Slashdot Mirror
Videogames: In the Beginning
evanak (Evan Koblentz) writes "Last year, at the PhillyClassic videogame event, I noticed a teenager wearing an ironic t-shirt. His shirt showed an original Nintendo controller and said 'Know your roots.' Sadly, it's not just modern youngsters who are unaware of their technological roots -- sometimes even we self-proclaimed adult über nerds are equally unaware. Regarding videogames, this is especially true, and now industry pioneer Ralph Baer is trying to rectify the situation. His attempt takes the form of a sincere autobiography, although with mixed results. The book is titled Videogames: In the Beginning." Read on for the rest of Koblentz's review.
Videogames: In the Beginning
author
Ralph Baer
pages
260
publisher
Rolenta Press
rating
8
reviewer
Evan Koblentz
ISBN
0964384817
summary
Autobiography of the inventor of home videogames
According to Rolenta publisher Lenny Herman (the author of Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames), Baer became interested in documenting his own experiences a few years ago, when the mainstream media began heaping praise with increasing frequency on Atari founder Nolan Bushnell.
Baer begins his story as expected: a detailed explanation of why he, not Bushnell, should be called the father of videogames. Baer, as Slashdot readers probably know, invented the prototype console that eventually became the Magnavox Odyssey. He explains that he suggested building a game feature to differentiate Loral Electronics' high-end televisions in 1951, but that his idea was declined by management; that he got serious about the idea and built his first prototype while working at defense contractor Sanders Associates in late 1966; and that Bushnell attended a demonstration (and signed the guestbook) in 1972 before founding Atari and consequently building his own version of Pong.
That's fair, and if Baer were to conclude the first chapter with the book's subtitle -- "the inventor of home videogames" (note the qualifier of "home" vs. "all") -- then it would be an acceptable story. However, he takes the argument into a different and surprising direction. He asserts that everything before his time -- such as Willy Higginbotham's 1958 oscilloscope-based tennis game at Brookhaven National Laboratory and MIT hacker Steve Russell's Spacewar from the 1960s -- were not "real" games simply because they used non-standard screens and weren't commercially viable. (But so what? They were no less entertaining. By common sense, and not a console purist's definition, a "videogame" is a game played on a video screen, period. I'm sorry if Bushnell gets credit for the invention of practical, home videogames where Baer rightfully deserves it, but that's no reason to indict the whole history of creative computer science.)
Happily, the Baer drops the matter after the first chapter, and continues telling the story of his adventures working with Sanders and Magnavox. Better yet, it turns out that these adventures are fascinating and worth reading no matter when or what Baer originally invented. Among the technologies he helped to develop were methods for delivering game content over cable television networks, the use of cartridges for storing game data, interactive videotape and videodisk systems, instant-replay features for sports games, and methods for drawing on the screen. He also invented the famous electronic Simon toy. For most of this time, he made a living by designing military simulators for Sanders Associates. In addition, for most of these issues, Baer includes not just prose about the how and why, but also detailed and full-color technical notes, illustrations, and even schematics. There are also sections focusing on the business issues he faced while trying to get Magnavox and other large corporations (such as Coleco and Nintendo) interested in his unproven ideas, which of course were correct, or else you wouldn't be read this. Another section of the book deals with lawsuits involving Bushnell.
Baer has two more treats for us before closing his autobiography. First, he includes eight appendices, focusing on the Simon and other toys; a television games chronology; a Magnavox timeline; notebook entries from 1966-1972; patents; schematics and experiments; timelines of all of his projects sorted by date and category; and a bibliography. Second, for hands-on readers, there is an optional CD available for $10, which includes the necessary information for building your own Brown Box prototype and with video of Baer demonstrating how to play it. (My review copy didn't include the CD, so I'm basing this on what's stated in the book and on an email from the publisher.)
Overall, I recommend checking out this book. There are other videogame histories, but none so thorough from the perspective of a pioneer who actually lived it. If you can get past the controversial first chapter, you will find a great tale of ingenuity, persistence, ambition, and justice, along with some very cool technological insights. Or, as summarized by Steve Wozniak on the back cover, "I can never thank Ralph enough for what he gave to me and everyone else." Game on!
