History of Video Games

[Eilujin]

I figured some people may find this interesting information and I mostly posted this due to another thread that sort of got on this topic.

History
Main article: History of computer and video games

Beginnings
The first primitive computer and video games were developed in the 1950s and 60's and ran on platforms such as oscilloscopes, university mainframes and EDSAC computers. The earliest computer game, a missile simulation, was created in 1947 by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. A patent application was filed on January 25th, 1947 and U.S. Patent #2 455 992 issued on Dec 14th, 1948. Later in 1952, was a version of tic-tac-toe named Noughts and Crosses, created by A. S. Douglas, as part of his doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University. The game ran on a large university computer called the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC). In 1958, William Higinbotham - who previously helped build the first atomic bomb - created Tennis for Two at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York to entertain visitors at the lab's annual open house. In 1962 MIT's Steve Russell created Spacewar and John's Great Adventure. The game ran on a PDP-1 mini-computer. The game spread quickly to universities and research facilities around the country. In 1968 Ralph Baer, who would later be known as the "Father of Video Games", applied for a patent for an early version of a video game console named the "Television Gaming and Training Apparatus." In 1967, Baer created a ping-pong like game for the console that resembled Tennis for Two (and the future 1972 arcade game Pong). He worked with Magnavox to create and release the first console, named the Magnavox Odyssey, in 1972.

The Golden Age of Arcade Games
Arcade games were developed in the 1970s and led to the so-called "Golden Age of Arcade Games". The first coin-operated arcade game was Computer Space, created in 1971 by Nolan Bushnell. In these pre-arcade days, the game was placed in bars and taverns. The game required players to read a set of instructions before playing, and never became a hit in the bar scene. In the spring of 1972, Bushnell attended a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey system in Burlingame, California, and played Baer's ping-pong game for the first time. Soon afterwards Bushnell and a friend formed a new company, Atari. Nolan envisioned creating a driving game for arcades. He hired an electronic engineer named Al Alcorn and directed him to build a ping-pong game. The game Alcorn created was so much fun that Nolan decided to go ahead and market it. Since the name Ping-Pong was already trademarked, they settled on simply calling it PONG. The intuitive interface led the game to be wildly successful in the bar scene and ushered in the era of arcades.

Consoles and beyond
The 1970s saw the release of the first home video game consoles. The patent for Ralph Baer's Magnavox Odyssey was granted in 1972, and paved the way for the next wave of home consoles. The late 1970s to early 1980s brought about the improvement of home consoles and the release of the Atari 2600, Intellivision and Colecovision. The video game crash of 1983, however, produced a dark age in the market that was not filled until the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) reached North America in 1985. This presented Americans with games such as Mario Bros. and other Nintendo franchises, many of which are still popular today.

The last two decades of game history have been marked by separate markets for games on video game consoles, home computers and handhelds. See the article on Console wars for additional information on that facet of game history.

In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, the first popular handheld console. Included with the system was Tetris, which became a popular puzzle game. Several rival handhelds also made their debut around that time, including the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx. While some of the other systems remained in production until the mid-90s, the Game Boy remained at the top spot in sales throughout its lifespan.

The North American market was dominated by the Sega Genesis early on after its debut in 1989, with the Nintendo Super NES proving a strong, roughly equal rival in 1991. The NEC TurboGrafx 16 was the first 16-bit system to be marketed in the region, but did not achieve a large following, partly due to a limited library of English games and effective marketing from Sega. In Japan, the PC Engine's (Turbografx 16) 1987 success against the Famicom and CD drive peripheral allowed it to fend off the Mega Drive (Genesis) in 1988, which never really caught on to the same degree as outside Japan. The PC Engine eventually lost out to the Super Famicom, but retained enough of a user base to support new games well into the late 1990s. CD-ROM drives were first seen in this generation, as add-ons for the PC Engine in 1988 and the Megadrive in 1991. Basic 3D graphics entered the mainstream with flat-shaded polygons enabled by additional processors in game cartridges like Virtua Racing and Starfox.

