History of Video Games

Information Age/"Systems Era"

The Information Age began around the 1970s and is still going on today. It is also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age. This era brought about a time period in which people could access information and knowledge easily.

National Defense Education Act 1958

The act that was passed in response to Sputnik; it provided an opportunity and stimulus for college education for many Americans. It allocated funds for upgrading funds in the sciences, foreign language, guidance services, and teaching innovation.

Sputnik (1957)

The first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957.

RDS-1

The first Soviet nuclear test, code named "First Lightning", detonated a plutonium bomb

Xerox Alto

The first computer to include a fully bit-mapped display, including drop down menus and icons.

Aladdin's Castle

The largest of the Golden Age arcade chains by far, which had 450 locations at its peak

Nintendo Quality Control System

Seal of Quality Third-party licensing program Inventory management

Split Level Ranch

Split Level Ranch house plans are a variation of the Ranch genre, designed to get a little more space in the typically modest footprint of a true Ranch home

Baby Boomers

The 78 million people born during the baby boom, following World War II and lasting until the early 1960s

E.T. the Extra Terrestrial

1982 adventure video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600 video game console

Apple II

A complete microcomputer system, developed by Apple Computer Inc. and introduced in 1978 that helped broaden the personal computer market beyond hobbyists.

ARPANET

A computer network developed by the Advanced Research Project Agency (now the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) in the 1960s and 1970s as a means of communication between research laboratories and universities. ARPANET was the predecessor to the Internet.

IBMers

A person who works for the technology company IBM

Transistor

A small electronic device used in a circuit as an amplifier or switch.

Atari

A video game development company that released Pong, the first big-hit arcade game, and established the home-video game market through a deal with Sears

Hacker Ethic

Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. All information should be free Mistrust authority—promote decentralization Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position You can create art and beauty on a computer Computers can change your life for the better

ARPA

Advanced Research Projects Agency

Big Three Television Networks

American Broadcasting Company, Columbia Broadcasting System, National Broadcasting Company

Thomas Watson Jr.

American business executive who inherited the leadership of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) from his father, Thomas J. Watson, Sr., and propelled the company into the computer age

Norbert Wiener

American mathematician who established the science of cybernetics in 1948

Bertie the Brain

Bertie the Brain was a computer game of tic-tac-toe, built by Dr. Josef Kates for the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition

Commodore 64

Best selling computer of all time, sold between 10 and 17 million units

"Big" Science

Big Science is characterized by large-scale instruments and facilities, supported by funding from government or international agencies, in which research is conducted by teams or groups of scientists and technicians

Alan Turing (1912-1954)

British mathematician - a pioneer in the area of computer intelligence- he was also a key part of the team that broke the Enigma code (used by the German military) during World War II

Pac-Man Fever

Buckner & Garcia (1981)

Computer Space (1971)

Created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in partnership as Syzygy Engineering, it was the first arcade video game as well as the first commercially available video game

Gunpei Yokoi

Created the gameboy, game and watch, and the cross control pad

Adventure! (1976)

Crowther and Woods' Adventure is the granddaddy of all interactive fiction. Originally written by Will Crowther in his spare time at BBN, it made its way onto the fledgling ARPAnet

"Kitchen Debate"

Debate between Nixon and Khrushechev. The two men discussed the merits of each of their respective economic systems, capitalism and communism. The debate took place during an escalation of the Cold War, beginning with the launch of Sputnik in 1957, through the U-2 Crisis in 1960. Most Americans believed Nixon won the debate.

Gran Trak 10

First car racing game , first arcade game to use ROM data, first steering wheel, four-position gear shifter, accelerator and brake foot pedals

Atari 2600

First commercially successful video game system (1977) for homes; allowed the owner to purchase individual game cartridges.

Thomas Watson Sr.

First president and CEO of IBM

Apple Macintosh

First released in 1984, it was one of the first commercially successful personal computers sold with graphical user interface software.

Minoru Arakawa

Founder and first president of Nintendo of America. Under Arakawa's leadership, and after a rocky start, Nintendo of America saw success with arcade hit Donkey Kong. Arakawa tapped young (and little-known) employee Shigeru Miyamoto to design and program Donkey Kong

Nolan Bushnell

Founder of Atari and Chuck E Cheese

Warner Communications

From 1976 to 1984, Warner Communications owned Atari, Inc., but suffered substantial losses due to the video game crash of 1983

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

German philosopher and mathematician who thought of the universe as consisting of independent monads and who devised a system of the calculus independent of Newton (1646-1716)

Vector Graphics

Graphics that use points, lines, curves, and shapes based on mathematical equations to represent images.

Levittown

In 1947, William Levitt used mass production techniques to build inexpensive homes in surburban New York to help relieve the postwar housing shortage. Levittown became a symbol of the movement to the suburbs in the years after WWII.

