Because of these advantages, the Atari home version of Pong sold well, and a host of other companies began producing and selling their own versions of Pong (Herman, 2008).Ī major step forward in the evolution of video games was the development of game cartridges that stored the games and could be interchanged in the console. Although this system could only play one game, its graphics and controls were superior to the Odyssey, and it was sold through a major department store, Sears. Atari, which was making arcade games at the time, decided to produce a home version of Pong and released it in 1974. This system included a Pong-type game, and when the arcade version of Pong became popular, the Odyssey began to sell well. It was the Magnavox Odyssey, and it was based on prototypes built by Ralph Behr in the late 1960s. The first video game console for the home began selling in 1972. In two different countries on opposite sides of the globe, Japanese and American teenagers, although they could not speak to one another, were having the same experiences thanks to a video game. Games like Space Invaders illustrate both the effect of arcade games and their influence on international culture. In Japan, the game was so popular that it caused a national coin shortage. The end of the 1970s ushered in a new era-what some call the golden age of video games-with the game Space Invaders, an international phenomenon that exceeded all expectations. By the end of the 1970s, so many video arcades were being built that some towns passed zoning laws limiting them (Kent, 1997). Pong was initially placed in bars with pinball machines and other games of chance, but as video games grew in popularity, they were placed in any establishment that would take them. In 1972, Pong, the table-tennis simulator that has come to symbolize early computer games, was created by the fledgling company Atari, and it was immediately successful. The first coin-operated arcade game was modeled on Spacewar! It was called Computer Space, and it fared poorly among the general public because of its difficult controls. Those with access to computers were quick to utilize them for gaming purposes. Most computer users worked or studied at university, business, or government facilities. In the early ’70s, very few people owned computers. This scene was describing Spacewar!, a game developed in the 1960s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that spread to other college campuses and computing centers. Something basic is going on (Brand, 1972). non-business hours) in North America hundreds of computer technicians are effectively out of their bodies, locked in life-or-death space combat computer-projected onto cathode ray tube display screens, for hours at a time, ruining their eyes, numbing their fingers in frenzied mashing of control buttons, joyously slaying their friend and wasting their employers’ valuable computer time. A 1972 article in Rolling Stone describes the early days of computer gaming: The 1970s saw the rise of video games as a cultural phenomenon. Video games have grown from simple tools that made computing technology understandable to forms of media that can communicate cultural values and human relationships. The first video games functioned early on as a form of media by essentially disseminating the experience of computer technology to those who did not have access to it.Īs video games evolved, their role as a form of media grew as well. Tennis for Two created an interface where anyone with basic motor skills could use a complex machine. In a time before personal computers, these games allowed the general public to access technology that had been restricted to the realm of abstract science. These games would generate little interest among the modern game-playing public, but at the time they enthralled their users and introduced the basic elements of the cultural video game experience. Tennis for Two was a rudimentary game designed to entertain visitors to the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
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