History of video games

Tennis for Two

The first video game ever created was "Tennis for Two" created by William Higinbotham, on October 1958. The game was created for an open house at the Brookhaven National Laboritory for guests to play. William Higinbotham was responsible for creating an exhibit to show off an instrumentation division's work. While most other exhibits were boring, Higinbotham wanted to "liven up the place." Higinbotham showed off the instruments ability to display various curves, even one from a bouncing ball. It didn't take long for Higinbotham to think of a game of tennis, and quickly jotted down the blueprints for the new device. In two weeks Robert Dvorak had made a working model of Higinbothams' creation, and so "Tennis for Two" was ready for it's debue. The game was controlled with a knob that players could adjust to change the angle of the ball, then they'd press a button to "hit" the ball to the other side of the screen. The ball could be hit by either player as long as the ball was on their side of the screen, the only way to "loose" was if the ball wasn't angled properly of if they misstimed their button press.

Space War

A space combat videogame developed by Steve Russell with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and more. Space war was made for the DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at M.I.T. and was worked on by students and employees of the university. The game had two spaceships "the needle" and "the wedge", both ships are played by people and both ships have limited fuel and weaponry. The ships continue to move withought the players imput due to the two ships being close to a star's gravity well, the ships were destroyed when hit with a torpedo, the star, or each other. If the player wanted to, they could use hyperspeed to "warp" to any location on the screen at random, or potentially destroying the ship (depending on the version you played). Orriginally, the game was controlled by switches on the computer, but Bob Saunders built a gamepad to reduse the akwardness of the games control. With the sucess of Space War, the game was eventually spread or recreated for other computers, especially when computers with screens were more widespread across America. Space War would go on to inspire many games including "arcade video games", "Galaxy Game", "Computer Space", and even "Asteroids".

"Brown Box"

In 1967, Ralph Baer developed a prototype for the first multiplayer program. Orriginally named TV unit #7, the console would be better known by its nickname "brown Box", despite being one of the worlds earliest consols, the Brown Box had some elements that modern day consoles still have, two controllers and a multigame program system. The Brown Box came with games already in them, the player had to flip switches on the console to switch between games, program cards were used to show players what switches needed to be flipped to play specific games. The games included were: ping-pong, checkers, four different sports games, target shooting, and a golf putting game.

Megnavox Odyssey

The Odyssey is the first home video game console, designed by Ralph Baer, who inspired Nolan Bushnell of Atari to create his own version: the world-renowned Pong, programed by Al Alcorn.

Atari

The first home console created with interchangeable video game cartrages. In 1976, the sole owner of the company sold the company to Warner Communications for $28 million to continue funding the development of the Video Computer System, later renamed Atari 2600.

Golden Age of Video Games

With the success of video games as a whole, it's no surprise that there was a sudden surge of videogames, specifically arcades. "Space Invaders" "Pac-Man" and "Donkey Kong" were some of the most popular arcade games to be released, starting the most infamous rivalry in video game history with the creation of Mario, one of video games most important mascots.

Gaming computers

With computers becoming more mainstream in the 80's, it became a major threat to video games. With games on the computer like blackjack and text adventures. It's thanks to a major recession in America that caused a shift to personal computers. However, this caused Japanese companies like Nintendo and Sega to gain popularity.

The Console War

One year after Nintendo released their console, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991 for the Sega Megadrive and Genesis. Finally Nintendo had a true rival in Sega, and sparked the console war.

Donkey Kong Country

With Nintendo's success in the video game medium, they had a unique request made to them, a game studio by the name of Rare wanted to make a video game about Donkey Kong. When Nintendo agreed to Rare's pitch, the game was set into motion. However, Rare made the game in a very unique way; instead of pixelated graphics, Donkey Kong Country was made with pre-rendered graphics, achieved through a compression technique that converted 3D modles into SNES sprites with little loss of detail. Because of Donkey Kong Country, video games have visually improoved drastically.

1990's Gaming

In the 1990's the video game industry further paved the way for more modern graphics, moving from raster to 3D, causing popularity in more genres of games like first person shooters, real-time strategy, and MMO games. During this time, more violent games were released like Mortal Kombat, Doom, and Night Trap causing parents to worry about their children becoming more violent in their regular day life.

2000's Gaming

Further inovations in gaming led to a more robust gaming industry. During this time it was common for players to make game modifications or "mods," leading to games like Counter Strike (Half life mod) as early as 1999.

Sixth Generation Consoles

The sixth generation of gaming started with the release of the Sega Dreamcast in 1998, followed by the release of the Playstation 2 in 2000. Nintendo followed a year later with the release of the GameCube in 2001, followed closely by the release of the Xbox with the release of Halo: Combat Evolved. With the release of GTA 3, open-world games became popular.

Online Gaming

With the rise in popularity for MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) PC's began to include games like RuneScape, World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and Ultima Online. Microsoft also launched its own online service called Xbox Live, which was a huge success with games like Halo 2.

Seventh Generation

A sort of renaissance for the video game industry, with the release of handheld consoles like the PSP (Playstation Portable) and Nintendo's DS. In console gaming, the Xbox 360 released in November of 2005, while the PS3 launched in 2006. Both companies had online play games and sales platforms, mainly Xbox live and Playstation Network. Nintendo also gained dominence with the release of the Nintendo Wii, with Wii sports and Mario Kart Wii. While the Wii had lower thecnical specifications, it more than made up for it with the motion controlls which increased engagement with non traditional gamers.

Eighth Generation

This Generation started with the release of the Nintendo 3DS and the PS Vita in 2011. The Wii U was released as the successor to the Wii, and with the release of the PS4 and Xbox One in 2013 led to the two consoles dominating the gaming industry. Console exclusives such as Uncharted 4, God of War, Spider-Man, Gears of War 5, and Forza Horizon 4, drove success for both the PS4 and Xbox One, furthuring the console war throught the generation. The final eigth-generation console was a hybrid platform called the nintendo switch which incorporated Wii-style motion controls and portability. the Switch's most popular games include The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Smash Bros, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Mario Kart 8.

Current Generation

The current generation is similar to the last with the release of the PS5, Ps5 digital Edition, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. This new generation has a wide variety of improvements with cloud service gaming, the latest innovations in graphical proscessing, and enhanced gameplay on next-gen consoles and PC's with faster storage options and superior image processing.