Early+Video+Games

Video Games were introduced into the commerical entertainment in 1971, but they started long before that. One of the first video games was an interactive electronic game was created by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mannon a cathode ray tube in 1947. The game was a missile simulator inspired by radar displays from World War II. It used analog circuitry, not digital, to control the CRT beam and position a dot on the screen. Screen overlays were used for targets since graphics could not be drawn at the time.

In 1961, a group of students at MIT, including Steve Russell, programmed a game titled Spacewar! on the DEC PDP-1, a new computer at the time. The game pitted two human players against each other, each controlling a spacecraft capable of firing missiles, while a black hole in the center of the screen created a large hazard for the crafts. The game was eventually distributed with new DEC computers and traded throughout the then-primitive internet. Spacewar! is credited as the first widely available and influential computer game.

Atari was founded in 1972. The first arcade video game with widespread success was Atari's PONG, released the same year. The game is loosely based on table tennis: a ball is "served" from the center 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. Atari sold 19,000 PONG machines, creating many imitators.

The arcade game industry entered its Golden Age in 1978 with the release of Space Invaders by Taito, a success that inspired dozens of manufacturers to enter the market. In the same year, Atari released Asteroids. Color arcade games became more popular in 1979 and 1980 with the arrival of titles such as Pac-Man. The Golden Age saw a prevalence of arcade machines in malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants and convenience stores.

While the development of early video games appeared mainly in video arcades and home consoles, the rapidly evolving home computers of the 1970s and 80s allowed their owners to program simple games. Hobbyist groups for the new computers soon formed and game software followed.

The Golden Age of Arcade Games reached its full steam in the 1980s, with many technically innovative and genre-defining games in the first few years of the decade. Defender established the scrolling shooter and was the first to have events taking place outside the player’s view, displayed by a radar view showing a map of the whole playfield. Battlezone used wireframe vector graphics to create the first true three-dimensional game world. 3D Monster Maze was the first 3D game for a home computer, while Dungeons of Daggorath added various weapons and monsters, sophisticated sound effects, and a "heartbeat" health monitor. Pole Position used sprite-based, pseudo-3D graphics when it pioneered the "rear-view racer format" where the player’s view is behind and above the vehicle, looking forward along the road with the horizon in sight. The style would remain in wide use even after true 3D graphics became standard for racing games. Pac-Man was the first game to achieve widespread popularity in mainstream culture and the first game character to be popular in his own right. Dragon's Lair was the first laserdisc game, and introduced full-motion video to video games. Journey Escape, a videogame developed by Data Age for the Atari 2600 console, and released in 1982, stars the rock band Journey, one of the world's most popular acts at the time, and is based on their album of the same name.

1992 saw the release of real-time strategygame Dune II. It was by no means the first in the genre, but it set the standard game mechanics for later blockbuster RTS games such as Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Command & Conquer, and StarCraft. The RTS is characterized by an overhead view, a "mini-map", and the control of both the economic and military aspects of an army. The rivalry between the two styles of RTS play—Warcraft style, which used GUIs accessed once a building was selected, and C&C style, which allowed construction of any unit from within a permanently visible menu—continued into the start of the next millennium.

Alone in the Dark while not the first survival horror game, planted the seeds of what would become known as the survival horror genre of today. It established the formula that would later flourish on CD-ROM based consoles, with games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

When you look back then how video game changed, it is pretty amazing. the video game industry is now a $10 Billion industry and still growing. It is creating competition with the film industry. The many features now that are in video games are an amazing feat compared to the first games. ->>