
In 1978-80 was the release of two games that revolutionised the arcade gaming market emptying the pockets of millions of user. However none the less the game was a huge monetary success selling over 19,000 games, the machines even stopped working at one point because too many quarters were being jammed in the machine, this is noted the birth of arcade gaming. In 1971 Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn of Atari developed ‘Pong’ a table tennis type game that bears resemblance to the tennis game created for the Odyssey, which created a lot of controversy.

1967-8 he patents his idea and creates a prototype of the console and titles it the ‘Brown Box’.īased on his ideas Magnavox releases Odyssey the first home video game system. He thought of the idea while waiting fora colleague at New York bus station in 1966 and later that year he writes down notes for the development of television gaming. While the success of video games is slowly rising, Ralph Baer is thinking up of the next idea to revolutionise the video game market. This takes us to the 1960’s which is an iconic year because the very first computer based game ‘Spacewars!’ was made, by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) student on a TX-0 (‘Transistorized Experimental computer zero’ one of the earliest fully transistorized computer). This just shows the advancement of the technology in such short time. It doesn’t stop there either later on in 1957 Alex Bernstein write a new chess program on the IBM-704 that can predict the next four moves of it’s opponent.
#CATHODE RAY TUBE AMUSEMENT DEVICE 1947 TV#
These were all huge achievements but one in particular that shown a big growth in the field was in 1956 when the Checkers program written on the IBM-701 computer and created by, Arthur Samuel’s defeats checkers master on national TV showing the intelligence of these programs giving it some mainstream success. During the 1950’s other fairly basic games were made playable through an interactive systems, games such as Chess, Naughts and Crosses (OXO), Black Jack and Tennis. The first game on this device was very basic it indulges you to fire a gun at a target. This device worked by connecting a cathode ray tube hooked to an oscilloscope displa, this was the earliest form of an interactive piece of technology at it’s time and it was not sold to the public.

Goldsmith, Jr & Estle Ray Mann patented the idea for the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device”. Consequently, some have labelled Higinbotham the Grandpapapapa of Video Games.A vital point in video game history is 1947, this was the era in which it first started when Thomas T. Nintendo lost the court case, when the judge ruled that Tennis For Two didn't use video signals, and could therefore not qualify as a video game.īaer is widely considered to be the Father of Video Games. Nintendo stated that Baer had stolen his idea for a tennis game from Tennis For Two. Baer - creator of the first games console, the Magnavox Odyssey - in a bid to invalidate his patents. In 1985, Nintendo sued Magnavox and Ralph H. Viewed on yet another oscilloscope, whatever that is, Higinbotham created a pair of familiar-looking aluminium paddle controllers.

Unlike the top-down Pong, Tennis For Two adopted a side-on perspective, simulating a ball's trajectory based upon wind resistance. That accolade had already been taken by Tennis For Two, created by William Higinbotham for the Brookhaven National Laboratory's annual public exhibition. In actual fact, Pong wasn't even the first tennis game. Pong is considered the first proper video game - even if most people forget that it was a proven rip-off.
