Gaming Timeline

1950s

1952

• Alexander (Sandy) Douglas a PhD student at Cambridge University produces the world's first computer game - a version of noughts and crosses (Tic-Tac-Toe) to run on the EDSAC.

1958

• At the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York Willy Higinbotham created "the tennis program" a game played on an oscilloscope connected to an analogue computer.

1960s

1961

• Spacewar - The first CRT display was a converted oscilloscope used to play SpaceWar.The first trackball (and thus, the first mouse) was a SpaceWar control at MIT. It is said that Ken Thompson salvaged a PDP-1 and created a new operating system, now called UNIX, so that he could play SpaceWar.

1966

• Periscope, designed by founder David Rosen, was a behemoth. It used chains to drive cardboard ships. The object was to spot the ships with your periscope, press a button, and hit them with your torpedoes. The torpedoes were actually beams of light. The game proved successful because of a realistic periscope interface and the best sound effects for a machine of that time. The game took Japanese game parlors and train stations by storm. Its fame quickly spread to arcade owners in Europe and the USA. Pretty soon Sega, previous an importer of arcade games, was in the game exporting business.

1970s

1972

• Magnavox Odyssey - Odyssey＊s cartridges contain no components: they are basically wirejumper sets. When plugging a cartridge into the console, internal diode logic circuits are interconnected in different ways to produce the desired result. As a matter of fact, the Odyssey contains everything to make a game based around a ball, one or two paddles representing the players, and a central or off-side vertical line which serves as a net or a wall. The cartridges act to connect some the machine＊s diode logic circuitry to set the aspect and the position of the vertical line (normally centered for ping pong and tennis but located on the left or on the middle for handball and volleyball respectively, or not displayed at all for Chase games and gun games), and to determine the interaction between the ball and the other graphic objects: bounce or erase either a player or a ball spot when there is a collision with a player or the central line (a player could even be erased after a collision with the ball). During the winter of ＊72 每 ＊73 Ralph Baer designed several advanced cartridges equipped with some additional acvtive components so as to add some more realistic features to the Odyssey. Unfortunately, Magnavox chose not to go along with these new ideas. Recently, Ralph rebuilt two active cartridges. One plays Tennis with sound effects, the other is a form of Squash with sound and an active wall which moves from left to right, thus increasing the game difficulty.

1976

• Atari＊s PONG - Atari released its own version of PONG in 1976. The system had an important feature that most others didn't have in 1975: the use of a single chip that provided games with digital on-screen scoring and attractive sound. As a matter of fact, other systems were still using analog or digital circuits using discrete components. Digial on-screen scoring would have required more components in the circuits, hence an increase of the retail price. Because Atari designed a special PONG chip, the system could sell at normal price with advanced features.
• Fairchild Channel F - The Channel F was a new console which would feature plug in cartridges that would contain ROM chips with actual microprocessor code rather than dedicated circuits (which were used in the original Odyssey game system). Instead of a short shelf life common to pong systems, the console could now be continuously renewed with the simple plugging in of a game cartridge. And with the possibility of new game cartridges released at any time, the lifetime of the console seemed very attractive to Fairchild. The Channel F was designed around Fairchild's own F8 microprocessor (which was actually a CPU and several support processors that all together are called the "F8").

1977

• Atari VCS 2600 - The VCS, unlike most other home videogames of the time, had a CPU and enabled users to play different games simply by sticking in another cartridge. The actual game was stored on the cartridge's ROM, not in the system itself. This meant the VCS was able to play an unlimited number of different games, unlike the limited Pong-style consoles.
• First handheld game - Under the Mattel Electronics brand name, Mattel Toys introduced the world's first handheld electronic game called Football, and was sold through the Sears line of hypermarkets.

1978

• Launch of Intel 8088 processor - The Intel 8088 is an Intel microprocessor based on the 8086, with 16-bit registers and an 8-bit external data bus. It can address up to 1 MB of memory. The 8088 was introduced on July 1, 1979, and was used in the original IBM PC. The 8088 was targeted at economical systems by allowing the use of 8-bit designs. Large bus width circuit boards were still fairly expensive when it was released. The prefetch queue of the 8088 is 4 bytes, as opposed to the 8086's 6 bytes. The descendants of the 8088 include the 80188, 80186, 80286, 80386, and 80486 microprocessors.

• Space Invaders was launched - Space Invaders is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado in 1978. It was originally manufactured by Taito and licensed for production in the U.S. by the Midway division of Bally. Released initially in its native Japan in 1978, it ranks as one of the most influential video games ever created. Though simplistic by today's standards, it was one of the forerunners of modern video gaming.

