The Origins of Video Games

The origins of video games begins first in 1940 when Edward Condon created a computer that played the game called Nim,in which players tried to avoid picking up the last match.It was used for the Westinghouse display at the World Fair and it was played by tens of thousands of people,but what they didn't know was that the computer was programmed to win at least 90% of the time.Over the next couple of decades video games were quite simple games on quite simple devices,such as the "cathode ray tube amusement device" that played a game where people would fire a gun at a target.The next couple of breakthroughs in gaming involved programming games like chess and noughts and crosses to play on computers,which was revolutionary at the time but today is common on all computers.



The next big breakthrough in video game technology was the creation of the BASIC programming language by John Kemeny in 1964,making it easier for college students to create games of their own. The first ever video game console was the Odyssey by Magnavox,released in 1972 it was able to play a total of 27 different games.Although it was a great success,it was completely overshadowed 3 years later by the Pong console by Atari,which played simple 8-bit versions of hockey and tennis.Then in 1978 the arcade version of a classic video game was released in Japan-Space Invaders.Within a year,the machines were being shipped over to the USA so millions of Americans could drive back the hordes of alien ships.Then in 1980,the arcade version of Pac-man was released in Japan and within 2 years it had gotten ported to a home console,the Atari 2600.2 years later,Ms.Pac-man is released in the arcade and for home consoles and it quickly becomes the best selling arcade game of all time.In the next post,I will be finishing off the origins of video games.Please let me know if you enjoyed this post in the comments.

Cheers,
Darren