You can purchase Videogames: In the Beginning from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
According to Rolenta publisher Lenny Herman (the author of Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames), Baer became interested in documenting his own experiences a few years ago, when the mainstream media began heaping praise with increasing frequency on Atari founder Nolan Bushnell.
Baer begins his story as expected: a detailed explanation of why he, not Bushnell, should be called the father of videogames. Baer, as Slashdot readers probably know, invented the prototype console that eventually became the Magnavox Odyssey. He explains that he suggested building a game feature to differentiate Loral Electronics' high-end televisions in 1951, but that his idea was declined by management; that he got serious about the idea and built his first prototype while working at defense contractor Sanders Associates in late 1966; and that Bushnell attended a demonstration (and signed the guestbook) in 1972 before founding Atari and consequently building his own version of Pong.
That's fair, and if Baer were to conclude the first chapter with the book's subtitle -- "the inventor of home videogames" (note the qualifier of "home" vs. "all") -- then it would be an acceptable story. However, he takes the argument into a different and surprising direction. He asserts that everything before his time -- such as Willy Higginbotham's 1958 oscilloscope-based tennis game at Brookhaven National Laboratory and MIT hacker Steve Russell's Spacewar from the 1960s -- were not "real" games simply because they used non-standard screens and weren't commercially viable. (But so what? They were no less entertaining. By common sense, and not a console purist's definition, a "videogame" is a game played on a video screen, period. I'm sorry if Bushnell gets credit for the invention of practical, home videogames where Baer rightfully deserves it, but that's no reason to indict the whole history of creative computer science.)
Happily, the Baer drops the matter after the first chapter, and continues telling the story of his adventures working with Sanders and Magnavox. Better yet, it turns out that these adventures are fascinating and worth reading no matter when or what Baer originally invented. Among the technologies he helped to develop were methods for delivering game content over cable television networks, the use of cartridges for storing game data, interactive videotape and videodisk systems, instant-replay features for sports games, and methods for drawing on the screen. He also invented the famous electronic Simon toy. For most of this time, he made a living by designing military simulators for Sanders Associates. In addition, for most of these issues, Baer includes not just prose about the how and why, but also detailed and full-color technical notes, illustrations, and even schematics. There are also sections focusing on the business issues he faced while trying to get Magnavox and other large corporations (such as Coleco and Nintendo) interested in his unproven ideas, which of course were correct, or else you wouldn't be read this. Another section of the book deals with lawsuits involving Bushnell.
Baer has two more treats for us before closing his autobiography. First, he includes eight appendices, focusing on the Simon and other toys; a television games chronology; a Magnavox timeline; notebook entries from 1966-1972; patents; schematics and experiments; timelines of all of his projects sorted by date and category; and a bibliography. Second, for hands-on readers, there is an optional CD available for $10, which includes the necessary information for building your own Brown Box prototype and with video of Baer demonstrating how to play it. (My review copy didn't include the CD, so I'm basing this on what's stated in the book and on an email from the publisher.)
Overall, I recommend checking out this book. There are other videogame histories, but none so thorough from the perspective of a pioneer who actually lived it. If you can get past the controversial first chapter, you will find a great tale of ingenuity, persistence, ambition, and justice, along with some very cool technological insights. Or, as summarized by Steve Wozniak on the back cover, "I can never thank Ralph enough for what he gave to me and everyone else." Game on!
You can purchase Videogames: In the Beginning from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
i don't know how the 'know your roots' t-shirt is ironic. i mean, it's not like everybody is 40 years old and still playing pong. 'your' would imply that the roots he is 'knowing' are relative to his own life, not that of some intelevision spaz touting the depth of burger time gameplay.
I have a videogame collection with close to 1000 original game carts and systems as well as thousands more in emulation. When younger kids/relatives come over they don't even know how to USE a NES/SNES let alone an Atari or the likes, but once I brief them they all love them. TAZ for Atari 2600 is one game that holds up so well it is amazing, or Warlords.
The "roots" of gaming were FUN games, easy play, and great simple control. Gaming really needs to get back to its roots and stop trying to be the next multi-billion hollywood-like crap industry.
Music has been turned artificial, movies have followed suit, I guess games are next. When people will wake up and stop accepting this crap is beyond me. People have no "soul" anymore, they want fluff with no real substance, typical disposable society.
Ask a teenager to hum or whistle their favorite song... they can't do it because there is nothing but a catchy hook, it's empty. Same thing with games, they have tons of flash and glitz but no soul and it isn't getting any better.
