History Of Games – Early days…

A brief introduction to the world of video games up to the 1990’s (because from then on, the games industry is quite well known, therefor not really having a need to explain):

The history of video games goes as far back as the 1940s, when in 1947 Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a United States patent request for an invention they described as a "cathode ray tube amusement device." Video gaming would not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and 1980s, when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since then, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern culture in most parts of the world. There are currently considered to be eight generations of video game consoles, with the sixth, seventh and the eighth concurrently ongoing. (Wikipedia)

The first record of any game as such was on January 25, 1947, Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a United States patent request for an invention they described as a "cathode ray tube amusement device". This patent, which was then issued by the United States Patent and Trademark  on December 14, 1948, details a machine in which a person uses knobs and buttons to manipulate a cathode ray tube beam to simulate firing at "air-borne" targets. A printed overlay on the CRT screen helps to define the playing field. This wasn’t really classed as a game, because in the late 40/50’s, home computers were very rare, purely for the fact that people didn’t know much about them, They were used as a working tool, more than I form of play, in my opinion. In this decade, most basic games were developed such as; Tic-Tac-Toe, Pong, Draughts and many other’s originating from the traditional board/family games people played at that era.

The second games movement came in the 1970’s with the introduction to arcade gaming. In September 1971, Galaxy Game was installed at a student union at Stanford University. Based on Spacewar, this was the first coin-operated video game unit. Only one was built, using a DEC PDP-11 and vector display terminals. In 1972 it was expanded to be able to handle four to eight consoles. Obviously at these early stages in the life of video games, you can easily see how the younger audience caught onto the idea of being able to play, without the need to exercise or having family/relations around. The key part to the 70’s being so influential was when Bushnell and Dabney founded Atari, Inc. in 1972, before releasing their next game: Pong. Pong was the first arcade video game with widespread success. The game is loosely based on table tennis: a ball is "served" from the center of the court and as the ball moves towards their side of the court each player must maneuver their paddle to hit the ball back to their opponent. Atari sold over 19,000 Pong machines, creating many imitators.

The first major hit of the 70’s was the release of the home 'console' system was developed by Ralph Baer and his associates. Development began in 1966 and a working prototype was completed by 1968 (called the "Brown Box") for demonstration to various potential licensees, including GE, Sylvania, RCA, Philco, and Sears, with Magnavox eventually licensing the technology to produce the world's first home video game console. The system was released in the USA in 1972 by Magnavox, called the Magnavox Odyssey. The Odyssey used cartridges that mainly consisted of jumpers that enabled/disabled various switches inside the unit, altering the circuit logic (as opposed to later video game systems that used programmable cartridges). This provided the ability to play several different games using the same system, along with plastic sheet overlays taped to the television that added color, play-fields, and various graphics to 'interact' with using the electronic images generated by the system. Philips bought Magnavox and released a different game in Europe using the Odyssey brand in 1974 and an evolved game that Magnavox had been developing for the US market. Over its production span, the Odyssey system achieved sales of 2 million units. This being the first generation console, was a huge stepping stone to achieve a global market for video games.

The Golden age of gaming arrived between (1978-86). The arcade game industry entered its golden age in 1978 with the release of Space Invaders by Taito, a success that inspired dozens of manufacturers to enter the market. The game inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants and convenience stores during the golden age. The game also became the subject of numerous articles and stories on television and in newspapers and magazines, establishing video gaming as a rapidly growing mainstream hobby. Space Invaders would go on to sell over 360,000 arcade cabinets worldwide, and by 1982, generate revenue of $2 billion in quarters, equivalent to $4.6 billion in 2011.  In 1979, Namco's Galaxian sold over 40,000 cabinets in the United States, and Atari released Asteroids which sold over 70,000 cabinets.

Soon many of these games—at first clones of mainframe classics such as Star Trek, and then later ports or clones of popular arcade games such as Space Invaders, Frogger, Pac-Man (see Pac-Man clones) and Donkey Kong —were being distributed through a variety of channels, such as printing the game’s source code in books (such as David Ahl’s BASIC Computer Games), magazines (Creative Computing), and newsletters, which allowed users to type in the code for themselves. Early game designers like Crowther, Daglow and Yob would find the computer code for their games—which they had never thought to copyright—published in books and magazines, with their names removed from the listings. Early home computers from Apple, Commodore, Tandy and others had many games that people typed in. (Wikipedia)

The computer gaming industry experienced its first major growing pains in the early 1980s as publishing houses appeared, with many honest businesses—occasionally surviving at least 20 years, such as Electronic Arts—alongside fly-by-night operations that cheated the games' developers. While some early 1980s games were simple clones of existing arcade titles, the relatively low publishing costs for personal computer games allowed for bold, unique games. (Wikipedia) However this called for a swift change in the way people perceived the way video games were to be recognised, by creating genres from them, such as; Action-Adventure games, Puzzle games, Beat ‘em up games, Hack and slash games, Sports games and many more styles. This introduction got the public interested, because the games industry at this point were trying to create a game to suit everybody’s need s and desires.

In 1885, the third generation of video games was welcomed into the world by Nintendo’s release of its 8-bit console, the Famicom, known outside Asia as Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was bundled with Super Mario Bros (A brilliant game for all ages, for example my brother’s still a massive fan at the old age of 28). This instantly became a success. The NES dominated the North American and the Japanese market until the rise of the next generation of consoles in the early 1990s. Other markets were not as heavily dominated, because of heavy competition from PC's like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 preventing the NES having much success in Europe, or lack of marketing, allowing other consoles to find an audience like the Sega Master System in Australia and Brazil (though it was sold in North America as well).

In the new consoles, the gamepad or joypad took over joysticks, paddles, and keypads as the default game controller included with the system. The gamepad design of an 8 direction Directional-pad (or D-pad for short) with 2 or more action buttons became the standard. This generation also marked a shift in the dominance of home video games from the United States to Japan.

The Legend of Zelda series made its debut in 1986 with The Legend of Zelda. In the same year, the Dragon Quest series debuted with Dragon Quest, and has created a phenomenon in Japanese culture ever since. The next year, the Japanese company Square was struggling and Hironobu Sakaguchi decided to make his final game—a role-playing game (RPG) modeled after Dragon Quest and titled Final Fantasy—resulting in Final Fantasy series, which would later go on to become the most successful RPG franchise. 1987 also saw the birth of the stealth game genre with Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series' first game Metal Gear on the MSX2 computer—and ported to the NES shortly after. In 1989, Capcom released Sweet Home on the NES, which served as a precursor to the survival horror genre. (Wikipedia)

In 1988, Nintendo published their first issue of Nintendo Power magazine, which is being sold at a fast rate to this day. Unfortunately this generation ended with the discontinuation of the NES in 1995.