The History of Video Games

Video games have been around since the early 1970s. The first commercial arcade video game, Computer Space by Nutting Associates, was introduced in 1971. In 1972, Atari introduced Pong to the arcades. An interesting item to note is that Atari was formed by Nolan Bushnell, the man who developed Computer Space. He left Nutting Associates to found Atari, which then produced Pong, the first truly successful commercial arcade video game.

Pong was a great hit when it came out. Move your cursor to get the slides to bounce back the moving square -- it will speed up as you progress.

That same year, Magnavox offered the first home video game system. Dubbed the Odyssey, it did not even have a microprocessor! The core of the system was a board with about four-dozen transistors anddiodes. The Odyssey was very limited -- it could only produce very simple graphics, and required that custom plastic overlays be taped over the television screen. In 1975, Atari introduced a home version of its popular arcade game, Pong. The original home version of Pong was sold exclusively through Sears, and even carried the Sears logo. Pong was a phenomenal success, opening the door to the future of home video games.

Although the Fairchild Channel F, released in 1976, was the first true removable game system, Atari once again had the first such system to be a commercial success. Introduced in 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), the 2600 used removable cartridges, allowing a multitude of games to be played using the same hardware.

The hardware in the 2600 was quite sophisticated at the time, although it seems incredibly simple now. It consisted of:

• MOS 6502 microprocessor
• Stella, a custom graphics chip that controlled the synchronization to the TV and all other video processing tasks
• 128 bytes of RAM
• 4-kilobyte ROM-based game cartridges