The history of the Video GamesThe first known video game was made in government laboratory in 1958. The computer was an analog monster filled with vacuum tubes in the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the playing field was the five-inch screen of a lab oscilloscope. The game itself, never named, was a simple version of tennis, a sort of primitive Pong. It was designed and put together by a researcher named William Higginbotham, and all he was trying to do was put on a demonstration for the annual visitorÃÂs day.
Using the newest and fastest computer of 1962, a researcher named Steve Russell from Harvard University developed a game he called Space War. In this game, two players controlled the movement of a dot on the screen, and each player could fire ÃÂtorpedoesÃÂ- blasts of light- at the other playerÃÂs dot. The game was a big hit at MITÃÂs 1962 Science Open House.
Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual si...
An Intel i486DX2-66 Microprocessor, top view.
ProcessorBy 1970, however, integrated circuits had made computers small enough and cheap enough for someone to produce a commercial version of Space War, called Computer Space. The computer ÃÂchipÃÂ was about the size of a manhole cover, which may seem huge by todayÃÂs standards but was the ultimate in miniaturization at the time.
Then there are the more realistic looking images that are showing up in many games, like one called ÃÂWingsÃÂ. In Wings, the player takes a jet interceptor in order to foil an enemy missile attack. The editors of one games magazine called it ÃÂone of the finest flight simulators ever created for any system. Also there are the games that use a laser videodisk. The disk is simply, a multiple-choice movie, an illustrated, electronic version of those multiple-choice novels that are going around. All laser disk, after all, can only hold a couple hours...