History of videogames: the first videogame created?

As an avid retro player, for quite some time I have been particularly interested in the history of video games. To be more specific, a topic that I love is "What was the first video game that was made?" … Then, I began an exhaustive investigation on this subject (and making this article the first of a series of articles that will cover in detail the entire videogame history).

The question was: What was the first video game that was made?

The answer: Well, like many things in life, there is no easy answer to that question. It depends on your own definition of the term "video game." For example: when you talk about the "first video game", do you mean the first commercially created video game, or the first console game, or perhaps the first digitally programmed game? Because of this, I made a list of 4-5 video games that in one way or another were the beginners of the video game industry. You will notice that the first video games were not created with the idea of ​​obtaining any benefit from them (in those decades there was no Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Atari or any other video game company). In fact, the only idea of ​​a "video game" or an electronic device that was only made to "play and have fun" was above the imagination of more than 99% of the population in those days. But thanks to this small group of geniuses who took the first steps in the videogame revolution, today we can enjoy many hours of fun and entertainment (leaving aside the creation of millions of jobs over the past 4 or 5 decades). Without further ado, here I present the "first video game nominees":

1940s: entertainment device with cathode ray tube

This is considered (with official documentation) as the first electronic game device ever created. It was created by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. The game was assembled in the 1940s and submitted for a US patent. UU. In January 1947. The patent was granted in December 1948, which also makes it the first electronic gaming device to receive a patent (US Patent As described in the patent, it was an analog circuit device with a series of buttons used to move a point that appeared on the screen of the cathode ray tube.This game was inspired by how the missiles appeared on the radars of World War II, and the objective of the game was simply to control a "missile "to achieve a goal. In the 1940s it was extremely difficult (if not impossible) to display graphics on a cathode ray tube screen. Because of this, only the actual" missile "appeared on the screen. The target and any another graphic was displayed on screen overlays placed manually on the screen, many say that Atari's famous "Missile Command" video game was created after this gaming device.

1951: NIMROD

NIMROD was the name of a digital computer device from the 50s. The creators of this computer were the engineers of a company based in the United Kingdom under the name of Ferranti, with the idea of ​​showing the device at the Festival of Great Britain of 1951 (and later also showed in Berlin).

NIM is a numerical strategy game for two players, believed to be originally from ancient China. The NIM rules are easy: there are a certain number of groups (or "piles"), and each group contains a certain number of objects (a common initial matrix of NIM is 3 piles containing 3, 4 and 5 objects respectively). Each player takes turns to remove items from the piles, but all deleted items must be from a single pile and at least one item is removed. The player who takes the last object of the last pile loses, however, there is a variation of the game where the player who takes the last object of the last pile wins.

NIMROD used a panel of lights as a screen and was planned and made for the sole purpose of playing the NIM game, which makes it the first digital computer device created specifically to play a game (however, the main idea was to show and illustrate how a digital computer works, instead of entertaining and having fun with it). Because it does not have "raster video equipment" as a screen (a television, monitor, etc.) many people do not consider it as a real "video game" (an electronic game, yes … a video game, No …) . But once again, it really depends on your point of view when you talk about a "video game."

1952: OXO ("Zeros and Crosses")

This was a digital version of "Tic-Tac-Toe", created for an EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) computer. It was designed by Alexander S. Douglas of the University of Cambridge, and once again was not made for entertainment, it was part of his doctoral thesis on "Interactions between humans and computers."

The rules of the game are those of a normal Tic-Tac-Toe game, player against the computer (there was no option for 2 players available). The input method was a rotary dial (like those of old phones). The output was shown on a 35×16 pixel cathode ray tube screen. This game was never very popular because the EDSAC computer was only available at the University of Cambridge, so there was no way to install and play it anywhere else (until many years later, when an available EDSAC emulator was created, and by then many other excellent video games where available too …).

1958: Tennis for two

"Tennis for Two" was created by William Higinbotham, a physicist who works at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. This game was created as a form of entertainment, so laboratory visitors had something fun to do during their wait on "visitor's day" (finally! … a video game that was created "just for fun" …) The game was quite well designed for its time: the behavior of the ball was modified by several factors such as gravity, wind speed, position and contact angle, etc. You had to avoid the net like in real tennis, and many other things. The video game hardware included two "joysticks" (two controllers with a rotary knob and one button each) connected to an analog console and an oscilloscope as a screen.

"Tennis for Two" is considered by many to be the first video game created. But once again, many others differ from that idea that says "it was a computer game, not a video game" or "the output screen was an oscilloscope, not a raster video screen … so no qualifies as a video game. " But hey … you can't please everyone …

It is also rumored that "Tennis for Two" was the inspiration for Atari's mega hit "Pong", but this rumor has always been strongly denied … for obvious reasons.

1961: Space war!

"Space war!" The video game was created by Stephen Russell, with the help of J. Martin Graetz, Peter Samson, Alan Kotok, Wayne Witanen and Dan Edwards of MIT. In the 1960s, MIT was "the right choice" if you wanted to do computer research and development. So this half-dozen innovative people took advantage of the fact that a new computer was ordered and expected to arrive on campus very soon (a DEC PDP-1) and began to think about what kind of hardware testing programs would be carried out. When they discovered that a "Precision CRT Screen" would be installed in the system, they instantly decided that "some kind of visual / interactive game" would be the demo software chosen for the PDP-1. And after some discussions, it was soon decided to be a space battle game or something similar. After this decision, all other ideas came out quite quickly: such as the rules of the game, concept design, programming ideas, etc.

Then, after about 200 men / hours of work, the first version of the game was ready to be tested. The game consisted of two spaceships (affectionately called by the players "pencil" and "wedge") firing missiles at each other with a star in the center of the screen (which "pulls" both ships due to their gravitational force). A set of control switches was used to control each spacecraft (for rotation, speed, missiles and "hyperspace"). Each spacecraft has a limited amount of fuel and weapons, and the hyperspace option was like a "panic button", in case there is no other way out (it could "save you or break you").

The computer game was an instant success among MIT students and programmers, and they soon began making their own changes to the game program (such as real star cards for the background, star / non-star option, deactivation option background, angular momentum option, among others). The game code was transferred to many other computer platforms (since the game required a video screen, a hard-to-find option in the 1960s systems, it was mainly transferred to newer and cheaper DEC systems such as the PDP -10 and PDP-11).

Space war! Not only is it considered by many to be the first "real" video game (since this game has a video screen), but it has also been proven to be the true predecessor of the original arcade, as well as being the inspiration of many other video games, consoles and even video game companies (can you say "Atari"? …). But that's another story, arcade games and console video games were written on a different page from the history of video games (so stay tuned for future articles on these topics).

So here they are, the "First Video Game" nominees. What do you think is the first video game ever created? … If you ask me, I think all these games were revolutionary for their time, and should be credited as a whole as the beginners of the videogame revolution. Instead of looking for the first video game, the really important thing is that they were created, period. As the creator of "Spacewar!" Stephen Rusell once said: "If I had not done so, someone would have done something equally exciting or even better in the next six months. I just arrived first." .

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