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Video games have been a part of our daily lives for decades now. Many of us have never known a time when they didn’t exist and somewhat take that for granted without digging into their history, but who invented video games?
What was the first video game? These are questions too few of us seem to ask. The evolution of gaming is very well documented, letting us easily map out an entire history of video games’ timeline to answer these burning questions.
Join us as we answer your biggest questions about our favorite medium, from who invented the first video game to a complete history of video game consoles.
Key Takeaways
- ?The first video game can be traced back to the early 1950s.
- ?Video game consoles began with the Magnavox Odyssey.
- ?We are currently in the ninth generation in the video game timeline.
- ?Nintendo consoles didn’t show up until the third generation.
- ?A.S. Douglas invented the first video game, but Ralph Baer is often credited with being the father of video games.
Who Invented the First Video Game?
In 1952, a British professor named A.S. Douglas made a rudimentary game he called OXO. This was a rudimentary recreation of the classic pen-and-paper game tic-tac-toe translated onto the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator computer. This primitive machine was one of the first that allowed users to write their own programs that the computer would read and display on a basic screen.
OXO was Douglas’ thesis project at Cambridge and was sadly deleted after its demonstration.
The average person will probably point to a game like Pong when asked what the first video game was, but that game is actually a few decades older than the first game we can consider a video game as we understand it.
A more common answer to who invented video games would be William Higinbotham, the creator of Tennis for Two at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. This game was a basic simulation of tennis, much like Pong would be later, that used repurposed oscilloscopes as controllers.
The reason some might consider this the real first video game is the fact that it was made open to the public to play in 1958 and 1959, while OXO was never playable outside of a select few at Cambridge.
The First Video Game Console
It is only when we reach the dawn of consoles does video game history begins to look like something we can recognize as video games.
The first video game console was called the Magnavox Odyssey, released in 1972. It was originally prototyped as early as 1967 by Ralph Baer, who wanted to create a system multiple people could use to play a variety of games in their homes. Granted, these different games were simply plastic overlays you placed on your TV screen and different written rules players would follow. At that time, arcades were still niche, and each machine was dedicated to a single game.
The Odyssey’s controllers were blocky and meant to be placed on a table while in use. They had one reset button on top, as well as three knobs; one on the right and two on the left. These knobs allowed players to move and manipulate individual squares on the screen.
Games were played by placing a plastic overlay on the screen to create scenarios, such as a maze in which one player chased the other’s block, called Cat and Mouse. Due to the limited span of color TVs at the time, the system’s graphics were purely black and white, and the package included color overlays you had to physically stick to your television.
The Magnavox Odyssey never caught on, in large part because most people did not understand the concept of controlling an image on their TV screens. This system only had 28 games released for it, including Brain Wave, Dogfight, Invasion, and Shootout. However, a tennis simulation game on the system would go on to inspire the arcade hit Pong in 1972.
It would be another five years before another home console came out, but the Magnavox Odyssey set the standard that other systems would build on and remains one of the most important pieces of video game history.
History of Video Game Consoles
The Magnavox Odyssey may have been the first video game console, but it is far from the only historically significant one.
The Odyssey isn’t a name most people recognize anymore (unless you’re talking about the latest 3D Mario game) but it paved the way for some of the most iconic and long-running brands in gaming.
But there is one other oft forgotten console that played a pivotal role in the history of game consoles: the Fairchild Channel F released in 1976. This was the first console to utilize programmable ROM cartridges that gave players the ability to change games on a single system.
Following its arcade hits, Atari consoles were the first to achieve mainstream success. It began in 1975 with its stand-alone Pong system (which spawned a litany of Pong consoles), which was successful enough for it to develop the Atari 2600 in 1977.
The Atari 2600 was a revolution for not only having interchangeable cartridges that let players access multiple games on the same hardware at home, just like the Fairchild, but with much greater variety and quality. This is also where the classic joystick and button controller first appeared outside of arcades.
There were a handful of other consoles at the time, but none as important as when the first Nintendo consoles arrived and brought the entire gaming industry back to life after the infamous crash in the ’80s. While Atari did once again try to reclaim its spot as one of the pillars of the gaming industry (despite being the cause of the crash in the first place), it was at this point Sega consoles, and later PlayStation and Xbox, would come in and replace all the consoles from the first two generations.
Console Generations
We already answered what the first video game console was, but there’s a lot more to cover if you want a full breakdown of video game consoles from their origins to the present day.
Console generations are an easy way to distinguish between major jumps in video game history. While they don’t line up perfectly, since older consoles often get supported after new ones come out, and not all systems release in the same timeframe, there are generally agreed-upon official generations we can look to.
Because we could spend thousands of words on each individual console and its impact on the industry, let’s instead break them down into generations, from the first all the way up to the current ninth generation. We haven’t included absolutely everything from the early days (due to the sheer abundance of hardware) but only the most notable examples from the time.
Video Game Console Generations in Order
The exact dates of gaming console generations have been debated. However, we’ve listed the systems based on the times they were released, most popular, and then discontinued. Some machines lived longer than others, and many generations overlapped, such as what we’re seeing in the present, with the eighth and ninth generations in tandem.
The Bottom Line
Video game history is a rich and complex tale we could spend hours discussing. While questions like who invented video games and what the first video game console was have fairly easy answers, many common questions are a bit more complicated.
However, knowing as much about the history of video game consoles and software can make you appreciate just how far the medium has come. Where games were once incredibly basic simulations running on computers the size of entire rooms that only select scientists and professors had access to, we can now enjoy bleeding-edge gameplay and graphics in a neat little box under our TVs.
While we’re currently in the ninth generation of consoles now, we don’t see any signs of this medium ending any time soon. From the looks of it, things are only going to continue evolving in new and exciting ways that we can’t wait to experience first-hand.
