WGE MAG: 51
GAME HISTORY
VIDEO
1947 - Goldsmith and Mann filed a US patent request for an invention they described as a “cathode ray tube amusement device”
1950 - Charley Adama created Bouncing Ball, a program for MIT’s Whirlwind computer
1958 - William Higinbotham creates Tennis for Two a precursor to Pong
1966 - Bill Harrison created the first light gun to interact with a gaming device
1969. Sanders Associates show off the world’s first dedicated games console device
1969. Space Travel the Worlds first Unix game created
1971 - Galaxy (the first coin-op game) installed at a student union at Stanford University
1971 - 1,500 ‘Computer Space’ game machines created by Ralph Baer, who went on to form Atari
1971 - First version of a Star Trek game developed 1972 - Atari release Pong, selling 19,000 machines
1972 - Magnavox Odyssey, using game cartridges becomes first home video games console
1972 - Frank Sinatra in TV ads for Odyssey assists 100,000 first year sales!
1974 - Philips buy Magnavox. Life sales of Magnavox 2m units
1974 - Maze War and Spasim - first examples of first person shooters released
1975 - Dungeon created by Daglow. Based on Dungeons and Dragons it became the first example of a role playing game
1978 - Taito release Space Invaders 1979 - MicroVision handheld console created
1979 - Atari release Asteroids
1979 - Namco release Galaxian and Pac-Man
1979 - Publisher Infocom founded to port games to personal computers. Subsequently sold to Activision
1980 - Space Panic hailed as first multi-level platform game
1980 - Defender, the first shooter using side-scrolling, released by Williams Electronics
1981 - Haunted House released by Capcom, possibly first ever Horror genre game
1981 - Revenues from video games in US exceeds earnings generated by US movie industry and music industry
1981 - Nintendo release Donkey Kong, which incorporates a character called Mario
1982 - Taito’s Jungle King features first ‘scrolling jump and run’
1983 - Congo Bongo, the first isometric platformer (3D environment using 2D graphics) released by Sega
1983 - Mario Bros released
1984 - Karate Champ released by Data East. First one-on- one fighter game
1985 - Space Harrier released to be the first successful ‘rail shooter’
1987 - Final Fantasy franchise introduced the side-view turn- based fight. Where player characters appeared on the right and the enemies on the left
1991 - Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog make first appearance
1992 - Alone in the Dark became the most popular ‘Horror genre’ game of its time
1996 - Quake pioneered turn based internet first person shooter games
1998 - Nokia installed Snake on its first handset 2001 - Microsoft releases Xbox 2004 - Release of Nintendo DS and Playstation (PSP) 2005 - Xbox 360 released 2006 - Wii released
2011 - Nintendo Wii, Microsoft’s Kinect, and Sony’s PlayStation Move
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