History of Video Games

1
History of Video Games

• CS481/CS681
• Fall 2007

2
Summary

• 1931 Pinball machine
• 1971, first commercial game introduced
• 2 game market crashes
• 10,000,000,000 industry
• Seven generations of hardware
• Whats the future?

3
Pinball

• Bally Manufacturing
• Williams Manufacturing
• Midway Games
• Created the production, distribution, and
  consumer channels used by video game industry

4
Japan (Pre-history)

• Early coin operated companies established by
  foreigners
• Taito, (Sega Rosen Enterprises Sega
  Enterprises)
• 1966 Periscope
• Imported to the US and Europe, expensive
• Set the 25 cent price for coin operated machines
• Meanwhile, back in the US ... computers rising

5
Electronic / Computer games (Prehistory)

• 1948 Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device patent
  for electronic game. Vacuum tubes controlled
  missiles firing at a target
• 1951 Transistors replacing vacuum tubes at
  university computers. Students want games.
• Checkers (1951)
• TTT (1952)
• Nimrod played Nim (UK)

6
Birth

• Spacewar, 1962, MIT students wanted to test the
  capabilities of their new DEC PDP-1
• Gravity, warp
• Widely distributed by DEC
• Other games were not distributed (no internet)

7
Commercialization

• 1971 Galaxy Game
• Clone of Spacewar
• Stanford, 10 cents in student union
• Ran until 1979
• Bushnell, Dabney created custom arcade hardware
  for Spacewar clone - failure...
• June 27, 1972 Bushnell/Dabney found Atari Inc.
  ... meanwhile...

8
Games on Television Screens (Consoles)

• Ralph Baer
• 1967 chase game
• Light gun -gt shooting, paddles -gt tennis
• Prototype played multiple games
• No sound, overlays
• 3 dials for vertical, horizontal, and spin
• Magnavox bought it, and managed to sell 100K units

9
Pong

• Al Alcorn, Ataris first game engineer
• 1972 Implemented Pong
• Atari tried to get Ballys to manufacture it
• Machine malfunctioned during demo because it was
  too full of coins!
• Atari decided to forget Ballys and go into
  manufacturing!
• Many Pong clones competed

10
70s Creativity, new game genres

• 1974, Tank designed by Steve Bristow
• 1973, Gotcha, pursuit
• 1974, Gran Trak 10, Driving/Racing
• 1976, Night Driver, sit down cabinet
• 1975 Breakout, SP Pong
• 1976 Death Race

11
Golden Age of arcade games (2)

• 1978Space Invaders, (Taito) high score, no name
• 1979, Star Fire, (Exidy), initials
• 1979, Atari Football, smooth scrolling scree,
  trackball controller
• Many Companies entered the business
• Konami, Namco, Irem, SNK, Technos Japan.
• Galaga, Defender, Scramble, Moon patrol

12
Maze Games Pac-Man

• 1980, Namco, Originally Puck-man but changed name
  before releasing in the US.
• Best selling arcade game up to that point
• First identifiable video character
• Cover of Time
• 1981, MIT students enhancement kits for pac-man
  ended up producing Ms. Pac-Man (4 mazes)
• 1982, Namco, Pole Position, Racing, POV

13
Platform Games

• 1981, Donkey Kong, Nintendo
• 1982, Donkey Kong Junior introduced Mario
• 1983 Elevator Action

14
Tech

• 1972 handheld TTT
• 1976 game cartridges
• 1977 Joystick
• Vector graphics
• 1979 Asteroids, others (but died after 1983 and
  raster)
• Laserdisc
• 1983 Dragons Lair, animated sequences,
  interactive movie

15
80s

• 1982 EA born
• PCs, game source code printed in magazines
• Commodore 64
• 1983, Snipes, first networked commerical
  text-mode game
• Maze War (university research game)
• Spasim (3d multiplayer space sim), precursor to
  Doom and Quake
• Handheld LCD console

16
Crash of 1983

• Too many companies, too many bad games
• So many ET the Extra Terrestrial game cartridges
  were left over that they had to be buried in a
  big hole in NM!
• Lasted One Year!

17
Video game consoles (3)

• Nintendo, NES (Famicon), Super Mario Brothers
• Gamepad
• 8 direction D pad with 2 or more action buttons
• 1986 Dragon Quest precursor to RPG
• 1987 Final Fantasy, Role playing game
• 1986 Legend of Zelda
• 1988 Nintendo Power Magazine

18
90s (4)

• Rising to match Hollywood
• 3D graphics, sound cards, CDs, fast PCs
• Internet based distribution, shareware,
• 1992 RTS games, Dune II set the std.
• Warcraft, CC, StarCraft
• 1993 Myst, and adventure puzzle game
• Sim games Sim city, SimEarth,...The Sims (2000)
• Mods, Counterstrike, Half Life mod

19
Internet Gaming

• Multi-User Dungeons
• 1996 Quake, FPS
• MMORPGS Ultima Online, Everquest
• Persistent worlds, large numbers of players
• Java/Flash back to simple games
• Decline of arcades, rise of home consoles, PCs

20
4, 5, 6, 7 generations

• Sega Genesis, Super NES
• Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64
• DDR
• Sega Dreamcast, Playstation2, Game Cube, Xbox
• Sims, Halo, GTA, Halo 2, GTA San Andreas, Guitar
  Hero
• PSP, PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS
• Spore Demo

21
Future

• Where is it heading?
• Graphics
• Physics
• AI
• Immersion, Realism, ...
• Holodeck