1980s

1980

• Intellivision launched - Armed with twelve games, better graphics and sound than its competitors, and the promise to release a compatible keyboard that would turn the system into a home computer ("Play games and balance your checkbook!"), Mattel set its sights on taking down the "invincible" Atari 2600. They got off to a good start, selling out the first production run of 200,000 Intellivision units quickly.
• Battlezone launched - BattleZone is an intense arena-based vehicular combat game set in a world of professional motorsport - the sport where man and machine merge to survive in the most competitive and dangerous arenas on the planet. The developers used brilliant software code and innovative circuitry to create a high tech look. But some low-technology tricks were used as well. For example, a simple band of red cellophane was applied to the inside of the Battlezone screen. Placed across the top of the screen, the result was red colors for the radar and warning messages, even though Battlezone didn't have a two-color display. A game takes on a life of its own, Rotberg said: "Most games rarely turn out exactly the way that you plan them. Every time that you play the game, you try to amplify those things that are fun, and you try to pare away those things that are annoying and really not enjoyable. It is kind of like a story that grows in the telling."
• Pac-Man launched! - Pac-Man is the best-selling coin-operated game in history. Namco estimates that the original Pac-Man arcade title has been played more than ten billion times in its 20-year history. Namco's total Pac-Man revenues have reached $100 million.
• IBM PC - The IBM PC model 5150 was announced at a press conference in New York on August 12, 1981 and became available for purchase in early Fall 1981. This is the computer that as manufactured by IBM and in clone form became the de facto standard for business use for the remainder of the decade and beyond. The base model retailed for $2880 and included 64 kilobytes of RAM and a single-sided 160K 5.25" floppy drive. Adding a hard drive or increasing the memory could drive the price up considerably. The IBM PC was powered by a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor.

1982

• Colecovision - Coleco releases the Colecovision, a cartridge-based game console buoyed not only by superior graphics and sound, but also by support from a growing game company: Nintendo. Nintendo licenses Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior to Coleco, which releases excellent translations for the Colecovision and ports reasonable versions to the Atari VCS and Intellivision. Coleco also releases an adapter that lets VCS cartridges be played on the Colecovision. Realizing that Atari has firm support from Namco, creator of Pac-Man, Coleco involves itself heavily with Sega, Konami, and Universal (Mr. Do!).
• Famicom - The Family Computer or Famicom, released in July, 1983 was Nintendo's first attempt at a home video game system. The Famicom was intentionally made to look like a toy and was released strictly in Japan. The games released first were Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye but by the end of 83 they had enhanced two-player version of Popeye and DK Jr. out as well as a baseball game, Mario Brothers (not Super Mario Bros.), a Go game and an adult title.

1983

• Commodore 64 - Although it looks like an unimpressive keyboard-like box, the C-64 was wildly popular. More C-64's have been sold than any other single computer system, even to this day. That's about 17 million systems, according to the Commodore 1993 Annual Report. In a 1989 interview, Sam Tramiel, then-president of Commodore, said that "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years."

1984

• Video Game Crash - The video game crash of 1983 was the year-long crash of the US video game industry and the bankruptcy of a number of companies producing home computers and video game consoles in North America in late 1983 and early 1984. It brought an end to what is considered the second generation of American console video gaming. The crash was followed by a gap of two years, during which there was no significant development for American video game consoles. That gap ended with the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) (along with its landmark title Super Mario Bros.) which was first introduced in Japan in 1983 (as Famicom) and then in the United States in 1985, and which would become extremely popular by 1987.

1985

• Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo took steps to make the system seem less like a videogame system and more like a computer or a VCR. They called the U.S. version of the Famicom the Nintendo Entertainment System, and designed it to look less like a videogame console and more like something that would fit in with other home entertainment appliances. Nintendo even agreed to buy back all unsold inventory in order to get retailers to take a chance on them.

1986

• Sega Master System - Sega began distributing the $200 Sega Master System in the United States only a few months after the NES had become widely available. But Nintendo had a trump card: Its strict game developer contracts prohibited developers from releasing any NES game on any other console for two years. Because the NES had become the dominant console, a developer had to choose between maximizing its game's sales and gambling on the success of a new console. This contributed to the limited game offerings Sega could muster. Nevertheless, the Master System was cheaper than the NES and became popular in Great Britain, Brazil, and Australia.

