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first video game
In October 1958, Physicist William Higinbotham created what is thought to be the first video game. It was a very simple tennis game, similar to the classic 1970s video game Pong, and it was quite a hit at a Brookhaven National Laboratory open house. -
first computer game
The first computer game is generally assumed to be the game Spacewar!, Spacewar originally ran on a PDP-1 computer the size of a large car. By today's standards, the graphics are rather primitive, although less primitive than many games form the 1980's. -
First generation of home consoles
Began i with the Magnavox Odyssey, until "pong"-style console manufacturers left the market -
Golden age of arcade video games (1978–1982)
Space Invaders introduced important concepts in arcade video games. It was also the first game to confront the player with waves of targets that would shoot back at the player and the first to include background music during game play, a simple four-note loop. -
Second generation consoles
The second generation of video game consoles began in 1976. ... The Atari 2600 was the most popular video game console for much of the second generation. Other consoles such as Intellivision, the Odyssey 2, and ColecoVision were also popular. The second generation ended in 1984. -
Early home computer games (1976–1982)
When most people think about the first video game, they think of Pong, the ping-pong arcade game released by Atari in 1972. However, months earlier, Magnavox had released its Magnavox Odyssey, a home video game system based on the “Brown Box,” a prototype invented by Ralph Baer. -
Video game crash of 1983
The video game crash of 1983 (known as the Atari shock in Japan) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in North America. ... Revenues peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985 -
Early online gaming
MAZE, which is created by NASA interns, is one of the early first-person shooter games. As gaming begins to take off, 1973 sees the first game sold, Pong by Atari. Empire, which was played over the PLATO network, offers the first time a game could be played on multiple screens -
PC gaming
1989 and the early 1990s saw the release and spread of the Multi-User Dungeon codebases DikuMUD and LPMud, leading to a tremendous increase in the proliferation and popularity of MUDs. Before the end of the decade, the evolution of the genre continued through graphical MUDs into the first massively multiplayer online role-playing games, which freed users from the limited number of simultaneous players in other games and brought persistent worlds to the mass market. -
Transition to 3D
3D computer graphics using polygons were soon popularized by Yu Suzuki's Sega AM2 games Virtua Racing (1992) and Virtua Fighter (1993), both running on the Sega Model 1 arcade system board;[42] some of the Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) staff involved in the creation of the original PlayStation video game console -
Third generation consoles (1983–1995)
The third generation of video game consoles began on July 15, 1983. The third generation began with the release of the Nintento Family Computer, or better known as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Sega SG-1000. This generation helped end the North American video crash of 1983. -
Mobile phone gaming
Mobile phones began becoming video gaming platforms when Nokia installed Snake onto its line of mobile phones in 1997 As the game gained popularity, every major phone brand offered "time killer games" that could be played in very short moments such as waiting for a bus. Mobile phone games early on were limited by the modest size of the phone screens that were all monochrome, the very limited amount of memory and processing power on phones, and the drain on the battery. -
Sixth generation consoles (1998–2013)
In the sixth generation of video game consoles, Sega exited the hardware market, Nintendo fell behind, Sony solidified its lead in the industry, and Microsoft developed their first gaming console. -
Seventh generation consoles (2005–present)
The generation opened early for handheld consoles, as Nintendo introduced their Nintendo DS and Sony premiered the PlayStation Portable (PSP) within a month of each other in 2004. While the PSP boasted superior graphics and power, following a trend established since the mid-1980s, Nintendo gambled on a lower-power design but featuring a novel control interface.
