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History of Video Games
seer writes "There's a nice history of videogames over at GameSpot. It starts with pre-videogame activity in 1889 with the Marufuku Company (later Nintendo) and stretches to the recently released GameCube-DVD system."
Hey, it's sunday. No reason to knock yourself out reading the works of ancient
philosophers (unless you're taking Ancient Philosophers 230 and have
an exam this week).
Because they saved a LOT of the videogames story. Project like
mame,
uae,
mess is simply amazing,
and thanks to any others that contributes.
With his discussion about caves and shadows and the perfect form.
As Plato said, we are nothing but imperfect shadows from the ideal form, which is in this cave, cast from the light from the perfect fire.
So all we have to do is find this cave and we can play the perfect video game.
...waka-waka-waka...
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
I think what's interesting is that unlike today, earlier videogame designers were often very inventive in the look of the game itself.
It's too bad that Mattel's Intellivision system never really succeeded in the long run; they had games that in many cases were vastly superior to the competition at the time from Atari, Coleco, and so on. The PGA golf game on that system was quite playable for its time; and who can forget the games that used the Voice Module such as B-17 Bomber and Bomb Squad? The Bomb Squad game can be extremely unnerving, especially when you set it at the highest level of difficulty.
Which opponent to frag first often has other implications that can ruin your success in a game. And this is all split second decision making.
Of course, this is not Ancient Philosophy, but modern.
So a study of the history of games, the design of video games, etc, can be valuable.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Still, it's interesting to see how many of these companies start out; Nintendo started out selling playing cards, moved to computer games and then went back to cards with Pokemon (gotta buy 'em all!).
My particular favourite line was regarding "Death Race 2000": "Public outcry against video game violence gains national attention". This in 1976...
I think it should be pointed out that this article is a US centric version of the history of the video game. (Wooo, that's a suprise!).
From a UK perpective (which is supposedly the third biggest games producer in the world behind the US and Japan), the articles fails to mention the ZX Spectrum or any UK games which influenced generations of UK (and perhaps European) game developers.
Of course, every country has it's own unique history of video games (and the big US and Japanese companies have had a big influence no doubt).
But let's not get to US centric folks.
"Marufuku Company (later Nintendo)"
;)
No wonder they changed their name, but then again if they kept it maybe they wouldn't be accused of being a kiddie company
Very minor nit, but the PDP-1 was the first mini, not a mainframe. The name, Peripheral Data Processor was in response to the econimics of the time. Trying to get PHBs to see the wisdom of buying a couple of minis instead of an IBM mainframe was virtual job-suicide.
However, you could easily justify buying a peripheral to offload some data processing to. Thus was born the PDP and the mini (and eventually PDP was the reason for two of the best OSes of all time: VMS via DEC which is now Compaq and UNIX via Bell Labs which is now partly AT&T, partly Lucent and partly Caldera... what a long road).
If you want an informative (albeit poorly edited, IMHO) book about the early history of video games, check out "ZAP! The Rise and Fall of Atari" by Scott Cohen.
I remember the day when we all went to County Stadium in Milwaukee, WI. to play in the "atari Pac-man" championships back in the early 80's.
We never thought it could get better than that.
Has it?
What I'd like to see is a technical history of videogames. (There are some, but I want to find a more comprehensive and in-depth one.) I want all the details. I do some work with microcontrollers (AVRs are my new favorite). I'm not the best coder, but I enjoy mucking around in the bits and bytes of assembly language. The old videogames fascinate me, not for the games (I have yet to find a game I enjoy), but for the hardware. In today's world of bigger-faster-better, I think most people don't realize the incredible power of the systems they have. It seems people scoff at anything short of a GHz today, but the power of even a few KHz is simply incredible. When used right, it can do incredible things. (When slowed and bloated, it seems awful, but that's entirely due to the programmers.)
In my assembly class, people like to complain that the 68k chip we're programming is "outdated". They don't understand that "outdated" is a word that has almost no meaning in the embedded world. Remember the Sega Genesis? Neo Geo? Both 68k. Comparable to the processor in my Visor. The processor in the original PONG machines were comparable to what is used in the Nintendo Gameboy, 20 years later. Same processor as is in my TI-85 calculator, for which there is a raycasting Wolfenstein 3D look-alike. Not too shabby.
Anyway. I don't claim to be the most knowledgeable on this stuff, but I think it's very interesting. The workstations of yesterday become the pocket toys of tomorrow. Nothing ever dies, everything has its place. You can't always program in Java, you can't always throw more hardware at it and make the problems go away. Sometimes you have to use skill and ingenuity, and this is something that I admire greatly. I say, Cheers to the old game coders! Remarkable work.
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
It's ~1:30am Monday morning (.au Time), with a deadline to be reached by 9:30am, and I can't stop playing a 3D shockwave version of Pong!
Talk about your history of games... Pong's appeal is ever reaching. It is God's gift to the CRT. It is the pixelated equivalent of a fresh spring morn.
In a word:
Quintessential!!!
Either that or procrastination is somehow involved.
:)
You might wanna pick up a couple of these titles. They certainly are worth the time and money:
"Homo Ludens - a Study of the Play-element in Culture" (Johann Huizinga)
"The Study of Games" (Elliot M. Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith)
"I have no words and I must design" (Greg Costikyan)
"The art of computer game design" (Chris Crawford)
"Finite and Infinite Games - A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility" (James P. Carse)
Hope you find this usefull.
naah sig schmig
and it was huge. the pdp-8 was small and cheap (at about the size of a fridge and $10.000).
it had lots of great peripherals, such as the teletype (standart for in/output, but in theory you could interact with 12 switches on the front panel that could set the accumulator directly, and 12 + 1 lights indicating its value), extra ram (magnetic - and expensive) or even a crt.
