Let the Video Games Begin - Video Games

In this day and age it seems like videogames have been around forever, but even some of the great classic videogames such as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, or Super Mario Bros. are less than thirty years old as of this writing. The evolution of the videogame began long before these arcade classics came out and continues unabated today, with sophisticated graphics and innovative control mechanisms that could only have been dreamed about in the early days of videogames.

The History of Videogames

A videogame is, in short, a game in which the player or players use some sort of controller or interface to manipulate the action taking place on a video screen. The first videogame is generally recognized as a simple missile simulator on a cathode ray tube, created in 1947 by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. Other relatively simple videogames were created over the years, notably the vector display games Tennis for Two and Spacewar, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that videogames began to become commercially available. 1971 saw the release of the first coin-operated videogame, called Galaxy Game, shortly followed up by Computer Space two months later. Computer Space was the first coin-operated game sold commercially and was followed a year later by Pong, now regarded as one of the true classics of videogame history. Video game consoles also came into being during the 70s, beginning with the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972.

Although the 1970s saw the beginnings of the videogame industry as we know it today, it wasn’t until the 1980s that videogames became a fully integrated part of popular culture. The enormous popularity of Pac-Man began what is known as the golden age of video games. It was followed by Nintendo’s first successful videogame, Donkey Kong. In terms of home consoles, Atari was dominant during this golden age. Videogames experienced a downturn in popularity, however, due to the movie tie-in game E.T., which was rushed to completion in time for the holiday shopping season. The game is considered one of the worst ever made and almost singlehandedly brought down the industry.

Videogames Today

Videogames came back into vogue in the United States with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System and the game packaged with it, Super Mario Bros. The 8-bit graphics were a significant improvement on the old Atari home consoles and the game itself is considered by some to be the most influential, if not the greatest, videogame of all time. The release of the NES can be considered the advent of modern console gaming, with each generation improving on the graphics of the previous one. In addition to console gaming, handheld gaming became popular with the release of the first Game Boy and the enormously popular puzzle game Tetris. The other major player in the videogame industry is PC gaming, which began with the relatively simple games on the Commodore 64 and Apple II series and evolved into a gaming platform favored both by hardcore enthusiasts of multiplayer online games and by casual gamers who can play simple games online for free.