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.
Video game culture
As video games often have settings, characters, and plots, they have often become the basis for Hollywood movies. The first movie based upon a video game was consistently denounced by critics. It was 1993's "Super Mario Bros.", which featured John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper. Most film adaptions of other video games have been rated unfavorably as well, and the adaptions often fail at the box office too. 2001's "" was successful at the box office, despite poor reviews ($274,703,340 USD gross revenue). Director Uwe Boll has become well known for his film adaptions of video games, notorious for being poorly reviewed box office flops. This was the case with BloodRayne which was reviewed terribly by critics and only grossed $3,650,275 USD, a fraction of its $25 million budget. The contributing factors to the unsuccessful transition from home television to theatre screens are attributed to: a dramatic re-envisioning of the video game that provides a disconnect from the game's plot, the game itself lacking a plot rich enough to provide a decent script (particularly with versus fighting games), a substantially altered plot to make the movie more "mainstream" ("Doom"), and an emphasis on using celebrity actors over actors that would fit the part.