"In 1949, a young engineer named Ralph Baer was given an assignment to build
a television set. He wasn't supposed to build just any television set, but one
that would be the absolute best of all televisions. This was not a problem for
Baer, but he wanted to go beyond his original assignment and incorporate some
kind of game into the set. He didn't know exactly what kind of game he had in
mind, but it didn't really matter because his managers nixed the idea. It would
take another 18 years for his idea to become a reality, and by that time there
would be other people to share in the glory, like Willy Higinbotham, who
designed an interactive tennis game played on an oscilloscope, and Steve
Russell, who programmed a rudimentary space game on a DEC PDP-1 mainframe
computer. And then there was also Nolan Bushnell, who played that space game and
dreamed of a time when fairground midways would be filled with games powered by
computers.
Today, with interest in classic games gaining steam once again, players of
video games are reminded of the rich history of the industry. Crave's Asteroids
64 is a modern version of a game that came out in 1979. And the original
Asteroids was merely an updated version of Nolan Bushnell's Computer Space,
which was really a jazzed-up copy of Steve Russell's Spacewar. Space Invaders,
Centipede, Frogger, and Pong are once again on store shelves, and Pong is but a
polished variant of the game Willie Higinbotham displayed on his oscilloscope.
The history of video games is not just about people. It's also about
companies and ironies. Atari was an American company with a Japanese name, and
the Japanese company Sega was started by an American. Magnavox, the company that
started it all, is owned by Phillips, a company that is over a century old, and
Nintendo, the company that made video games popular again, is just as old. And
who would have ever thought Sony, the company that invented all types of
electronics, from transistor radios to video recorders, would release a video
game console that would become its top-selling product of all time?
In today's world, where video games are often cited as a source for teenage
violence, it's interesting to see that the first home console also had a light
rifle as an optional peripheral.
The world of video games continues to evolve. By reading about the past,
perhaps you'll also get a glimpse of the future." -- By Leonard Herman, Jer
Horwitz, Steve Kent, and Skyler Miller (GameSpot.com)
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