloon Gun" (August 1974) and a light gun game for the Magnavox Odyssey video game console (1972), as well as non-video game light gun games since the 1936 "Seeberg Ray-O-Lite".
Star Wars
Lucasfilm had started its own video game company in 1982, becomong known for adventure games and World War II flight combat games. In 1993, LucasArts released "", the first self-published "Star Wars" video game and the first space flight simulation based on the franchise. It was one of the best-selling games of 1993, and established its own . The released between 1998 and 2003 also focused on space battles set during the films.
Video game development
The first video games were non-commercial, and were developed in the 1960s. They required mainframe computers to run and were not available to the general public. Commercial game development began in the 1970s with the advent of first-generation video game consoles and early home computers like the Apple I. Due to low costs and low capabilities of computers, a lone programmer could develop a full game. However, approaching the 21st century, ever-increasing computer processing power and heightened consumer expectations made it difficult for a single person to produce a mainstream console or PC game. The average cost of producing a triple-A video game slowly rose from 1–4 million in 2000 to over $5 million in 2006, then to over $20 million by 2010.
History of Western role-playing video games
"Telengard", a BASIC port of the earlier PDP-10 game "DND", and "Dungeons of Daggorath", both released in 1982, introduced real-time gameplay. Earlier dungeon crawl games had used turn-based movement, in which the enemies only moved when the adventuring party did. "Tunnels of Doom", produced the same year, introduced separate screens for exploration and combat. "Dragon Quest" is most commonly claimed as the first role-playing video game produced for a console, though journalist Joe Fielder cites the earlier "Dragonstomper".
History of video games
"Space Invaders" introduced or popularized several important concepts in arcade video games, including play regulated by lives instead of a timer or set score, gaining extra lives through accumulating points, and the tracking of the high score achieved on the machine. It was also the first game to confront the player with waves of targets that would shoot back at the player and the first to include background music during game play, a simple four-note loop. With its intense game play and competitive scoring features, "Space Invaders" became a national phenomenon as over 200,000 invader games—counting clones and knockoffs—entered Japanese game centers by the middle of 1979. While not quite as popular in the United States, "Space Invaders" became the biggest hit the industry had seen since the Great Depression as Midway, serving as the North American manufacturer, moved over 60,000 cabinets. The one-two punch of "Space Invaders" and the Atari game "Asteroids" (1979), which moved 70,000 units and popularized the recording of multiple high scores in a table, resulted in video arcade games completely displacing pinball and other amusements to become the central attraction of not just the shopping mall arcade, but also a variety of street locations from convenience stores to bowling alleys to pizza parlors. Many of the best-selling games of 1980 and 1981 such as "Galaxian" (1979), "Defender" (1980), "Missile Command" (1980), "Tempest" (1981), and "Galaga" (1981) focused on shooting mechanics and achieving high scores. Starting with "Pac Man" in 1980, which sold 96,000 units in the United States, a new wave of games appeared that focused on identifiable characters and alternate mechanics such as navigating a maze or traversing a series of platforms. Aside from "Pac Man" and its sequel, "Ms. Pac-Man" (1982), the most popular games in this vein were "Donkey Kong" (1981) and "Q*bert" (1982).
Spider-Man in video games
In the 1990s, comics enjoyed a boom, and the early 1990s saw a myriad of video games based on high-profile comic story lines and the 1994 "Spider-Man: The Animated Series". "The Amazing Spider-Man" was the first game of the decade released, a puzzle oriented action game developed by Oxford Digital Enterprises and released in 1990 for the Amiga and ported to MS-DOS, Commodore 64, and Atari ST. The title was published by Paragon Software Corporation and features over 250 screens.
