![]() ![]() Created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963 by a group of students led by Steve Russell, the game was so popular that it spread around the world to other computer centers in universities and government research centers (and inspired Nolan Bushnell’s aforementioned Computer Space). Perhaps the most famous of these mainframe computer games, however, is Spacewar!, a game in which players controlled two dueling spaceships in cosmic warfare. ![]() In The Strong’s collection are materials from the first educational game (about the ancient city of Sumer) and the first computer baseball simulation developed by John Burgeson in 1961. Users of the Magnavox Odyssey weren’t the first people to play a video game, however, for select members of society had access to large mainframe computers and, not surprisingly, some of them began to think about ways to use them to play games or run simulations. Magnavox Mini Theater and Odyssey demonstration filmĬartridge, about 1972. This device played a film strip of a commercial that showed a happy family spending time engaged in this new-fangled activity, video games. The concept was alien to many people, so Magnavox had to work extra hard to get people to reimagine what they could do with their televisions, as is demonstrated in the retail unit they created for their stores. What emerged was a game that transformed the television set into a gaming device. Baer had first conceived the idea of using a television to play a game in 1966 and he soon developed a series of prototypes to control spots on a screen. Magnavox released the Odyssey in 1972 (shortly before the release of the arcade version of Pong) after six years of work by Ralph Baer, its creator. Certainly it was the first home video game system-that fact is beyond dispute, though it was based on analog, not digital circuitry. It did lay the groundwork for Pong, however, and soon people all over America were dropping in quarters by the millions to bounce an electronic ball back and forth.Īnd yet Pong itself was not even the first electronic tennis game, for it was preceded by another product-the Magnavox Odyssey-that can stake multiple claims as the first video game. ![]() The cabinet for Computer Space was stylishly hip, but the gameplay was clumsy and it didn’t take off. A year earlier, he had partnered with the manufacturing firm Nutting Associates to release Computer Space, a game set in outer space in which two ships tried to destroy each other. Pong brought video games to the public consciousness in a widespread way for the first time, which is why many people think of it as the first “video game.” But it was not even the first arcade video game created by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. Atari released the arcade game Pong in 1972 and this electronic table tennis game became an instant hit in bars, restaurants, laundromats, and other places around the United States (and eventually internationally) where people played coin-operated games like pinball or electromechanical driving games. If you asked someone on the street the question “What is the first video game?” their answer might well be Pong. Video games are no different, so the answer to the question “What is the first video game?” is, of course, complex and depends on what we mean by a video game and what we mean by “first.” As with almost anything having to do with the history of technology, progress tends to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the accretion of small innovations and gradual improvements over time that add up to startling changes. ![]()
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