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The Early Days
Video games actually started in a lab with scientists. In 1952, Professor A.S. Douglas created "OXO" which was basically just tic tac toe. In 1958 William Higinbotham created Tennis for Two on a large analog computer, and in 1962, Steve Russell invented "Spacewar!" which was a space themed combat video game. -
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The Home Console
In 1967, the first prototype multiplayer video game console, the "Brown Box" was made. In 1972 the device was sold to Magnavox and released to the public as the "Odyssey" however this console didn't last very long and soon died out. However one of their games inspired Atari's "Pong", the very first arcade game. Which released to arcades in 1972, with a counterpart for homes coming out in 1975. Magnavox ended up sueing Atari for pong and ended up making over 100 million dollars over the years -
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The Home Console (Cont.)
In 1977, Atari released the new "Atari 2600" which was a new console with cartridges. A few other inventions from this point include the creation of Pac Man, space invaders, donkey kong, and the first flight simulator game. -
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The Video Game Crash
In 1983, the video game market crashed due to overhyped low quality games, and the compitition from computer gaming, the industry was saved in 1985 though, with the NES (Nintendo Entertainment system) coming to North America. With the NES came important games like super mario and the legend of zelda. Nintendo also brought in place regulations to try and combat the low quality games that were getting released back then. In 1989 Nintendo made the very popular "Gameboy" which brought tetris with it -
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Console war
Sega released a new console in 1989 called the Genesis, to counter it, Nintendo made the Super NES in 1991, starting the first console war. With Sega's new release of Sonic that same year. The early 90s saw the release of iconic games like mortal kombat and street fighter II. Super Mario and Mortal Kombat got turned into movies in 1993, as well as street fighter. Although Sega was more successful in north america, the same couldnt be said for japan -
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3D Consoles
The first 3d console was put out by sega, later to be followed by nintendo, and a new company: Sony. Long story short, all three companies had good unique game releases, but none came close to Sony with their PlayStation. In 2000, Sony released the Playstation 2, which supported all the games from the previous console, and was the best selling console of all time, and it used dvd's instead of cartridges and cds. It went on to compete against microsofts Xbox, the Sega Dreamcast, and the gamecube.