List of Naruto video games
"Naruto" video games have appeared for various consoles from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. Most of them are fighting games in which the player directly controls one of a select few characters based on their counterparts in the "Naruto" anime and manga. The player pits their character against another character controlled by the game's AI or by another player, depending on the mode the player is in. The objective is to reduce the opponent's health to zero using basic attacks and special techniques unique to each character derived from techniques they use in the "Naruto" anime or manga. The first "Naruto" video game was "Naruto: Konoha Ninpōchō", which was released in Japan on March 27, 2003, for the WonderSwan Color. Most "Naruto" video games have been released only in Japan. The first games released outside Japan were the "" series and the "" series, released in North America under the titles of "Naruto: Clash of Ninja" and "Naruto: Ninja Council". In January 2012, Namco Bandai announced that they have sold 10 million "Naruto" games worldwide.
OXO
OXO or Noughts and Crosses is a video game developed by A S Douglas in 1952 which simulates a game of noughts and crosses. It was one of the first games developed in the early history of video games. Douglas programmed the game as part of a thesis on human-computer interaction at the University of Cambridge.
History of video games
"PaRappa the Rapper" popularized music video games in Japan with its 1996 debut on the PlayStation. Subsequent music and dance games like "beatmania" and "Dance Dance Revolution" became ubiquitous attractions in Japanese arcades. While "Parappa", "DDR", and other games found a cult following when brought to North America, music games would not gain a wide audience in the market until the next decade with titles like Guitar Hero. Also in 1996 Capcom released Resident Evil, the first well known survival horror game. It was a huge success selling over 2 million copies and is considered one of the best games on the PlayStation.
Racing video game
The following year, Atari released the first car driving video game in the arcades, "Gran Trak 10", which presents an overhead single-screen view of the track in low resolution white-on-black graphics. Later that same year, Taito released "Speed Race" designed by Tomohiro Nishikado (of "Space Invaders" fame), in which the player drives down a straight track dodging other cars. The game was re-branded as "Wheels" by Midway Games for release in the United States and was influential on later racing games.
Video (magazine)
Today, the legacy of "Video" lies in the history of video game journalism as its regular column, "Arcade Alley", represents the earliest example of a video game column in a mainstream publication. Arcade Alley is credited with having popularized the nascent medium, leading its two main writers to create the first US video game magazine, "Electronic Games".
Combat flight simulation game
Prior to the rise of modern-day video games, electro-mechanical games were produced that used rear image projection in a manner similar to the ancient zoetrope to produce moving animations on a screen. This technology led to the rise of arcade games, as well as the first simulation video games in the late 1960s. One such electro-mechanical game was "Jet Rocket", a flight simulator released by Sega in 1970 that featured cockpit controls that could move the player's aircraft around a landscape displayed on a screen and shoot missiles at targets that would explode when hit. In 1975, Taito released the arcade video game simulator "Interceptor", an early first-person combat flight simulator that involved piloting a jet fighter using an eight-way joystick to aim and shoot at enemy aircraft.
Tiny Toon Adventures (video game)
Tiny Toon Adventures is a platform video game for the NES. It was published and developed by Konami and released in 1991. It is the first "Tiny Toon Adventures"-related video game to be released for any video game console device.
Nimrod (computer)
The game of Nim running on the Nimrod is a candidate for one of the first video games, as it was one of the first computer games to have any sort of visual display of the game. It appeared only four years after the 1947 invention of the cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game to use an electronic display, and one year after "Bertie the Brain", a computer similar to the Nimrod which played tic-tac-toe at the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition. The Nimrod's use of light bulbs rather than a screen with real-time visual graphics, however, much less moving graphics, does not meet some definitions of a video game.
Dragon Quest (video game)
Dragon Quest is the first role-playing video game (RPG) in the "Dragon Quest" media franchise. It was developed by Chunsoft for the Family Computer (or Famicom for short) and published by Enix in Japan in 1986 as "Dragon Quest" and by Nintendo in 1989 in North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES) as Dragon Warrior. "Dragon Quest" has been ported and remade for several video game platforms, including the MSX, PC-9801, Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4 and mobile phones. In play, players control a hero character who is charged with saving the Kingdom of Alefgard and rescuing its princess from the evil Dragonlord. "Dragon Warrior"s story became the second part in a trilogy. Several more anime and manga series, which revolved around this overarching plot were created.