Sony TR-63

It is thought to be the first consumer product released by Sony onto the American market and it was also Sony's first pocket size transistor radio (1957)

Fiorello La Guardia

Mayor who banned pinball in New York in the 1940's

Color TV-Game 6

Nintendo's first true home video game system or console! It is also the first of four Color TV systems to be released. The Color TV-Game 6 was a system with built-in games; no cartridges or peripheral attachments. It played a more advanced version of Pong called Light Tennis

Nintendo Power

Originally named the Nintendo Fun Club, a video game news and strategy magazine from Nintendo of America, which had originated in August 1988

Space Invaders (1978)

The system found its killer app with its version of Taito's Space Invaders in 1980 and became widely successful, leading to the creation of Activision and other third-party game developers as well as competition from home console manufacturers Mattel and Coleco

Radar Scope (1979)

Though a massive success in Japan, it was soon an infamous commercial failure in North America which created a financial crisis for the subsidiary Nintendo of America. Its president Minoru Arakawa pleaded for his father-in-law Hiroshi Yamauchi to send him a new game that could be used to convert thousands of unsold or idle Radar Scope machines. This emergency prompted the creation of Shigeru Miyamoto's first game, the smash hit Donkey Kong

TX-0

Transistorized Experimental computer zero, but affectionately referred to as tixo (pronounced "tix oh"), was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64K of 18-bit words of magnetic core memory

Hiroshi Yamauchi

Yamauchi transformed Nintendo from a hanafuda card-making company that had been active solely in Japan, into the multibillion-dollar video game publisher and global conglomerate that it is today

Chase the Chuck Wagon

a 1983 promotional video game written by Mike Schwartz for the Atari 2600 and distributed by Purina. It was available only via mail order by sending in proofs of purchase to Purina

Lincoln Laboratory

a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security

Balance of Power (1985)

a computer strategy game of geopolitics during the Cold War, created by Chris Crawford and published in 1985 on the Macintosh by Mindscape, followed by ports to a variety of platforms over the next two years

King's Quest (1983)

a graphic adventure game series created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installments, the series was primarily responsible for building the reputation of Sierra

Coleco Telstar

a series of dedicated first-generation home video game consoles produced, released and marketed by Coleco from 1976 to 1978

IBM 700/7000 Series

a series of large-scale (mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s use vacuum-tube logic and were made obsolete by the introduction of the transistorized 7000s

Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC)

a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Historically it has been a wellspring of hacker culture and the oldest such hacking group in North America, formed in 1946

SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment)

a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area

Pierre Jaquet-Droz

a watchmaker of the late eighteenth century. He lived in Paris, London, and Geneva, where he designed and built animated dolls, or automata

Bally Manufacturing

an American company that began as a pinball and slot machine manufacturer, and later expanded into casinos, video games, health clubs, and theme parks

Kinetoscope

an early motion-picture device in which the images were viewed through a peephole

Deadline (1982)

an interactive fiction computer game published by Infocom in 1982. Written by Marc Blank, it was Infocom's third game. It was released for the Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, IBM PC (as a booter), Osborne 1, TRS-80, and later for the Amiga and Atari ST

Donkey Kong (1981)

broke new ground by using graphics as a means of characterization, including cutscenes to advance the game's plot and integrating multiple stages into the gameplay

Pin Games

coin-operated versions of bagatelles

Curta Mechanical Calculator

considered the best portable calculators available until they were displaced by electronic calculators in the 1970s

Magnavox Odyssey (1972)

considered the first home video game console

Battlezone (1980)

considered the first virtual reality arcade video game

Ralph Baer

considered to have been the inventor of video games, specifically of the concept of the home video game console

Williams Electronics

developed its own breakthrough hit with the release of 1980's Defender, whose gameplay, horizontal scrolling, and dynamic color influenced many subsequent games. It was followed by a sequel in 1981, Stargate, and a group of popular and influential titles: Joust, Robotron: 2084, Sinistar, and the licensed Moon Patrol

Zork! (1980)

distinguished itself in its genre as an especially rich game, in terms of both the quality of the storytelling and the sophistication of its text parser, which was not limited to simple verb-noun commands ("hit troll"), but recognized some prepositions and conjunctions ("hit the troll with the Elvish sword")

Spacewar!

first interactive computer game

Mattel Intellivision

home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. Development of the console began in 1977, the same year as the introduction of its main competitor, the Atari 2600

Dime Museum

institutions that were popular at the end of the 19th century in the United States. Designed as centers for entertainment and moral education for the working class

Colecovision (1982)

offered a closer experience to more powerful arcade game systems compared to competitors such as the Atari 2600and Atari 5200. The initial catalog of twelve games included Nintendo's Donkey Kong as the pack-in cartridge, Sega's Zaxxon, and some lesser known arcade titles that found a larger audience on the console, such as Lady Bug, Cosmic Avenger

Defender (1980)

one of the highest grossing arcade games ever, earning over US$1 billion

Peter Main

oversaw the US launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Game Boy

Hanafuda

playing cards of Japanese origin that are used to play a number of games

AN/FSQ-7

referred to as the Q7 for short, was a computerized command and control system for Cold Warground-controlled interception used in the USAF Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense network

Generation 1.0 Home Consoles

refers to the video games, video game consoles, and handheld video game consoles available from 1972 to 1983. Notable consoles of the first generation include the Odyssey series, the Atari Home Pong, the Coleco Telstar series and the Color TV-Game series

Colossus

regarded as the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer, although it was programmed by switches and plugs and not by a stored program

Nintendo Famicom

released on July 15, 1983 as the Family Computer (or Famicom) for ¥14,800 (equivalent to ¥18,400 in 2019) alongside three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye

Shigeru Miyamoto

the creator of some of the most acclaimed and best-selling game franchises of the company, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Donkey Kong

Infocom

the developer and publisher responsible for many of the early text adventures

DEC PDP-1

the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1959. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture at MIT, BBN and elsewhere

Fairchild Channel F (1976)

the first programmable ROM cartridge-based video game console, and the first console to use a microprocessor

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)

the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer, built during World War II by the United States

Sam Borofsky (1944-214)

the first to introduce products from LG and Samsung to the United States, but he was also the first to represent pocket calculators, pagers, and videogames

Cold War

the power struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States after World War II

SABRE (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment)

used by travel agents and companies around the world to search, price, book, and ticket travel services provided by airlines, hotels, car rental companies, rail providers and tour operators