Video games have become a very significant part of people’s lives. To someone of my age, it can almost seem like video games always existed, some of my earliest memories were playing on a PlayStation 1, which was my first console. Of course there were decades of video games and computers prior to that, and the advances that this industry has made are amazing. Firstly we must look at how it began.

1849, The Difference engine! This machine is considered the world’s first computer… (And it didn’t work) well not at the time at least. Charles Babbage was only able to create designs of the engine, as technology had not caught up with him yet. It wasn’t till much later that people were able to build functioning machines from his original designs. Lets jump ahead a few hundred years to 1939, the HP Audio oscillator 200a, and the first product to be made by Hewlett-Packard himself! HP still one of the worlds leading computer companies. From 1943 – 1946 pretty much all computers took up the size of your living room. Long before computer were even consider for personal use, most of the machines were for large companies or the military. Zuse Z3 created by Konrad Zuse during World War II. Whirlwind a computer created for the U.S Navy. The Colossus one of the more famous of early computer was used as a code breaker during Word War II. Of course theses machines were created during wars and/or for military and so none were considered as a means of play.


What a video game?! Here are some of the earliest video games. In 1948 Tennis for two was created as a demonstration for an early computer. I think this is important as it shows that one of the first “computer games” was created for the purpose of showing off to the public what computers could do, so the first thoughts of personal computers was for play. 1951 Nim, one of the first computer games, was created by Herbert Koppel, it weighed nearly 50 pounds and played against a human, and regularly won. Mouse in a Maze, was one of the first games to be created, for the TX-0. Mouse in the maze was a game were the players had to place maze walls and dots (cheese), then a mouse would traverse the maze to find find the cheese, this game actually sounded like a lot of fun to me.

 Now for Spacewar! 1962, the first ever shooter video game, two players, both control a starship and have to destroy the other. There was a star in the middle of the screen which would pull both ships into so the players had to keep moving to not be sucked in. it has had many remakes, and i consider one of the most important early video games. 

In 1972 Atari created pong, which is by far the most famous early video game... if not the most famous video game of all time. Its the perfect 2d tennis game we all know, The game was created by atari, one of the first video game companies and there success led to the rise of the video game industry. 1974 maze war, the first multiplayer First person shooter, all of these becoming the backbone of the gaming genres and industries. Videos games have developed a lot over the many years and anything can change, but one thing is for certain, They're not going anywhere.

This was a very quick overview of the evolution of computers and video games. Next time we'll looking into the 1980s - 1990s


-Michael Ollerton

References

sites:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_video_game#cite_note-Introduction_to_Game_Development-13
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1952/08/02/1952_08_02_018_TNY_CARDS_000236053
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/mit/tx-0/TX-0_history_1984.txt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar_(video_game)
http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/creative/SpacewarOrigin.html
http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong

photos:

  1. Video Games: http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/026/6/a/badasses_in_video_games_by_pacduck-d384d2n.jpg
  2. Difference Engine: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Babbage_Difference_Engine.jpg
  3. Tennis for two: http://www.m-e-g-a.org/wp-content/uploads/t42_05.jpg
  4. SpaceWar: http://mstatic.mit.edu/mit150/025p.jpg
  5. Atari Game Console: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Atari-2600-Wood-4Sw-Set.jpg


 Books: 

 The Ultimate History of Video Game - Steven Kent

Pheonix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames - Leonard Herman