--
making up good sigs is a hard thing to do.
1993: Congress Notes Video Game Violence ... sigh... people never remember anything
Incensed by the violence in Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, Senators Joseph Lieberman (Connecticut) and Herbert Kohl (Wisconsin) launch a Senate "investigation" into video game violence, threaten to somehow effect a ban on "violent" games, and eventually soften their demands and concede to an industry-wide rating system.
they are still in office?
joe lieberman?
Runnin' On Empty
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Doesn't go as far back or forward, but much more detailed and better written.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
If someone actually liked that site, which was low on information, you'll absolutley love this site: http://www.emuunlim.com/doteaters/
The doteaters examines the history of arcade, home and computer games. Anyone remember Wampus?
By far the best feature of the site is the overall timelines: http://www.emuunlim.com/doteaters/timescape.htm
The article fails to note that the Atari Lynx color handheld accommodated left-handed users. Game buttons were placed on both sides of the unit and you could flip the screen.
It ran circles around the gray Nintendo Gameboy (256 colors, stereo sound, multiplayer option), but Atari knew squat about marketing. A single commercial on MTV once in a blue moon, while Nintendo smothered every nook and cranny of the market. It was like Atari was satisfied if it produced X units and sold those units, instead of being more ambitious.
http://www.liquid.se/pong.html
Okay, before I'm moderated as a troll, and this is in reference to the article... read:
* Spider-Man 2 for the PlayStation is delayed to remove a scene that had the superhero on top of a building that looked like the World Trade Center.
* Changes are made to Flight Simulator 2002 to remove the World Trade Center towers from the flying environment and a patch is released to remove them from Flight Simulator 2000.
Why the hell is the world trade center being removed from old movies, video games, advertisements and just about anything else. Isn't this rewriting history? Are we supposed to pretend that they never existed? I have a picture of myself as a child with the World Trade Center right behind me.... should I doctor that photo to reflect the newer, more post 9/11 NYC skyline? I'm sorry, but there used to be two giant buildings where the empty space is... and pretending that they never existed will not help this country whatsoever.
Okay, it's not like me to post one of these lame ass "mod up" articles, but I've been confounded about the issue just as much as the above poster.
Since there is a barely a response to the above article, please consider modding it up for more exposure.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
No reason to knock yourself out reading the works of ancient philosophers (unless you're taking Ancient Philosophers 230 and have an exam this week).
"I can teach Japanese to a monkey in 46 hours. It's just a matter of being able to relate to the material. You like pro-wrestling, right?"
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
Some of Nintendo's early products were, well, not quite in keeping with its current family-friendly image. Do some more searching around the web and you'll get the idea :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
1977
Pizza Time Theatre Atari opens the first Pizza Time Theatre, a new arcade-restaurant combination that features moving robotic animals, electronic games, and food. The mascot for the restaurant is a rat named Chuck E. Cheese. Bushnell thought up the concept three years earlier while standing in line at a pizza parlor.
I still have a Chuck E. Cheese token back from when I used to play games a lot. It's a 1984 token and it says "In pizza we trust" on it.
There is no way I would play it now. I just hold onto it as a memory of youth, and wonder if it will ever achieve spectacular collector value.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This site got me hooked on Sega.
Virtual Boy made it out of Japan, I have one sitting behind me. They only lasted a year or 2 in stores tops, with a pitiful 12 or so games ever released. The biggest reason cited for the unit's failure is that most people develop splitting headaches after playing for more than 5 minutes. Also, it wasn't anything CLOSE to a headset. You needed to place the thing on a flat surface and move your face close to it.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
* I thought Space War was first implemented on the TX-O, not the PDP-1.
* Systems never mentioned: RCA Studio II (the only pre-2600 cartridge system not mentioned), Emerson Arcadia 2001 (with sound effects that must have been programmed by a tone-deaf person; you have to hear it to understand just how bad they are), APF M-1000, Atari Lynx.
More random stuff: :)
* When Atari finally released the 7800 in 1986, the units had been sitting in a warehouse, ready for sale for two years, since being cancelled in 1984 because "nobody wanted to buy video games any more". Sure, nobody wanted to buy crappy 2600 games any more... but Nintendo was foolish enough to release a system anyhow.
* I had one of those old Coleco Telstar units when I was a kid. One thing about it was that if you slid the game select switch to just the right position, you got a version of the "hockey" game where one side had three paddles instead of two.
* And FWIW, a few years back I found a (very thick) book by Tab Books which covers the design of TTL-based (as in no CPU) games. Very interesting what you can do without a CPU, but it really takes a Woz to get that kind of stuff right. (IIRC, Woz designed the coin-op Breakout machine.)
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I love archaic technology. However, I think that you overestimate the case for microprocessors, though. Much of the hardware in early video games was either simple digital or even analog.
Consider the venerable "paddle." Take an RC-based timer, reset on the vertical retrace. Use the potentiometer on the console as the R part of the circuit. When the timer fires, have it trigger a one-shot timer for a short period of time. Feed the ouput of that time to the gun of the CRT. Voila, a horizontal bar that you can move up and down the screen with the knob.
Take another shorter RC timer, triggered by the horizontal retrace. Have a fixed timing, so that it fires when the beam is about an inch from the left of the screen. Have it fire another timer that will stay on for a few pixels' trace. Take this output and the ouput of the timer in the previous paragraph, run them through an AND gate, and you have a paddle for the left of the screen.
Of course, eventually you are going to have to have some counters in there, but it's amazing how much you can do with very simple circuitry.