History of video games
The earliest known electronic computer games actually implemented were two custom built machines called "Bertie the Brain" and Nimrod, which played tic-tac-toe and the game of Nim, respectively. "Bertie the Brain", designed and built by Josef Kates at Rogers Majestic, was displayed at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1950, while Nimrod, conceived by John Bennett at Ferranti and built by Raymond Stuart-Williams, was displayed at the Festival of Britain and the Berlin Industrial Show in 1951. Neither game incorporated a cathode ray tube (CRT) display. Before these, automated games like the simple chess simulator El Ajedrecista (1914) and Nimrod's predecessor "Nimatron" (1940) had been created as electro-mechanical devices.
First generation of video game consoles
This was also the first involvement of Nintendo in video games. According to Martin Picard in the "International Journal of Computer Game Research": "in 1971, Nintendo had -- even before the marketing of the first home console in the United States -- an alliance with the American pioneer Magnavox to develop and produce optoelectronic guns for the Odyssey (released in 1972), since it was similar to what Nintendo was able to offer in the Japanese toy market in 1970s".
List of commercial failures in video gaming
Released in 1989 in North America and Europe; later in Japan in 1990 by Atari Corporation, The Lynx is an 8 bit handheld game console that holds the distinction of being the world's first handheld electronic game system with a color LCD. The Lynx was the second handheld game system to be released with the Atari name. The system was originally developed by Epyx as the Handy Game. The system is also notable for its forward-looking features, advanced graphics, and ambidextrous layout. In late 1991, it was reported that Atari sales estimates were about 800,000, which Atari claimed was within their expected projections. In comparison, the Game Boy sold 16 million units by later that year. Overall lifetime sales were confirmed as being in the region of 3 million, a commercial failure despite positive critical reviews. In 1996, Atari Corporation collapsed due to the failures of the Lynx and Jaguar consoles.
History of video games
In 1980, Nintendo released its Game & Watch line, handheld electronic game which spurred dozens of other game and toy companies to make their own portable games, many of which were copies of Game & Watch titles or adaptations of popular arcade games. Improving LCD technology meant the new handhelds could be more reliable and consume fewer batteries than LED or VFD games, most only needing watch batteries. They could also be made much smaller than most LED handhelds, even small enough to wear on one's wrist like a watch. Tiger Electronics borrowed this concept of videogaming with cheap, affordable handhelds and still produces games in this model to the present day.
Shoot 'em up
The genre's exact origins are a matter of some confusion. Video game journalist Brian Ashcraft pinpoints "Spacewar!" (one of the very earliest computer games) as the first shoot 'em up, but the later "Space Invaders" is more frequently cited as the "first" or "original" in the genre. "Spacewar!" was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, for the amusement of the developers; it was, however, remade four times as an arcade game in the early to mid-1970s. The game featured combat between two spacecraft.
History of games
The first board game for which the name of its designer is known is 'A Journey Through Europe or the Play of Geography', a map-based game published in 1759 by John Jefferys, a Geography and writing teacher. Designed in England by George Fox in 1800, The Mansion of Happiness became the prototype for commercial board games for at least two centuries to follow. The first board game published in the United States was 'Traveller's Tour Through the United States', published by New York City bookseller F. Lockwood in 1822. The earliest board games published in the United States were based upon Christian morality and included The Mansion of Happiness (1843) and The Game of Pope or Pagan, or The Siege of the Stronghold of Satan by the Christian Army (1844). While demonstrating the commercial viability of the ancient race game format, its moralistic overtones were countered by Milton Bradley in 1860 with the introduction of a radically different concept of success in The Checkered Game of Life, in which material successes came as a result of accomplishments such as attending college, marrying, and getting rich. Likewise the Game of the District Messenger Boy (1886) also focused on secular capitalist virtues rather than the religious.