1987

• PC Engine - The PC Engine was released by NEC, a Japanese company, in 1987. The PC Engine was a collaborative effort between Japanese software maker Hudson Soft (which maintains a chip-making division) and NEC. Hudson was looking for financial backing for a game console they had designed, and NEC was looking to get into the lucrative game market. The PC Engine was and is a very small video game console, due primarily to a very efficient three-chip architecture and its use of HuCards, credit-card sized data cartridges. It featured an enhanced MOS Technology 65C02 processor and a custom 16-bit graphics processor, as well as a custom video encoder chip, all designed by Hudson.

1988

• Tetris - Tetris (Russian: 妥快找把我扼) is a falling-blocks puzzle video game, released on a large spectrum of platforms. Alexey Pajitnov originally designed and programmed the game in 1984, while working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. Pajitnov has cited pentominoes as a source of inspiration for the game. He derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix "tetra-", as all of the pieces contain four segments, and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.

1989

• Atari Lynx - The Lynx featured 4,096 colours and multiplayer capabilities. Lynx players can link their systems together. The Lynx has an 8-bit processor and a 16-bit graphics chip, displaying the best handheld graphics of the time on a 3.5 inch LCD screen. The Lynx was designed with comfort in mind. Left or right handed players can play with their most comfortable position. The Lynx screen can be displayed upside-down and the joypad be used by the right hand instead of the left.
• Sega Genesis - The Genesis was released in 1989 at a time when Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on home consoles. At that time, Sega had a lot of hits in the arcade such as After Burner and Golden Axe, and part of the appeal of the Genesis was that now these games were not only playable at home but were fairly close to the arcade versions. This system, however, didn't get a lot of publicity until Sonic the Hedgehog debuted in 1991. This game not only gave the Genesis a much needed mascot, but also showed that it could generate some spectacular graphics, animation and sound-- all with incredible speed.
• Nintendo Game Boy released! - The Game Boy (必奈丞示奈奶, G言mu B身i?) is a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo[1], released in 1989 at US$89.95[2]. The Game Boy was the first successful handheld console, and was the predecessor of all other iterations of the Game Boy line. The Game Boy was originally bundled with the puzzle game Tetris, since Nintendo thought that an addictive puzzle game would get consumers' attention.

1990s

1990

• Moo - MOOs are text-based, virtual reality environments. They are stored in databases and connected to the Internet. MOO stands for MUD, Object-Oriented. The first MOO was created by Steven White, who wanted to make a MUD (a Multi-User Dungeon/Domain) that could be altered by the players themselves. His solution: a programming method called "Object-Oriented" that allows programmers to use "traits" of other objects in their own objects.
• Sega Game Gear released! - The Sega Game Gear is a handheld game console which was Sega's response to Nintendo's Game Boy. It was the third commercially available color handheld console, after the Atari Lynx and the Turbo Express.

1991

• Super Nintendo Entertainment System - The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1991, the main competitor for the Sega Genesis, and boy did it ever give Sega a run for it's money (literally!). Here are some of the specs: CPU 16-Bit CPU MEMORY Work RAM for CPU: 128 Kb Video RAM for CPU: 16Kb PROCESSOR 16-Bit PPU (Picture Processing Unit) APU (Audio Processing Unit): 8-Bit (main sound processor) producing 16-Bit sound COLOR Maximum colors on one screen: 256 Total colors available: 32,678.

1993

• Atari Jaguar - The Atari Jaguar was the world's first 64-bit home console video game system. Developed after three years of research, manufactured by IBM, the Jaguar was released in Fall 1993, and offered high-speed action, CD-quality sound, and polygon graphics processing beyond most other machines available at the time.
• Panasonic Real 3DO - Panasonic's REAL 3DO Interactive Multiplayer is a technological winner: It's a superior game machine that also plays audio CDs, displays photo CDs at high resolution, and with an optional full-motion-video (FMV) cartridge, plays full-length motion pictures. (REAL stands for Realistic Entertainment and Active Learning.)
• Doom is launched! - Doom1 is a 1993 computer game developed by id Software, and one of the most seminal titles in the first-person shooter genre. Combining immersive 3D graphics with graphic violence, it became both controversial and immensely popular; the shareware version is estimated to have been played by 15 million people. Beyond defining many gameplay elements of first-person shooters, Doom established a subculture in popularizing networked gaming, and WADs, expansions created by players themselves.

