Early history of video games
That same year saw the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console which could be connected to a television set. The inventor, Ralph H. Baer, had initially had the idea in 1951 to make an interactive game on a television set. Unable to do so with the technological constraints at the time, he began work on a device that would attach to a television set and display games in 1966, and the "Brown Box", the last prototype of seven, was licensed to Magnavox to adapt and produce. They announced the console in May 1972, and it went on sale that September. The console and its games featured numerous innovations beyond being the first video game device for home consumers: it was the first game to use a raster-scan video display, or television set, directly displayed via modification of a video signal; it was also the first video gaming device to be displayed in a television commercial. It sold for US$100 and shipped with several games, including "Table tennis", which Bushnell had seen a demo of and which "Pong" had been based on. The Odyssey sold over 100,000 units in 1972, and more than 350,000 by the end of 1975, buoyed by the popularity of the table tennis game, in turn driven by the success of "Pong". "Pong" and the Odyssey kicked off a new era of video gaming, with numerous other competitors starting up in the video game industry as it grew in popularity.
History of Western role-playing video games
The earliest role-playing video games were created in the mid-to-late 1970s, as offshoots of early university mainframe text-based RPGs that were played on PDP-10, PLATO and Unix-based systems. These included "Dungeon", written in 1975 or 1976, "pedit5", created in 1975, and "dnd", also from 1975. These early games were inspired by pen-and-paper role-playing games, particularly "Dungeons & Dragons", which was first published in 1974, and J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Some of the first graphical computer RPGs (CRPGs) after "pedit5" and "dnd" included "orthanc" (1978), which was named after Saruman's tower in "Lord of the Rings", "avathar" (1979), later renamed "avatar", "oubliette" (1977), named after the French word for "dungeon", "moria" (1975), "dungeons of degorath", "baradur", "emprise", "bnd", "sorcery", and "dndworld". All of these were developed and became popular on the PLATO system during the late 1970s, in large part due to PLATO's speed, fast graphics, and large number of players with access to its nationwide network of terminals. PLATO was a mainframe system that supported multiple users and allowed them to play simultaneously, a feature not commonly available to owners of home personal computer systems at the time. These were followed by games on other platforms, such as "Temple of Apshai", written in 1979 for the TRS-80 and followed by two add-ons; "" (1980), which gave rise to the well-known "Ultima" series; "Wizardry" (1981), and "Sword of Fargoal" (1982). Games of this era were also influenced by text adventures such as "Colossal Cave Adventure" (1976) and "Zork" (1976); early MUDs, tabletop wargames such as "Chainmail" (1971), and sports games such as "Strat-O-Matic".