Episodic video game
From to , the world's first digital satellite radio broadcaster, St.GIGA, transmitted episodic video games with voice acted overdubs (a technique called SoundLink), to be played in Japan on partner Nintendo's Super Famicom video game console with its Satellaview peripheral. The first SoundLink title, "BS Zelda no Densetsu", was released in four discrete broadcast episodes starting in August 1995. Nintendo has said it to be the world's first integrated radio-game.
History of video games
As affordable broadband Internet connectivity spread, many publishers turned to online gaming as a way of innovating. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) featured significant titles for the PC market like "RuneScape", "World of Warcraft", "EverQuest", and "Ultima Online". Historically, console-based MMORPGs have been few in number due to the lack of bundled Internet connectivity options for the platforms. This made it hard to establish a large enough subscription community to justify the development costs. The first significant console MMORPGs were "Phantasy Star Online" on the Sega Dreamcast (which had a built in modem and aftermarket Ethernet adapter), followed by "Final Fantasy XI" for the Sony PlayStation 2 (an aftermarket Ethernet adapter was shipped to support this game). Every major platform released since the Dreamcast has either been bundled with the ability to support an Internet connection or has had the option available as an aftermarket add-on. Microsoft's Xbox also had its own online gaming service called Xbox Live. Xbox Live was a huge success and proved to be a driving force for the Xbox with games like "Halo 2" that were highly popular.
The Cottage (video game)
"The Cottage" was the first publicly available Swedish adventure video game, as well as one of the first commercially available Swedish video games. Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, the game had a cult-like status among people with access to Oden. As people had to pay for the time they spent using Oden, the game was commercially important to QZ, leading to all three developers getting free Oden accounts; QZ's superintendent was at some point going to remove their free accounts, but reversed the decision when the developers said that they would remove "The Cottage" from Oden if that happened. Almost all IBM PCs in Sweden following the game's release for that platform had a copy of "The Cottage", and several thousand copies of it were sold; Kann reasoned that the success came because the IBM PC was still new, and that almost no computer programs were available in Swedish at the time. Despite this, the developers did not receive a lot of money outside of the pre-paid royalties; according to Johansson, they only got 500 SEK "every once in a while". While none of them continued working on video game development, Johansson ended up working with computer business, and the Eriksson brothers became professors within computer-related fields.
History of video games
Due to the debut of app stores created by Apple and Google, plus the low-cost retail price of downloadable phone apps, games available on smartphones increasingly rival the video game console market. Among the most successful mobile games of this period is "Angry Birds", which, released in 2009, reached 2 million downloads within one year. Nintendo announced their intentions for developing more games and content for mobile devices in the early 2010s, while Sega company is also dedicating development resources toward creating more mobile games. Independent small developers are entering the game market en masse by creating mobile games with the hope they will gain popularity with smartphone gaming enthusiasts.
History of video games
The first electronic digital computers, Colossus and ENIAC, were built during World War II to aid the Allied war effort against the Axis powers. Shortly after the war, the promulgation of the first stored program architectures at the University of Manchester (Manchester Mark 1), Cambridge University (EDSAC), the University of Pennsylvania (EDVAC), and Princeton University (IAS machine) allowed computers to be easily reprogrammed to undertake a variety of tasks, which facilitated commercializing computers in the early 1950s by companies like Remington Rand, Ferranti, and IBM. This in turn promoted the adoption of computers by universities, government organizations, and large corporations as the decade progressed. It was in this environment that the first video games were born.
Early history of video games
Today the term "video game" has completely shed its purely technical definition and encompasses a wider range of technology. While still rather ill-defined, the term "video game" now generally encompasses any game played on hardware built with electronic logic circuits that incorporates an element of interactivity and outputs the results of the player's actions to a display. Going by this broader definition, the first video games appeared in the early 1950s; they were tied largely to research projects at universities and large corporations, though, and had little influence on each other due to their primary purpose as academic and promotional devices rather than entertainment games.
