The Ever Changing Media – Video Games

When I think of the history of video games I always think that Pong was the first video game but I found out that I am so wrong on that one.  It appears to me that the first video game system was the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device in 1947.

“The patent was filed on January 25, 1947 and issued on December 14, 1948. The game was a missile simulator inspired by radar displays from World War II. It used analog circuitry, not digital, to control the CRT beam and position a dot on the screen. Screen overlays were used for targets since graphics could not be drawn at the time.”

Wow… a dot… how fun…

• 1950 was chess on a computer
• 1951 there was the computer called the NIMROD and the only game you could play was called the NIM and you could play it backwards and forwards.  I don’t know exactly what it was but it’s interesting nonetheless.
• 1952 Tic Tac Toe
• 1958 Tennis for Two

Blah blah blah… ok fast forward a little lol.  In 1966 Ralph Baer invented the first console video game system for the TV called the Odyssey that he had first thought of in 1951 but didn’t really work on it until later.  It was released in 1972 by Magnavox.  This was the very first video game console ever.  Just think, the video game system that you know and love today is all due to Ralph Baer who thought about it in 1951.

I remember when I was maybe 7 or 8 my parents bought the new Atari 2600.  It was the very first video game system that people could afford to buy for their children to play with.  By 1982 my parents trusted me enough to put it in my bedroom.  Well let’s face it, I was begging for them to let me play it constantly but they wouldn’t let me because they wanted to actually watch tv in the living room.  My sisters didn’t really care for it so I got it.  OMG I was so addicted to it.  Every day when I came home from school I got on it and played the HECK out of Pac-Man.

My cousins (my step-dads brothers family) had an Atari 5200 which made me jealous as hell because it had way better graphics than the 2600.  But there was nothing I could do about it because my parents spent a lot of money on the 2600 and they weren’t about to buy me the newer model.

I didn’t know this but Nintendo has been around as a card company since 1889.  Wow!

When I was 15 and we lived with my aunt for a very short time I can remember my cousins (my mothers sisters family) had a Nintendo Entertainment System aka NES.  My 3 cousins were all into video games and you add me and my 2 sisters to that crazy mix and you get a lot of kids who wanted to play.  Well, not my older sister anyway.  But I really wasn’t that into it for some reason.  I did get to play a couple games only because they insisted that I played.  I didn’t want to play because I didn’t want to fight over my turn.  If I had a time limit then I’d rather just not play at all, so I didn’t play very much.  It was also in the living room so the time limit was set in stone lol.

I didn’t get to play very many video games until I got my very first computer which was an Apple //e in 1989.  I only had a couple of games for it and it was pretty lame since the screen was black and green but it was fun for a little while.  I had King’s Quest 4 The Perils of Rosella.  I also remember having Wheel of Fortune lol.  But that media was 5 1/2″ floppy’s which meant that because I didn’t have a hard drive, it was 2 disk drives only I had to keep a blank disk in the 2nd disk drive to save my game and the 1st disk drive had the game disks but since there were 8 disks, every time I moved off screen to the left, right, front or back, it wanted me to change the disk.  That was too tedious.

I didn’t get to play it but there was the Sega Genesis in the 80′s and they had another version of the Nintendo somewhere in the late 80′s too.  Mostly I’m just talking about the game systems in general.

Handheld video games started to come out in the very late 80′s starting with the game boy which came out in 1989.  Then there was the Sega Game Gear which is what I had in 1992.  Those were cool because you could play it anywhere you wanted.  You weren’t limited to one room, the only thing is after awhile your eyes were really blurred lol.

Nintendo was the first to come out with a 3D based game system with it’s Nintendo 64.  Then later came the PlayStation and the X-box which featured something different, not only 3D but a disc instead of a cartridge.  I never had a game system with a disc before.

Now that we have moved away from cartridges and onto discs, there are now other ways of getting video games.  Digital download.  Instead of going out to the store to buy games you can just buy them directly from your game system.  I don’t know if you can do that with X-box or Nintendo Wii but I do know that you can do that with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable.  The PSP Go is the only game system available now that is download ONLY.

The history of video games goes all the way back to 1947 and here it’s 2009.  How are video games going to be different in the future?  I just don’t see how they can improve upon this any more than they already have.  But I said that when they came out with the Nintendo 64 and they certainly have surprised me before, I’m sure they will surprise me again.

I wonder what it will be like in 10 more years.  Will there be brain implants where your head is connected to the 10G wireless network where you can not only play video games but take calls and listen to music all in your head?

**Note**
I just thought that I would add that I don’t have ALL the facts, this is just my commentary.  If you have a correction or something to add please feel free to leave a comment.

Tags: analog circuitry, atari 2600, atari 5200, cathode ray tube, history of video games, magnavox, missile, nim, nimrod, odyssey, pac man, pong, ralph baer, tic, video game system, world war ii

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