Tuesday 14 October 2008

History of Video Games 1950's-1970's

A.S Douglas created the first graphical computer game of ‘Tic-Tac-Toe,’ programmed in 1952 in his PhD dissertation about Human-Computer interaction at the University of Cambridge. In 1958, engineer William A. Higginbotham invented the interactive computer game ‘Tennis for Two.’ He had previously helped to build the first atom bomb. Higginbotham wanted to develop an interesting exhibit that engages people and entertains, instead of boring them. In 1962, Steve Russell, a computer programmer from MIT created ‘Spacewar!’ which was the first game intended for computer use. Based on ‘Spacewar!’ in 1971, Nolan Bushnell, co-founder of Atari, created the first coin-operated arcade game called ‘Computer Space.’ However, this turned out to be unsuccessful due to the complexity of the controls, therefore ‘Pong,’ invented in 1972 by Atari was the first commercially successful coin-operated video game. A home version of ‘Pong’ was released in 1974 which received a high number of sales. ‘Death Race,’ an arcade game created in 1976, where pedestrian zombies were hit by a car created one of the first controversies over violence in a video game.

The first game I played was ‘Street Fighter’ on the Amiga which used a basic joystick.

The most recent games I played were ‘Tekken 5’ and ‘Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ on Playstation 2. The clever storylines ‘Namco’ created for each character, their fighting techniques and personalities maintained my interest in all the Tekken games.

My fascination in video games continued to grow as companies developed their games to appear more appealing with the graphics gradually improving over the years. My interest with video games was not a phase of interest; it became an addiction, where I could escape reality and enter a different world of gaming.