First-person shooter
The earliest two documented first-person shooter video games are "Maze War" and "Spasim." "Maze War" was originally developed in 1973 by Greg Thompson, Steve Colley and Howard Palmer, high-school students in a NASA work-study program trying to develop a program to help visualize fluid dynamics for spacecraft designs. The work became a maze game presented to the player in the first-person, and later included support for a second player and the ability to shoot the other player to win the game. Thompson took the game's code with him to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where with help from Dave Lebling to create an eight-player version that could be played over ARPANET, computer-run players using artificial intelligence, customizable maps, online scoreboards and a spectator mode. "Spasim" had a documented debut at the University of Illinois in 1974. The game was a rudimentary space flight simulator for up to 32 players, featuring a first-person perspective. Both games were distinct from modern first-person shooters, involving simple tile-based movement where the player could only move from square to square and turn in 90-degree increments. Such games spawned games that used similar visuals to display the player as part of a maze (such as "" in 1979), and were loosely called "rat's eye view" games, since they gave the appears of a rat running through a maze. Another crucial early game that influenced first-person shooters was "Wayout", that while featuring the player trying to escape a maze, it used ray casting to render the maze, simulating visually how each wall segment would be rendered relative to the player's position and facing angle, allowing more freeform movement compared to "Maze War" and "Spasim".
Golden age of arcade video games
Some games of this era were so popular that they entered popular culture. The first to do so was "Space Invaders". The game was so popular upon its release in 1978 that an urban legend blamed it for a national shortage of 100 yen coins in Japan, leading to a production increase of coins to meet demand for the game (although 100 yen coin production was lower in 1978 and 1979 than in previous or subsequent years, and the claim does not withstand logical scrutiny: arcade operators would have emptied out their machines and taken the money to the bank, thus keeping the coins in circulation). It would soon have a similar impact in North America, where it has appeared or is referenced in numerous facets of popular culture. Soon after the release of "Space Invaders", hundreds of favourable articles and stories about the emerging video game medium aired on television and were printed in newspapers and magazines. The Space Invaders Tournament held by Atari in 1980 was the first video game competition and attracted more than 10,000 participants, establishing video gaming as a mainstream hobby. By 1980, 86% of the 13–20 population in the United States had played arcade video games, and by 1981, there were more than 35 million gamers visiting video game arcades in the United States.
DND (video game)
DND is one of the earliest role-playing video games. The name "DND" is derived from the abbreviation "D&D" from the original tabletop role-playing game "Dungeons & Dragons". The video game was first released in 1977.
Adventure (Atari 2600)
As the first action-adventure video game and first console fantasy game, "Adventure" established its namesake genre on video game consoles. In addition to being the first graphical adventure game on the Atari 2600 console, it is the first video game to contain a widely known Easter egg, and the first to allow a player to use multiple, portable, on-screen items while exploring an open-ended environment, making it one of the first examples, even as small and primitive as it is, of an open world game. The game has been voted the best Atari 2600 game in numerous polls, and has been noted as a significant step in the advancement of home video games. "GamePro" ranked it as the 28th most important video game of all time in 2007. In 2010, "1UP.com" listed it as one of the most important games ever made in its "The Essential 50" feature. "Entertainment Weekly" named "Adventure" as one of the top 10 games for the Atari 2600.
History of video games
Other milestone games of the era include Rare's Nintendo 64 title "GoldenEye 007" (1997), which was critically acclaimed for bringing innovation as being the first major first-person shooter that was exclusive to a console, and for pioneering certain features that became staples of the genre, such as scopes, headshots, and objective-based missions. "" (1998) for the Nintendo 64 is one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, and is still the highest ranked game across all platforms on video game aggregator Metacritic. The title also featured many innovations such as Z-targeting, which has persisted through subsequent Zelda titles on newer consoles and is commonly used in many other franchises today.