The only hope is that the Nintendo Revolution claims to simplify the controller so that even a mom can play, with this simplification of controller should force game developers to go back to THEIR roots and begin to produce fun and enjoyable games with some heart put into them.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Sadly, it's not just modern youngsters who are unaware of their technological roots
Um, he's only a teenager, those are his roots.
Well, if we believe what the police in Utah say, that's what a rave is... Especially the munching pills part.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Seriously what theh heck is wrong with saying your roots are in Nintendo? What I would take this shirt to imply would be that Nintendo were the ones who inovated video games largely back in the early ninties and late eighties. They made gaming incredibly fun, and that's where video gaming really started to take off. Contrast the fun early nintendo and super nintendo games with the crap that Sony is pushing no where most games sell because of pixelated breasts, blood, and by playing to the lowest common denominator. It's one of the reasons I still have yet to own any Sony playstation product. And actually might never. Also one of the reasons I refuse to buy just about anything from Sony.
It sounds to me that it's one of those "I invented the Internet" deals.
Sadly these guys were all beaten by a couple score of years by the table top gamers, and those beaten by centuries by Board games, and of course I'm sure there was cavemen who played "who can get hit the hardest" and they beat us all.
This book does sound interesting but the first chapter probably will throw most people, why don't people just accept they aren't the FIRST. There's only one, and it's likely to be an unstandardized and oddball chose, rather then a standardized idea. VMS and Unix easily predates Dos, tnd There's smaller OSes before that too, IBM is one of the first developers of computers, but hardly the first. Babbage is considered the creator of computers, but I'm sure even he stood on the shoulders of giants (while he was a giant himself too.)
I prefer my historians to be realistic, even if they do believe themselves to do great things, Carmack is a genius, and as long as he doesn't run around and say he single handly created the FPS (though he did a HELL of a lot for it) I'll applaud him, same thing with Gates admiting that he changed a fledgling OS into DOS, or helping to create Basic, no he didn't do it himself, but he did take a decent idea and make one of the first stardized "simplistic" programming languages.
Basically I just wish all these programmers or creators would just admit that they arn't the only person in the industry, admit what they did for the industry, and not they to make their accomplishment the only one in the industry, but then to make that wish I'd have to forget about human nature, and sadly I can't so I guess I understand the reasoning for it, but the wish will stay in my heart even if it's never spoken.
I agree. And I'll add that the idea behind the "Root" shirt has nothing to do with the Atari or Pong of video games. Looking back over the last 20 years what was the first gaming console that made kids want stay in their homes for hours instead of going outside?
The Nintendo (ok or Sega or NeoGeo if you were rich) The Atari was great and a lot of kids played it. But given the choice between playing Dodgeball back in 7th grade or playing Pitfall on the Atari - I'd pick Dodgeball in an instant. The Atari was great but it was played with on days when it was too rainy or snowy to go outside, and after an hour or two you'd get bored and want to do something else.
Now the Nintendo...oh my...I didn't want to go outside because I could beat the crap out of my friends for hours in an NFL game or spend literally days exploring the worlds of FF and DW.
My Nintendo is the "Root" of where I got my desire to play games. Not the Atari, Not the Commador64, Not my PC Jr.. Sorry those were all fun, but they didn't make me give up the outside world and make me spend 4-6 hours in front of them every night.
Ave Molech Setting
Okay, there are two types of games as I see it. The games you're talking about, typical to the Atari, are "game games". Simple and fun. Personally, I tire of them quickly, but I know they mean something special for some people, and the more modern ones (examples you listed at the end) are actually quite awsome games.
