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.
Space Invaders
In 1996, "Next Generation" put "Space Invaders" at number 97 in their "Top 100 Games of All Time", saying that it "provides an elegance and simplicity not found in later games like "Phoenix"." IGN listed it as one of the "Top 10 Most Influential Games" in 2007, citing the source of inspiration to video game designers and the impact it had on the shooting genre. "The Times" ranked it No. 1 on its list of "The ten most influential video games ever" in 2007. 1UP ranked it at No. 3 on its list of "The 60 Most Influential Games of All Time," stating that, in contrast to earlier arcade games which "were attempts to simulate already-existing things," "Space Invaders" was "the first video game as a video game, instead of merely a playable electronic representation of something else." In 2008, "Guinness World Records" listed it as the top-rated arcade game in technical, creative, and cultural impact. "Entertainment Weekly" named "Space Invaders" one of the top ten games for the Atari 2600 in 2013. In 2018, it was ranked 87th in Video Game Canon's statistical meta-analysis of 48 "top games" lists published between 1995 and 2017.