The Advancement of Video Games

By: Curtis

The very first video game arcade machine that we are taught in school was pong. But did you know that pong actually derived from a machine that Willy Higinbotham created in 1958 that was made to resemble a tennis match? Video games are actually quite recent and is still advancing its scopes even to this day. The conceptualization of video games began in 1940, even though it wasn’t much of a video per se, but it was the first time you could play against something and not someone.

In 1962, the very first computer based game was created by an MIT student - Spacewar. Have you ever thought about how your Xbox, your Playstation or maybe even your Nintendo 64 came to be? In 1972, the very first in home system Odyssey was released to the public. Odyssey was based on Ralph Baer’s interactive television game that was patented four years before Odyssey. The same year, the arcade game pong was created and it became what we know as the very first arcade game.

As time moved on, technology advanced and people came up with different ideas to attract more people into playing their games. In 1977, Atari released Video Computer System that is more similar to the gaming systems that we know of today. Arcade games became popular with the release of Space Invaders. The point of the game was to destroy all alien space invaders before they get below the bottom of the screen. The game caused such an uproar that it seemed as though people were throwing quarters at the aliens in order to stop them from invading Earth. With the arcades becoming a place for people to visit, inventors started to think of more ways for people to throw their quarters at.

In 1980, Pac-man was created into a Video Computer System that became the very first on demand game in the arcades that were available to play at home. Donkey Kong came out in 1981 and people became obsessed with the game. The main character, Jumpman, later became widely known as Mario.

Of course, as the video game evolved closer and closer to reality, concerns about the violence has risen. Mortal Kombat prompted America’s senate to have a hearing for violence in the virtual world - that was how the games rating system came to be. Of course, in my opinion, the rating system is just a thing for parents nowadays. The people manning the video game section do not seem to check for ID’s. Whenever I am playing Call of Duty, there would always be some 12 year old screaming at me through chat. Maybe back when the rating system first came out did the stores that sold video games care about how old a person is. Playstation was released in 1995 and became a threat to Sega, which created Sonic. Sega was then forced out of the home console business in 2000 due to the release of Playstation 2.

My very first gaming console was an Xbox, Microsoft released Xbox and entered the home console business in 2001 and is still in the market with the different versions of Xbox. Video games have evolved from simple machines to sophisticated ones. Even now, companies are trying to take video game to a whole new level - virtual reality.

Work Cited

"Video Game History Timeline." The Strong. N.p., 24 Mar. 2016. Web. 02 Oct. 2016.