Task 1 – 1850s – 1970s

Games in my opinion were all the way back to stone ages when you think of a way you can entertain or have fun with yourself or another person. But in terms of video came the base started from the early CRT (Cathode Ray Tube), based on the US missile defence systems developed in the late 1940’s and in 10 years more games were developed by defence contractors, increasing its complexity and mechanics.

Moving to 1950, Charly Adama created the ‘bouncing ball’ video game for MIT’s new whirlwind computer. It was the first computer to display real time video imagery and used core memory; showed publically in April 1951. This is when real time visual elements were shown through an oscilloscope screen, this game was not interactive but was the precursor to the future upcoming games.

1952 the ‘OXO’ was developed also known as Tic, Tac, Toe and noughts and crosses. Created by Alexander S. Douglas. It was the first simulation game and ran on a EDSAC computer which used the same technology developed in the 1940 (cathode ray tube) as a visual display. It was essentially the first computer game which was the player vs the computer but was not allowed in the outer public because the computer was only made for and in university of Cambridge.

Going do 1961, the first influential computer game, ‘Space War developed allowing two players against each other capable of firing missiles, also having an environmental star which the players had to avoid. This was made on the DEC PDP -1 and the game was also given with the new DEC computers at that time.

Ralph Bear and Bill Harrison creators of the, ‘The chase Game’ and ‘Magnavox Odyssey’ , starting at 1967 developed the light gun and other video games which was works for on the TV set. The game, ‘The Chase Game’, consisted of two squares that chased each other. In 1968 the very first video game console was developed which was able to run table tennis and target shooting on its own hardware. Then at the late 1972 the game console and the peripheral known as the light gun was mass produced and sold.

Moving to 1971 where gaming actually became very popular and one of the most iconic games were developed at that, such as the galaxy game and one of the most popular pong.  The galaxy game which was also the first coin operated game only in standard university made by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, it was an improved version of the Space war game; costing at nearly $20k using the DEC PDP-11 computer with a vector display. There was only one than a lot of them produced in 2972 allowing ‘multiplayer’. 

Then later in 1972 Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dubney created the game called PONG, which was an idea from ping pong at the early times in 1967 which was on Magnavox Odyssey. Atari inc was developed in the same year in June. In September 1967 they installed it at a local northern California and where it became a huge hit and within a year they sold more than 35,000 machines. It became the most historical idol game which is remembered to date.

Reference: http://www.bmigaming.com/videogamehistory.htm