Whenever I begin playing several games in my Xbox 360, I couldn’t help but wonder just how it all came to be. My parents tell me the video games weren’t exactly popular back at the days and that it was considered an concept of the future. Bearing this in mind, I started to remember my early childhood memories when it comes to video games. And because I didn’t have anything good to do today, I decided to do some research about the whole history of video game consoles. In my surprise, I realized that the very first games I had back when I was a kid wasn’t the”first match console”. I had this idea that my previous console was the very first produced, so I guess it was indeed worth the time researching about video game consoles.
Whatever the situation, let us start our blast from the past as I take you straight back in the humble beginnings of our beloved video game consoles.
The concept of playing games in front of the television was considered absurd and a matter of the future. All except for one Ralph Baer who conceived one absurd thought; the ability to interact with your television, including playing games onto it. It was in 1951 while constructing television sets for Loral in Bronx, New York. Back in 1966, he successfully developed a game called”Chase” where two dots chased each other round the monitor. He showed the idea to his new supervisor, R&D owner Herbert Campman, that he had been given some funding and his project was taken by the company as an official one. A Couple of years later, Ralph Baer successfully created the”Brown Box”, which is considered as the great grandfather of all video game consoles
A couple of decades later, Magnavox chose to invest on video games and created the very first video game console known as the Magnavox Oddysey. It was indeed an innovation as it was the very first video game which can be connected to a television set. It was also the primary in regards to console peripherals because you’re able to purchase a light gun which you can connect to the console when playing games.
In 1975, Atari came up with its game console along with Pong, a match that would remain a popular notion before today. The console does not have some controllers though; in fact, the console looks like a control itself, so you could probably say that is the grandfather of all handheld television games. Then, the Atari 2600 came. Launched in 1977it might get so popular that it was the only console asides in Magnavox to survive the very first game console crash of 1977. Both firms continued to make games for their various game consoles until the second game console crash in 1983. Atari and Magnavox suffered from getting too many badly developed games, that explains why Nintendo became a highly common gaming brand within this era. It was in this season at which the Nintendo Entertainment System was developed and released.
This was my very first video game console and as far as I can remember, I played with tons of games on this console. Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, Contra, Megaman, and a lot of different games stuffed my cabinet instead of Barbie dolls and other fun stuff. Nintendo’s success lasted until Sega climbed up to battle their game console using the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis console. In reality, the only reason why I begged my parents to get me a Sega Mega Drive was since I always wished to play with Sonic the Hedgehog!
The SNES was popular amongst kids at that time. In fact, most of my friends get confused regarding what console they’d want to buy for Christmas!
Then in 1995, the age of 16 bit and 32 bit games were overshadowed by the Sony Playstation. The video game console sported better pictures, improved hardware and software support, a new pair of handy controllers and the memory card, a device which lets players store their saved games. It was revolutionary really, because it no longer uses cartridges, but disc drives rather. Sega and Nintendo both answered together with the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64, but when it comes to the Fifth generation of video game consoles, the Sony Playstation is the king.
Years passed and by 1999, the PC’s were engineered towards gambling also. Sega released the Sega Dreamcast in 1999, but was poorly received and eventually stopped in 2001 because they attempted implementing a sort of disc drive called the GD-Rom. It was a move to stop software piracy, but rather it resulted in poor sales. Nintendo Gamecube suffered the exact same fate as it introduced the Gamecube; the games console only plays 8 mm disc drives and was stopped in 2007. Sony, on the other hand, experienced a huge success with the Playstation 2 while Microsoft released the Xbox in 2001.
And the rest, as they say, is history.