In 1994-1995, Sega released Sega Saturn and Sony made its debut to the video gaming scene with the PlayStation. Both consoles used 32-bit technology; the door was open for 3D games. After many delays, Nintendo released its 64-bit console, the Nintendo 64 in 1996, selling more than 1.5 million units in only three months. The flagship title, Super Mario 64, became a defining title for 3D platform games. Nintendo's choice to use cartridges instead of CD-ROMs for the Nintendo 64, unique among the consoles of this period, proved to have negative consequences. In particular, SquareSoft, which had released all previous games in its Final Fantasy series for Nintendo consoles, now turned to the PlayStation; Final Fantasy VII (1997) was a huge success, establishing the popularity of role-playing games in the west and making the PlayStation the primary console for the genre. By the end of this period, Sony had dethroned Nintendo, the PlayStation outselling the Nintendo 64. The Saturn was successful in Japan but a failure in North America, leaving Sega outside of the main competition.

1998 saw the releases of the Sega Dreamcast in Japan (1999 in the US) and the Game Boy Color from Nintendo. In 2001 Sony released the widely anticipated PlayStation 2. In 2001 Microsoft entered the videogame console industry by releasing its new home console, the Xbox. Its flagship game, Halo: Combat Evolved, being available at the system's launch. Nintendo released their successor to the Nintendo 64, the GameCube, and the first all-new Game Boy since the console's inception, the Game Boy Advance. Sega realized they could no longer compete especially with Sony's new PS2, and announced they would discontinue the Dreamcast and no longer manufacture hardware, becoming a third-party developer in 2002.

Nokia entered the handheld market with its N-Gage game-phone hybrid in 2003. It was criticised for being poorly designed, and flopped. In 2004 Nokia released a re-designed N-Gage, called the N-Gage QD, which didn't fare much better. The other two more technically advanced handhelds to be released in 2004, the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable (PSP), didn't help the N-Gage. The Nintendo DS is a highly innovative handheld, the PSP is much more powerful and also includes limited media capabilities. In Western countries the consoles have had similar levels of success but in Japan the DS has been a huge hit, vastly outselling the PSP.

The end of 2005 saw the release of the Xbox 360 - the first of the seventh generation of video game consoles.

Microsoft has released future plans for its own handheld platform, although details are not clear yet.

The future of gaming

Consoles
2006 will see the continuation of the next generation of console gaming in the form of two new consoles. Sony with the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii will join Microsoft with the already released Xbox 360 in this year's "technology race". The Xbox 360 is powered by a multi-core CPU, the PlayStation 3 will be powered by Cell processor technology, and Wii will allow the gamer to interact with the game via a wireless motion sensing controller (such as using the controller in driving game by moving it left or right, or using it as a light sabre in a Star Wars game) and promises more innovations, although full technical specifications are yet to be revealed; but it has been rumored that its graphics processor is similar to an ATI X1800 or a Geforce 7800GT graphics chip, one of the most effective of its kind on the market. All the next-generation console are starting the transition from traditional media-based games (e.g. on a cartridge or DVD-ROM) to be able to utilize streamed content that is downloaded. This innovation is possible due to the increasing ubiquity of broadband internet access and availabilty of large storage mediums on the consoles.

Hardware
As computers get faster in the future, games will have better graphics, more realistic details, less load time, and less gliches. Games on PCs won't require installation nor licence agreement (like console games), as the game can be played straight from the disc. Future discs will hold more memory for bigger, deeper game worlds. Wider age groups will play games, as new types of games in other fields appear that appeal to those ages. Games will be used to teach kids and adults (for job training) in school and at home making learning fun and 'hands on', a process that has already begun. Battle simulation games are expanding into driving and car repair simulation, electronics repair simulation, surgury simulation, etc. Virtual Reality visors and touch suits, that create an illusion of fuller game immersion, may eventually come into common use when their tech problems are solved and their prices lower.

Gameplay Trends
Yet another distinct form of evolution in video gaming are the trends of popular gameplay. Natural progression of and consumer demand for increased complexity has gradually forced game software companies to be more creative and expansive in their design of new games. Video games have moved not only forward in the visual dimension, but also in the very concept of restrictive goals and objectives of the game. Patterns in contemporary gameplay continue to show less distinction between "levels" or "areas" [1]. Furthermore, the linear aspect of video games has shown a popular and somewhat constant push towards non-linear or explorative gameplay.

The acceptance of less restrictive and more wide-open gaming can be seen in the growing popularity of massively multiplayer online gaming (which, since the founding days of MUDs, has been a pioneer platform of never-ending objectives) as well as the Grand Theft Auto series, among numerous other examples.

Read full article here

[Ghostspectrum]

I loves me video games!