Video game history

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Video game history

The history of the video game begins in 1962, with the creation of the little game SpaceWar.

For many, the first electronic game in history was developed in 1962 by Slug Russell, Wayne Witanen and Martin Graetz,
colleagues at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), USA. In order to create something useful for their spare time, the
students conceived a space battle game capable of running on archaic DEC PDP-1 computers: SpaceWar .
However, some historians say that the great-grandfather of the games was developed four years earlier, in 1958, by physicist Willy
Higinbotham, best known for being one of the creators of the atomic bomb. It was a game of tennis shown on an oscilloscope and
processed by an analog computer, a kind of attraction for visitors to his laboratory.
In 1968 we have an important chapter in the history of video games, through the figure of the German eradicated in the United
States, Ralph Baer. After graduating in electronic engineering and working in several radio and TV companies, Baer had the
brilliant idea of creating a device capable of playing electronic games through television. This fact was of great importance for the
future of games due to the fact that, until that moment, games only ran on computers and access to them was restricted to small
groups of university students. The German developed and patented a device called the “Brown Box”, capable of running different
types of games, a fact that made Ralph Baer the “father” of video games.

The first commercialized console in history was the Odissey , made by the Magnavox company in 1972 in the United States. The
device was sold in Brazil later, at the end of the 70's. Manufactured by Philco and Ford, the console became known as Telejogo,
which basically consisted of lines that went up and down to hit a square.

odyssey

Shortly after the release of the Odissey , the phenomenon that everyone normally associates with video game history appears: the
Atari 2600 . Designed by Nolan Bushnell and released in 1978 in the United States and in 1983 in Brazil, the console is considered
a cultural symbol of the 80s, a true sales phenomenon.
Atari 2600

Despite all this success, Atari experienced serious financial problems during the decade, at the same time that the Japanese
Nintendo began to build its empire. As Nintendo grew and established itself as the largest in the world of consoles, SEGA, another
Japanese company, was also developing. To compete with the NES, the company launched the well-known Master System .
Leader Nintendo has obviously entered the fray and released one of the biggest hits in all of video game history: the Super NES .
This is one of the classic episodes of the battle of the consoles.
Super NES
Nintendo surprised the whole world by announcing the N64 , with 64-bit graphics. Another very important fact was the launch of
Sony's Playstation , which, for having a large library of games, became the sales leader and hit the incredible mark of 100 million
consoles sold.