The history of electronic games - decades 50 - 70

The electronics industry is a big thing these days, but although many people think it's somewhat current, it started, as far as records are concerned, in the 1950s. Here it will be briefly detailed what happened in each generation

50's

The games at first were developed to improve brain development in school activities and broaden the mind. This occurred as a consequence of computer research in areas such as artificial intelligence and simulation. Due to the lack of documentation, it is difficult to determine what would have been the first electronic game that was created, but we can highlight:

Nimrod : It was a machine in which he could play the mathematical game Nim. This machine was made by Ferranti for the Festival of Great Britain in 1951.

OXO : It was created by Alexandre S. Douglas in 1952 and simulated tic-tac-toe.

Hutspiel : Built by the United States Army in 1955, it was a war game that simulated a conflict with the Soviet Union

Tennis for Two : It was most prominent game of this decade, it was created by the American physicist William Higinbotham in 1958, it simulated a tennis game displayed on the screen of an oscilloscope.

60s

Spacewar: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was one of the leading centers of computer research in the world. This one had the TX-0 which was a computer equipped with transistors instead of valves. On account of attracting many students, they began to develop programming tools and simple games like Mouse in the Maze, this game simulated a mouse in a maze, as well as Tic-Tac-Toe. But after TX-0 was replaced by the PDP-1, a microcomputer that had a 512 x 512 resolution and ability to plot any point on the screen, the famous Spacewar was developed by Steve Russell and his colleagues. The game was first tested on July 30, 1961 and officially finished in 1962

70's

Odyssey: From the fruit of a prototype called "Brown Box" by engineer Ralph Baer (An Interactive TV with games) that was later bought by Magnavox. The Odyssey, the first video game console in history, was released in 1972.

Pong: Arcade game created by Bushnell at Atari and becomes a phenomenon in 1973. Several companies start to create similar games.

Tank: Kee Games launches the Tank game in 1974. This becomes the best-selling game of the year, surpassing Atari in sales.

Gunfight: It's the first game to use microprocessors instead of a tangle of circuits. Launched by Midway Games in 1977, it was the first arcade to be imported by the United States.

Atari 2600: The Atari 2600 was released in 1977, which was the first console programmable with Atari cartridge games.

Computer Othello: It was a version of the Othello board game. It was released in 1978 by the company Nintendo, which until then, made handmade cards of a traditionally Japanese type of deck (Hanafuda).

Football: As the name of the game already says, it was a football game created by Atari in 1978.

Space Invaders: Imported by Midway Games and developed by Taito in 1978, the goal was to destroy waves of ships with a human spaceship to gain the most points.

Gee Bee: A digital version of the pinball tables, published by Namco in 1978.

Lunar Lander: The first commercial game with vector graphics, released in 1979.

Asteroids: Launched in 1979, one of the names of great old games, sold 80,000 copies at the time, made great success in the United States, but not in other countries.

That’s all for today, I hope you enjoy and see you in the next chapter.