History of Video Games By: Héctor Muñoz-Avila Sources : Gamespot.com investor.about.com emuunlim.com designboom.com Wikipedia my own

Introduction Some ideas in the 1948 First video game: –Tennis game in an Oscilloscope –Space game on DEC-1 Current videogames: –Half Life 2 In between: –Space Invaders:

Chess Origins 1769 Fake chess machine 1952 Turing design a chess algorithm 1956 Maniac versus Human

Origins of Some Companies 1889 company create card game: 1932 COLECO (short for Connecticut Leather Company 1947 Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company: 1954 David Rosen makes machines for GI’s in Japan Sony Nintendo (“leave luck to heaven”) (Service Games)SEGA

Other Origins 1951 Ralph Baer suggest adding game to TV –May be considered the inventor of video games – Only until 1967 he realized his dream of an “intereactive television” 1952 A.S.Douglas Interactive Tic Tac Toe 1958 Willy Higinbotham national laboratory): Oscilloscope

Other Origins (II) 1961 Steve Russell creates space war “ If I hadn't done it, someone would've done something equally exciting if not better in the next six months. I just happened to get there first. - Steve Russell

Space War Legacy 1971 Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck formed Computer Recreations Galaxy Game Cost: $20K Play cost: 10 cent Built: dozens 1972 Noland Bushnell and Ted Dabney Associates) Galaxy Game Built: 1.5K 1972 PONG Built: 10K “Breaks down”

Early Games Pong ( Magnavox builds Odyssey

Early Stages: COLECO builds TELSTAR Cartridges are born (Fairchild Camera & Instrument: Channel F) Atari bought by Warner Communications ($28M) –Atari releases first console (later known as Atari 2600)

Early Stages Nintendo releases Othello ( Taito creates Space Invaders! –Midway bought license Apple and Atari release PCs –But Atari is seen as a gaming company

The Golden Age Atari releases Asteroids! Frogger, Konami/Sega, 1981 Pac-Man, Bally/Midway, 1980 Donkey Kong, Nintendo, 1981 Namco releases Pac-Man, 1982 (+300K machines sold) –Own television show US Army commissions Atari for a tank simulation game –Start of a long enduring activity (Lehigh included!) Nintendo releases first console in

The Great Crash The Commodore 64 PC is released Coleco releases the Adam PC Too many competitors small and large saturate the market –1982 Warner Corp. stock fell 32% after Atari announces les-that-expected sells of consoles –Atari sold to Jack Tramiel (owner of Commodore) –New company: Atari Corp. pulls from Console market Bright spot: Nintendo releases famicon does well in Japan

The Return of the Video Games Nintendo releases NES –Met with skepticism by market observers –Turns out to be an instant hit –Legend of Zelda Apple releases the Mac, Atari releases 520ST –Who won? Tetris is released! – Coleco files for bankruptcy 1985 MS releases Windows PC as a gaming platform

The Story Continues 1989 Nintendo releases Gameboy, Sega releases Genesis 1991 Nintendo releases SNES, Sega releases Sonic bit consoles –Nintendo releases Mortal Combat! Playstation 2, Gamecube, Xbox

What’s Left? PC Games –We will cover these in coming classes but by Genre: FPS RTS RPG (including MMO)