I was talking to someone at work today about video games. He was talking about Skyrim. I tell him I love the entire Elder Scrolls series. That I bought my original Xbox just so I could play Morrowind because it blew my mind at the time.
He then tells me he remembers that being the first console he ever played...damn did that make me feel old.
it's amazing to myself, just how old the video game culture really is, and that it's started to become mainstream in many peoples lives (edit) over 50 years ago! from today. and for others over 60 years ago, my dad was born in 1965 and even he used to be a hard core gamer. for a long portion of his life. he used to play games in the arcades.
I once heard that some Tempest like game was the first video game made in 1954 on some university computer, but now google is saying the PONG was the first video game invented in 1958 so I don't know what to beleve
Tennis for Two was made using radar equipment in 1958 by William Higgenbotham. Some don't consider it the first because there was no computer technology involved. Not quite Pong, though. It had a side-view, rather than the overhead view of Pong.
If that doesn't count then it's Space War in 1962 by Steve Russel. It was made on a PDP Mainframe computer at a university and shared around university networks. Two-player game where each player controls a space ship and tries to blow each other up. Overhead 2D view. There's a star in the middle of the screen that has real gravity that can affect the ships as they fly by it.
Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, was at a seminar where Space War was shown off. This is where he got his idea for the first arcade game which was a rip-off of Space War called Computer Space in 1971, and it bombed. Pong was released by Atari a year later in 1972 and was Atari's first success. Interestingly enough, The Magnavox Odyssey, the first console, was also released in 1972 and was damn similar to Pong.
I'm very interested in gaming history.
