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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.
"If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
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
I can still vividly recall playing Pac-Man and Scramble at the local roller rinks, and Donkey Kong and Defender at the front entrance of the local grocery store. I would scrape together all the change I could find just on the off chance my parents would let me hit the arcade at the mall, just to take a whack at Tempest or Spy Hunter.
:D
Space Invaders, Lunar Lander, Omega Race... Rush N' Attack, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, P.O.W.... Ladybug, Tapper, Mappy... yeah, I know my roots.
And thanks to the joys of emulators, I can go back to my roots any time I want!
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
And if you're in Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry has a great exhibit for a couple more weeks, "Game On". It's a hands-on exhibit and historical/cultural look at video games. From the Museum's website...
"Forty years ago, video games didn't exist. The Nintendo Company made playing cards, Sony made black and white televisions and Sega imported instant photo booths. Families played games by rolling dice or dealing cards."
Cool Exhibit!
Quomodo cogis comas tuas sic videri?
I brought Steve Russell's Spacewar to Sanders in the early 1970s, and installed it on the PDP-1 in the basement. When Nintendo was contesting the Magnavox patents they couldn't find any evidence that Baer had seen or played Spacewar, but the possibility does exist, since they were in the same building at the same time. Does he say in his book whether or not he ever encountered Spacewar>
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Sadly, it's not just modern youngsters who are unaware of their technological roots
Um, he's only a teenager, those are his roots.
www.klov.com
www.vaps.org
There is nothing like classic video games and pinballs. MAME is great, but still can't capture it completely. I am glad I got to grow up during the great era of arcades.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Spacewar not a "real" game? What a crock! Here is Spacewar running on a PDP-11 emulator in a Java applet: :-)
http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/sp acewar/
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 can see why he thinks the t-shirt is ironic - the shirt doesn't depict the earliest known example of video gaming, but I don't agree with his judgement.
If "roots" had to be the first known moment that a human did something (even if it was before your time), imagine the confusion. You couldn't say that your roots included MSDOS because the first computers did not run MSDOS. Would you have to say that the root was Babbage's mechanical computer, or would that be disqualified because it was never built?
It's a nonsense. If the person first played on the NES then the t-shirt is perfectly sincere.
As a senior project manager I am surrounded by 20-somethings who think that the world revolves around Halo and/or MechAssult...
Every once in a while I like to fire up either MAME or Stella (Atari 2600 emulator) to show them "the old days". I usually bring out Galaxian or Pac Man or Night Driver or Pitfall...
Oddly enough, some of these peeps have learned a bit and are enjoying using the emulators during break time.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Give the man some credit. It was dangerous work back then. I lost my arm playing the early version of Pac Man. We used real monsters back then.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
>His shirt showed an original Nintendo controller and said 'Know your roots.'
Wish I still had my old t-shirt which showed the solution of a quadratic equation and had the same motto...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Top of the list: Death of hardware
;)
Me and this guy from across town used to pound the living hell out of each other at 14.4K. At first, it was friendly rivalry but later, shit started getting abused.
The first casualty was my nice, almost new 500 MB hard drive. I still remember it: There I was, circling around back of the cathedral to take him out when all of a sudden I turn around and get a face full of rocket. Totally surprised (and pissed), I pounded my fist on the table screaming incoherantly (probably something similar to, "Son a BITCH!") and within my desktop I heard the scariest noise ever: 'whhhhiiiirrrrr... Click... whhhhhiirrrrr'. Yep. Destroyed my hard drive that day.
But my buddy did even better than that a few weeks later. I had helped him get a motherboard and processor but I had no case to donate. He ended up with this old Hyundai case. Man did that suck! Everything in the case was off by like half a centimeter (a Dremel can only do so much)!
Anyway, because of the sickly case design, he'd have to keep it open with a room fan blowing into the case to keep it from overheating. It was kinda comical and sad at the same time.
Now, how many of you remember that level with all the REALLY THIN walls you had to walk on with lava below? Well, I found out that the spawnpoints were such that he could not finish the level if I didn't want him to. I'd simply wait for him to get on those thin walls and blow him away.
After doing this (I'm not kidding) around 40 times, he texts me and says something like, "Godddamint chuk. if you fucking do that one more time im done." I'm sure you realize that this kind of message is the kind that almost insures his death. The funny thing was, he was on the walls again when I came around the corner, rocket launcher in hand. I fired off a round - purposely missing him and he got so freaked out that he fell off the wall into the lava.
{CLICK!}
Game over! I didn't find out what happened until the next day as he was too embarrassed and angry to talk to me. Apparently, when he accidentally fell off the wall in the game, his RL leg shot out and caught the 'case fan'. The case fan (with a nice, conductive metal grating) fell into his motherboard and shorted the whole mess out - EVEN his VESA (Whoa! 32-bit Trident chipest - hot stuff!) video card.
It was about that time that we both realized that maybe we were taking things a bit too seriously. Then Duke Nukem 3D came out... But that is a different story.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."