Video Game history and trivia
DO YOU REMEMBER Your first video game experience? My parents brought us a Commodore 64 that had 6 games bundled together (Arcadia, B.C. Bill, Pedro, Cosmic Cruiser, Invaders and 3D Jumpin Jack) as a ‘Value Pack.’
DID YOU KNOW The Magnavox Odyssey was the world’s first commercial home video game console long before PlayStations, Nintendos, Mega Drives or even Ataris. It was designed by engineer Ralph Baer who wanted to build something into a television set that the owner could control.
Sport has a long history in the video game industry. Beginning in 1937, the manufacturer Bryan’s Automatic Machine Works released ‘All Sports’ an arcade game and during the same period also produced ‘Ball Sport’ along with 11 other game types.
DID YOU KNOW Long before the days of Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D or Commando a 1975 arcade-shooter game called ‘Gun Fight’ was the first video game to depict a human-on-human shoot ’em up. Known as ‘Western Gun’ in Japan, ‘Gun Fight’ featured two players facing off in an old-fashioned western-style duel.
DID YOU KNOW Breakout was an arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc and released on 13 May 1976. It was conceived as a Nolan Bushnell/Steve Bristow partnership and built by Steve Wozniak with the help of Steve Jobs. Breakout was a stable mate of the earlier Alan Alcorn creation, ‘Pong.’
