History of video games

The video games developed by more technical experiments at universities in the 1950s to one of the most influential recreational forms of the 21st century.

The beginnings

In 1946 the first computer game for a vacuum-tube computer by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann was developed and filed January 25, 1947 for a patent. The patent was granted on December 14, 1948 1951 was presented with the help of a NIMROD computer the mathematical Nim game.; In 1952 there was the Tic -Tac- Toe game OXO.

The 1958 by American physicist William Higinbotham designed Tennis for Two at Brookhaven National Laboratory, consisting of an analog computer and an oscilloscope, is usually regarded as the first video game.

The further development was strongly dependent on the technical development of computer technology. So the first, graphically quite simple computer games developed on mainframe computers at American universities and thus remained only a small number of students and academics reserved, such as Spacewar! of 1962 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The 1970s

Early 1970s developed from the existing mass-produced and therefore relatively inexpensive television technology electronic slot machines that were also coin-operated open to the public for the first time. Therefore, the term video game. The first successful game was Pong, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. This saw the game at a trade show presentation at the game inventor Ralph Baer and developed it further. The machines we met different than today less in arcades, but - also accessible to children - in entrances of supermarkets, cinemas, kiosks, chip shops, canteens and other public places. A game for a marrow was normal.

Throughout the 1970s, video games developed rapidly and were, for example, from companies such as Atari or Magnavox attractive for home users in the form of video game consoles; by the public arcades gradually lost its supremacy in the field of video games. With the implementation of the highly successful arcade game Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 came in 1979 a breakthrough for the home consoles, which rapidly developed into a mass product.

The 1980s

The introduction of home and personal computer (PC) for the time being developed two technically separate from each other kinds of video game: The game console (then also " video game " ) based on specific game consoles and the computer game. Here, computer games were initially programmed mainly for home computers like C64. The designed primarily for serious applications PCs with monochrome graphics and piepsigem speaker sound were to play first rather unsuitable. Only through improvements such as 16-color EGA graphics from 1984 and sound cards (eg SoundBlaster 1989) of the PC gradually became a competition for home computers and consoles.

In 1983 it came to the Video Game Crash: In North America, the market for game modules broke almost completely together. While the video game industry had achieved 1982 sales of $ 3 billion, that number went in 1983 to $ 100 million back. Reasons were:

• Flooding of the market by a large number of bad games (especially for the Atari 2600)
• Unrealistic profit expectations of most small manufacturing companies
• Superiority of the home computers of technology and applications
• Increasingly lower price difference between console and home computer
• Light copyability of computer games (see: Software piracy) on cassettes and floppy disks, leading to higher appeal against the non-copyable for private modules of video games (copy here was a competitive disadvantage, not an advantage, as is sometimes assumed - but of course the difference between console and software manufacturer must be mentioned. )

From Japan, where home computers were not as popular, and was therefore less affected by the crash, a new impetus was for the video game industry: There was Nintendo's 1983 published 8- bit console " Famicom " after some initial difficulties to a great success. When Nintendo Entertainment System ( NES ) was modified for the Western market, Nintendo has tested the interest of American consumers during the Christmas season 1985. 50,000 consoles were sold limited to the city of New York. Then the NES in 1986 in all of North America and in 1987 was introduced in Europe. But not until the release of Super Mario Bros. (Japan, 1985, North America 1986), which exceeded all previously released video games at length and complexity, sparked a veritable " Nintendo Mania " from: Sales increased and began a new era of video games.

The origins of most games genres are in this time period. Role-playing games, racing games, Jump ' n' runs, beat ' em ups, Adventures and many more game categories have been developed at this time.

1989 came with the Game Boy and Atari Lynx first two handheld consoles on the market. The devices built a small, in the case of the Lynx even color LCD and controls with the rest of the electronics in one handy device.

The 1990s

In Europe, there was a breakthrough of the so-called 16- bit consoles Super Nintendo Entertainment System ( SNES) and Sega Mega Drive in the first half of the 1990s. These game consoles have been extremely successful worldwide. They offered players a better graphics and better sound than the consoles and computer games in the 1980s. Furthermore, came another " handheld " console on the market - the Sega Game Gear.

Since the mid- 1990s the two video game areas for game consoles and PCs for marketing reasons are merged to become once again. So were unified storage media (such as CD -ROM) and a compatible hardware the ability to develop games for both consoles and PCs various parallel and thus more cost-effective and for a broader mass market.

The most important innovation in the console market was the change from 2D to 3D graphics mid-90s using the PlayStation, the Sega Saturn and later published Nintendo 64 Although the previous consoles could also begin to represent 3D graphics, but this only by using special graphics chips that were integrated into the modules. For the PC first appeared 3D accelerator cards with which you could play 3D games for the PC. Although there were already less complex 3D graphics (eg Doom, Duke Nukem 3D), which were calculated by the CPU, but could not and the CPU can calculate relatively simple 3D graphics in real time. The 3D support for graphics cards later became indispensable. Later generations of graphics cards had both 2D and 3D support tightly integrated.

It came first networkable game for the PC in the trade. This resulted in new ways to play that were previously only partially possible. Multiplayer games were mostly on two players, usually limited in the Nintendo 64 on four players. On a PC you could now include far depending on option on 10 players in a game. First of strategy and role-playing games with network and online capability appeared.

The end of 1998 the introduction of the new generation of consoles was held with the Sega Dreamcast. Later, the PlayStation 2, GameCube and the Xbox followed. The Dreamcast Sega did not live with only 10 million units sold, the end of this console generation: Financially barely escaped the total bankruptcy, management decided by Sega, get out of the hardware business and changed from a console manufacturer to a pure software maker to.

The 2000s

Was widely spread first the PlayStation 2, which is backwards compatible with its predecessor. Far behind were the other consoles of the sixth generation.

The 7th generation opened in 2005 with the Microsoft Xbox 360 in 2006 was followed by the Nintendo Wii and the PlayStation 3 from Sony. The devices are very different, for example in the hardware design and the storage media and were addressed to different target groups. Commercial success was only the cheaper Wii that has a controller with motion sensors. The other two consoles have 256 instead of 128-bit processing power, and a graphics resolution in the HDTV standard, and optionally a hard drive and the ability to favorite DVD movies and Blu -ray discs play.

For handhelds, the Nintendo DS (2004/2005) offered the first extra screen also as a touch screen, a microphone for inputting and online capabilities. With the DSi, the Nintendo handheld in 2009 experienced a hardware update. The latest version also features two cameras and an SD card slot. The successor to the Nintendo DS was presented at the recent E3 trade show, Nintendo 3DS, which can produce a 3D effect without 3D glasses. Success was particularly the PlayStation Portable with the first optical media. The major platforms were / are:

• Sony PlayStation 2 (2000) 6th-generation, 128-bit
• Nintendo GameCube ( 2001, 2002 in Europe ), 128 bit
• Microsoft Xbox ( 2001, 2002 in Europe ), 32 bits

• Microsoft Xbox 360 (2005), 7th generation, 256-bit
• Nintendo Wii (2006 ), 128 bit
• Sony PlayStation 3 ( 2006, 2007 in Europe), 256 bit

The 2010s

• Nintendo 3DS (2011 in Europe)
• Sony Playstation Vita (2012 in Europe), 8th generation handheld
• Sony Playstation 4 ( November 2013 ), the 8th generation
• Nintendo Wii U (2012 ) HD console
• Mobile platforms such as Android and Apple iOS
• Microsoft Xbox One ( 2013)

Successful video game series

Following the best-selling video game series:

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