In 1961, a group of students at MIT, including [Steve Russell]?, programmed a game called Spacewar? on the then brand new DEC PDP-1. The game pitted two human players against each other, each controlling a space ship capable of firing missiles. A black hole in the centre created a large gravitational field and another source of hazard. This game was soon distributed with new DEC computers and traded throughout primitve cyberspace. It was the first widely available and influential game.
Pong? was developed in 1972 by Atari and became the first successful console video game. The game is loosely based around tennis: Two players each control a "bat" which has the freedom to move up and down at their end of the "court". A ball is "served" from the centre of the court and as the ball moves towards their side of the court each player must maneuver their bat to "hit" the ball back to their opponent. It soon had many imitators and the coin operated video game craze began.
Colossal Cave (also known as Adventure) was one of the first adventure games.
Atari [home computing]? (the 8-bit? era) [the great video game decline]? Nintendo [Game and Watch]? NES [Super Mario Bros]? Game Boy Tetris SNES Doom Sony PlayStation Tomb Raider SEGA PlayStation2? Dreamcast? Xbox Gamecube?
Everything listed on this page has to do with the history of consoles, but we're also using the word video game to apply to those played on computers. Request that someone add something about those!
While the fruit of development in early video games appeared mainly (for the consumer) in video arcades and home consoles, the rapidly evolving home computers of the early 1970s and 80s allowed their owners to program extremely simple games. Soon many of these games (often clones of popular arcade games) were being distributed through a variety of channels, included the physical mailing and selling of floppy disks and tapes, and the inclusion of the game's source code in magazines and newsletters, which allowed users to type in the code for themselves.
Soon a small cottage industry was formed, with amateur coders selling disks in plastic bags sent through the mail.
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