History Of Computer Games: Part 2

In the previous Game History Blog I covered the very early beginnings of computers and games. Games were simply the doodles of engineers expressing our natural interest in the possibility of playing against inanimate objects.

The next major steps like any fledging new technology are vast.

Spacewar!(Above) from 1962 is important because it’s the first sci-fi game, it’s not based on any sports or any other real life situation. The game was played on a Dec Pdp-1(Below) a “mini” computer only found in laboratories and commercial environments. Although referred to at the time as a Minicomputer these were still the size of small rooms, and extremely expensive. Despite this small audience the game was still successful, with the game made available by Dec.

Steve Russel the designer of Spacewar! later introduced computer game programming to a student called Nolan Bushnell. Nolan went on to create Pong in 1972 and founded Atari. He is considered to have begun the commercial gaming industry. Pong however was not his first commercial gaming venture. The year prior with an engineer called Ted Dabney he had created an arcade game called Computer Space. Although computer space wasn’t a huge success it was the first commercial coin operated computer gaming system, and thus the beginning of the arcade.

During this early period there seems to be a lot of “borrowing” of ideas. Computer Space, Atari’s Asteroids 1979, Bill Pitts and Hugh Tucks Galaxy Game 1971 (Which was the first coin operated gaming system, it just wasn’t really a commercial venture as it was only available to play at Stanford University) and many other games from this period are all basically clones of Spacewar!

Pong wasn’t even original game play, as this was stolen from Ralph Baer’s Magnavox Odyssey’s home system tennis game.  Ralph Baer at this point successfully sued Atari for patent infringement, as well as many other gaming companies over this decade including Nintendo. Nintendo interestingly as their defence stated that Ralph Baer’s Tennis Game was simply a copy of an even earlier tennis game, William Higinbotham’s Tennis for Two from 1958.

(Picture Shows the box, console, controllers and all the accessories which came with the Magnavox Odyssey, including cards, scoring sheets and screen overlays for colour play).

But what about PC gaming? Well this requires the existence of a PC (personal computer) that’s accessible for home use.  Xerox PARK a research and development company designed what we today call a PC, this materialised as the Xerox Alto (Above) in 1973. It had a mouse, Monitor (wrong way round), keyboard and a separate computer cabinet, and all this could fit with in the area of a standard desk. But this was not for home use, and would not have been bought by individuals; the Xerox Alto was for commercial use only.

The Apple 1 is the first computer available to anybody, well anybody willing to hand Steve Jobs $500 in 1976. Your Apple 1 would then be made out of wood by Steve Woznak in his garage. Below is an advertisement for the Apple 1, it’s interesting because it states Gaming as one of its primary functions.

The Apple 1 came about after Steve Jobs was given a tour of the Xerox PARK facility in Silicon Valley California and shown the Xerox Alto. Jobs saw an opportunity here where amazingly Xerox didn’t.

“If Xerox had known what it had and had taken advantage of its real opportunities”, Jobs said years later, “it could have been as big as I.B.M. plus Microsoft plus Xerox combined-and the largest high-technology company in the world.”

The Magnavox Odyssey, Pong, and the Apple 1 bring us to a gaming world we could recognise today. In 18 years we have gone from games being something engineers could play in their laboratories with Spacewars! In 1958. To average Joe being able to game at their local arcade and even in their own homes on their dedicated gaming console or on their PC.

Gaming has arrived and is part of popular culture.

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History Of Computer Games: Part 1

My Earliest memory of gaming is probably Duke Nukem 3D which came out in 1996. For what is considered quite a stupid crude game it’s easy to forget how advanced it was. It had Destructive and interactive environments, for example you could tip strippers, you could play multiplayer online death match, co-op and Duke-Tag (capture the flag), it had a map builder, many weapons including freeze and shrink rays and the mighty boot!!! You could even fly around the map using a jet pack, swim under water with an aqua lung, walk on lava with special boots, sea in the dark with night vision goggles.  Here’s a surprising one you could even project a hologram of yourself (HoloDuke) to disorientate your enemies, this didn't enter the Halo Franchise until there fifth instalment with Halo Reach in 2010.

But how did we get to this point of highly advanced gaming? Where did it all start?

The first computer game is arguably the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device 1947. This could also be considered to be the first games console, as it was a dedicated gaming device. Quite simply it was a Cathode Ray Tube which is a type of early monitor with a game built into it. Interestingly the game was technically a war game. (Predatory animals play by mimicking the hunting and killing of prey. Naturally it seems we can’t help ourselves either. Is it coincidence that the basis of games is killing other humans/humanoids and that this is fun?) The game is played by maneuvering a cross hair which is a small dot, onto an image of a plane, if you do this within the time limit the screen defocused signifying an explosion. The Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device although still purely an electromechanical device with no computer or programming  it’s still quite a scientifically advanced piece of equipment for its time. This was made in a time of vast room sized military funded computers, designed for research, code breaking and defense purposes.

Like the (above) 1941 Zuse Z3 the first electromechanical, programmable, fully automatic computer. This was used to research “wing flutter” of air craft by the Germans, and the (below) British 1943 Colossus was used to decipher encrypted telegraphic messages from German high command.

Some of the earliest computer games ran on these computers.

Like tennis for two 1948 and 0XO 1952. Tennis for Two (below) was designed to spice up a tour of a laboratory; the engineers devised a game so that the visitors could get some hands on experience with the equipment.

OXO was designed by Alexander S.Douglas who was studying human computer interaction. The Game was basically Tick Tack Toe. 

The appeal of playing against a machine and the draw of an “intelligent device” is no new thing.

The Antekythera Machanism (Above) from around 100bc is a small shoe box sized device capable of telling you the current, past and future positions of the moon, its colour and next eclipse and it also gave the position of various planets and stars. Some people believe that this mechanisms primary function was actually entertainment. The Island of Rhodes where the mechanism is believed to be from was known at these times for its displays of automata.

Another example of a piece of technology which drew crowds is a mechanism built in the 1770’s called the Turk (below).

This was an automated chess machine which travelled the world for 84 years astonishing audiences with its ability to play a strong game of chess.

The Turk could be considered the first games console, the first arcade machine you played with/against. The Turk was in fact so ahead of its time that the technology didn't actually exist for it to function, it was a fake, inside the mechanism was hidden a chess master. The Turk is important because its success demonstrates our inherent interest in pitting our own intelligence against the perceived intelligence of a machine.

The concept of “gaming” at this point doesn’t exists, but all that really changes from the Turk to the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device to OXO and Tennis for Two is that the technology becomes available to actually build these devices in the form of computers.

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wikipedia.org