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.
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.