1994

• Sega Saturn is launched! - Saturn was Sega's first next generation system that had a build in CD-Rom unit (Mega CD was just an addon for the Genesis). It came in direct confilct with Sony's Playstation (1) and lost (speaking with the global sales in mind).
• Playstation is launched!
• Myst - Myst is an immersive experience that draws you in and won't let you go. You enter a unique setting, venturing alone to varied times and places, the worlds that compose Myst. There are no instructions, and you encounter no living beings but soon realize your actions may help individuals who are somehow trapped in a parallel dimension.
• Wing Commander III - Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (commonly abbreviated WC3, WCIII, or HOTT) is the second sequel in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander science fiction space simulation franchise of computer games, produced by Origin Systems. Released in 1994, Wing Commander III made the move from the sprite-based graphics used in previous titles to software-driven texture-mapped polygonal 3D.

1996

• Tomb Raider is released! - Tomb Raider is One of the Most Popular Female Characters in the Video Game Market Today! It all started with the playstation 1 game titled Tomb Raider. It has Since gone on to multiple sequels as well as 2 major Blockbuster movies called Lara Croft Tomb Raider and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. Not only has Lara Croft Appeared in Games and Movies but she has also appeared in comic books. The Tomb Raider comic book by Eidos / Core and Top Cow Comics was a Big Hit. Lara has also appeared in cross over titles in the TopCow Universe with Brand Name characters like Witchblade and Fathom.
• Nintendo 64 - Released in 1996, the Nintendo 64 was the first system with 64-bit graphics and built-in four player gaming potential. Masterpieces such as Super Mario 64 and Super Smash Bros helped sell over 32 million N64 systems worldwide.

1998

• Half-Life - Half-Life is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game series developed by Valve Software and published by Sierra Studios.
• Sega Dreamcast - The Dreamcast is an 128-bit console system by Sega that was released in America for $199.99 on September 9th, 1999 and October 14th, 1999 in Europe. The Dreamcast has been out in Japan since November of 1998. Featuring a built-in 56K modem and utilizing Microsoft's Windows CE, the Dreamcast helped shape the future of online gaming and allowed for the relatively easy conversion of PC games for play on the platform. Over ninety games are in development for the Dreamcast, and at least fourteen will be available at launch. The Dreamcast also doubles as an Internet device, allowing you to surf the web and send email with the help of the optional keyboard.

2000s to present

2000

• Sony Playstation 2 launched! - The PlayStation2 computer entertainment system is small, slim and network ready. And it has an enormous game library 每 over 1,400 games 每 to choose from! The redesigned PlayStation2 (70000 series) inherits the basic functions and design philosophy of earlier PlayStation2 systems, but the internal design architecture has been completely overhauled to include the latest technology. PlayStation2 combines awesome videogames, music and DVD movie playback, plus online 'network' gaming altogether to form the best value entertainment console on the market. With cutting edge graphics and sound, you still can't go past a PlayStation2.

2001

• Xbox released! - The Xbox was a sixth generation era video game console produced by Microsoft Corporation. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market, and competed directly with Sony's PlayStation 2, and the Nintendo GameCube. It was first released on November 15, 2001 in North America; February 22, 2002 in Japan; and on March 14, 2002 in Europe and Australia.

2002

• Nintendo Gamecube - In the United States, the Nintendo GameCube is the undeniable underdog of the "console wars." Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox certainly sell better, and they tend to get more media attention. Toward the end of 2002, for example, the PlayStation 2 stirred up a lot of controversy with its new game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Microsoft had a hit with Xbox Live, its online gaming program. Once the undisputed king of home video games, Nintendo seems to be struggling just to hold its own.

2004

• Nintendo DS - DS is largely viewed as Nintendo's response to Sony's PlayStation Portable, or PSP, a new system that will play both movies and video games stored on mini DVD discs. Sony has announced plans to release PSP in Japan later this year and in the USA in 2005. The DS has slightly more processing power than the Nintendo 64 console released in 1996. While that's nowhere near today's top game-system graphical capabilities, two- and three-dimensional game images, when viewed on DS screens, are surprisingly crisp.
• Doom 3 - Built on id's revolutionary new 3D graphics engine, DOOM 3 draws players into one of the most frightening and gripping 3D gaming experience ever created.
• Sony Play Station Portable - The PlayStation Portable (officially abbreviated as PSP) is a handheld game console released and currently manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment.

2005

• Xbox 360 - A video game console produced by Microsoft, developed in cooperation with IBM, ATI, Samsung, and SiS.

2006

• Sony PlayStation 3 - A video game console from Sony Computer Entertainment, and the successor to the PlayStation 2.
• Nintendo Wii - The fifth home video game console released by Nintendo. The console is the direct successor to the Nintendo GameCube. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.