Then there are simulation games. Iw as just looking at a pic of MGS3 (not my cup of tea, but oh well.) It's trying to simulate the real world, stealth and AI as best as possible. Some people really enjoy this. Personally, a defining moment in my video game playing career was playing a used game I got at EB for $2, x-beyond the frontier. It's a space sim, with an economy where you trade crap, buy ships, blow shit up and build factories etc. Not like starcraft or anything, its a persistant universe, and fighting is done through the cockpit of a single ship, maybe using the AI commands to make your other ships attack with you. I remember, the first solar system you land in. The graphics were shit, let me tell you, pure shit. Some alien dudes are talking, the Taladi or something, but the voice acting is crap and you can't understand it. When your flying in the system, the first thing you notice is size. it takes like a minute to fly to the nearest station, as you watch it come closer and closer. The funny thing is, you could see the seams in space, like in the FAR off distance, where the level ended, everything was enclosed in a cube, with the stars textured on, but they did it badly so you could see the edges of the inside of the cube. (/me hands the dev's a tutorial on texturing and lighting) If you play it, and sit back and think about it, each sector, no matter how big it is, is actually small. Distances mean shit in computer graphics, since its all just empty space, so technically, in a sense, its easier to do "big" than small. For some reason though that didn't matter, because I felt like I was flying through space. The cool thing is, in space stations, you had to manually dock until you got the autopilot upgrade. Fly to fast, or not in a straight line, and boom your dead. The sequel X^2 is great too, great graphics.
What am I trying to get at in this off topic post? The simple atari games dont appeal to me, that doesn't mean they don't have soul. If the new fangled first person shooter with a million polys per character doesn't appeal to you, it doesn't mean someone else doesn't, and doesn't mean it doesn't have soul in their perspecitve. It's all about what kind of emotional response you personally get, whether its a joy from the pure mechanics of the game, or immersion from the realistic setting.
You're a dumbasss.
I'll go one better - Doom over a serial connection with each player in different rooms. That was deadly, having that thick serial cable sprawled across the floor between rooms.
I've really been in the mood for some of those old games lately. My wife (then fiancee) and I spent hundreds of hours in front of my 12 MHz 286 playing "Tank Wars" until all hours of the night. I've really wanted to play that lately. It was a hell of a lot of fun in its simplicity and ease of use. Unfortunately, it did not have proper clock/tick synchronization, so my AMD Athlon 64 3200 makes it jump to Ludicrous Speed, so it's unplayable as is.
But you're absolutely right that - even with the "simplistic" graphics and sound - they were FUN because they were forced to focus on gameplay. Only after 256-color games and 640x480 VGA graphics came into play was there an evident push to visuals at the expense of gameplay.
Fortunately, open source and freeware utilities like ScummVM are making it easier to play a lot of those older games.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
It's a sorry day when the most unoriginal, trite, predictable, unfunny comment is not only first post, but modded up to +5.
Why can't people think before posting?
When I was a wee lad I had a friend with a near senile old grandfather - an ex-electronics tech with the Army. His routine was set - breakfast, go out into the garage and tinker with circuits, lunch, nap, more tinkering, supper, and then when the sun set - his self-built Heathkit HAM Radio.
:)
One fine day me and my buddy were happily playing 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' on his 2600 when the old man broke his routine enough to stick his head in and say, "Those things are just silly, really. Nothin' to 'em. Just a bunch of IC's..."
That led to a discussion on how 'foolish' those IC's were. "Nothin' to 'em!", he'd shout (making his antiquated hearing aid whistle and hum loudly). A little while later, he tried to show me why the transistor was better than ''em all'. It was amazing. He saw absolutely NO advantages to using integrated circuits. I think he sniffed at them because they represented something he couldn't fix - something he couldn't tear apart and trouleshoot. His biggest complaint was that the IC 'made people lazy'.
When I look at video games today and try and compare them with the past, I always keep his example in mind. As I get older, I see how easy and how tempting it is to shut off any advances simply because I don't understand them fully. It's scary out there after all.
As a critic of video games, I have to come up with something better than: "This game sucks because games like Defender had FAR more playability!" Even if that's my opinion (and it often is), I have to at least try and see things from an unjaded perspective. Most kids today don't know, don't WANT to know about how it was when you played 'Hunt The Wumpus' on punchcards.
There's something about being a kid and having those first experiences - whether it's Project Gotham, Metroid, or Asteroids - that make it special for you (if no one else). That's the kind of thing you can't explain to other people who haven't been there - and don't try. Education is one thing, getting lost or losing perspective in the past is another.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Since he said it's "unfunny," I doubt he doesn't know it's a joke. I also doubt that most people don't realize that. See, the problem here is that it is a stupid, unfunny joke.
Know your roots indeed. Hmmm, I was born in Winnipeg, so my family's history must start there...
No, I see the Atari 2600 as vintage gaming. Obviously these "many" people you refer to are of a different generation.