The first video games. How it was. The history of computer games The very first computer game

Hello friends. Today there will be an interesting fact about the first computer game in the world. Who invented it and what it was.

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What was the first computer game

Let's begin. The very first computer game in the world was called Spacewar, and it consisted of two spaceships fighting a duel. It is worth clarifying right away that we are talking about a game that has become widespread.

It was created by two programmers (Steve Russell and Martin Graetz), who knew each other since university days and were both fond of science fiction.

In what year was the first computer game released?

In January 1962, a simple program was written that was intended for the newest and fastest computer of that time, the PDP-1. It performed 100 thousand operations per minute and had 9 kilobytes of RAM. Of course, when compared with a modern computer, which performs up to two billion operations, this is not enough, but it was still 1962.

The location of the fighting was shown on the round cathode display. This is the night sky of Cambridge and rivals could fight using a keyboard or a gaming joystick.

The game involved opponents moving their shuttles and shooting at each other. Ammunition and fuel could run out, and to avoid being hit you had to make a so-called hyperjump, after which you could appear anywhere on the playing field or next to the central star.

It was the first commercial game that didn't have many fans. But in 1971, its arcade version was released. And a few months earlier, they installed a slot machine in the Stanford student council, with another modification of Spacewar - Galaxy Game.

Unfortunately, the creators did not earn much money from this game, but it was still popular for 6 years and they managed to recoup the $60,000 invested in it.

In this article I will tell you, as you understand from the title, the history of the emergence, formation, and development of computer video games from and to, from 1947, when a patent for the use of a cathode ray tube was registered, to the present. Let's capture the history of the creation of the first most popular gaming consoles, the first mega-games of all times. Young people aged 25-35 will be especially interested in plunging into such a recent childhood. And if you want to get a sea of ​​positivity from your favorite games along with this article, you can click.

1947 - The first patent was filed for the use of a cathode ray tube (oscilloscope, the first type of computer display) for gaming purposes. The patent was filed by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Astle Ray Mann on January 25, 1947, and received on December 14, 1948. The patent described the idea of ​​a controller controlling the position of luminous dots on a screen.

1948 - A computer chess algorithm was created. The authors of the algorithm are Alan Turing and his colleague D. G. Champernow. (An algorithm is not quite a program code yet, but just a logical verbal description of actions, divided into separate lines).

1952 - The first logic computer game “OXO” was created - a computer implementation of “tic-tac-toe” (a field of three by three cells, the user made his move, after which the computer made a counter move). The game was created by A.S. Douglas during his doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge (UK). Douglas wrote his dissertation on the topic of human-computer interaction, and used the game as a visual illustration. The game existed in a single copy on a large computer - the EDSAC mainframe.

1958 - The first tennis simulator was created. The creator is William Higinbotham, one of the scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory (New York, USA). The game was called "Tennis for Two". In this game, two people controlled moving platforms to hit a ball. The computer did not participate in the game, but only displayed the results of the players’ actions on an oscilloscope in real time. This game existed in one single copy.

1962 - In April 1962, DEC began selling the relatively small PDP-1 computers. The basic package of these computers included the game “SpaceWar!” as a test program. Thus "SpaceWar!" became the first game to be released into circulation.

1966 - Ralph Baer, ​​having learned that his idea of ​​interactive television, voiced in 1951, was already being implemented in the form of computer games, began developing new game prototypes. He created 7 experimental games.

1968 - Ralph Baer develops his experimental console called “Box Brown”. It was possible to play all the games he invented. There were also simple arcade games - “Chase Game”: two squares chasing each other on the screen; and a completely new type of “Target Shooting games”: you had to shoot at the screen with a light gun.

1970 - The computer mouse is invented. Douglas Engelbart received a patent for “a system for indicating X-Y positions on a monitor.” This system looked like a square wooden mouse with large wheels. But the mouse began to be used in computer games much later.

1977 - The Atari 2600 game console goes on sale. It was thanks to this console that the popularization of computer and video games moved to a completely new level. The Atari 2600 was sold from 1977 to 1983, and during this time more than 40,000,000 copies of this console were sold!

On July 5, the first home computer, the Apple II, goes on sale. Along with computers intended for the masses, computer games are also spreading significantly.

1981 - IBM begins selling its first personal computer.

1982 - The Internet (global network) was created. More precisely, a unified network data transfer protocol has been created - TCP/IP. This standardization made it possible to unite disparate local networks into a single global network - the Internet. (The very idea of ​​a single TCP/IP protocol appeared back in 1974).

1983 - The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console was created. (In the USSR this prefix is ​​known as “Dendy”). In Japan, and then throughout the rest of the world, a new console boom began. Following the NES, other third-generation consoles began to appear.

1985 - the legendary game “Super Mario Bros.” was created. The game was released on the NES console, created by Shigeru Miyamoto. The main character of the game, Mario, becomes the official symbol of Nintendo. Although Mario as a character had previously appeared in two more games (Donkey Kong 1981, Mario Bros. 1983), real fame came to him only in the third game Super Mario Bros. Games about the plumber Mario have over time turned into the most popular game series.

1985 - The game “Battle City” (better known as “Tanks”) was created.

1989 - The GameBoy pocket game console from Nintendo is released. One of the most famous games on this console is Tetris. It was thanks to GameBoy that the Russian game Tetris gained worldwide fame and fame. “GameBoy” sold a huge number of copies around the world – more than 120,000,000 copies of the console were sold.

1994 - Sony releases its first, but very successful gaming console, PlayStation. It became the best console of the 5th generation. Games for this console were distributed on CDs. Most games on the PlayStation had 3D graphics. Console sales exceeded 102,000,000 units.
The strategy “Warcraft: Orcs and Humans” from Blizzard has been created. The Warcraft series of games has become a leader in the real-time strategy genre over time.

1995 - The first specialized exhibition of the computer video game industry was held - Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

1998 - The game “Half-Life” is released. Despite the fact that the game was made in the 3D-Action genre, it had a full-fledged plot that developed as the game progressed. The game was filled to the brim with plot events and colorful secondary characters. Before the advent of Half-Life, the plot existed only in quest and role-playing games, where it was most often presented in the form of text. With the advent of Half-Life, games have become much closer in content to movies. This game created a precedent, after which more and more large games began to be created with a plot.


The strategy game StarCraft from Blizzard has been created. The game was made so well that it continues to be played to this day. StarCraft has hosted many global e-sports competitions.
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2000 - The PlayStation 2 console is released. The console has the ability to play online and connect to the Internet. To date, this console remains the most popular in the world. “PlayStation 2” sold 140,000,000 copies worldwide.

2005 - The new 7th generation console, Xbox 360, was released.

2007 - The most popular Russian-language game “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” is released from the Ukrainian company "GSC Game World". The game tells about the life of adventurers in the Chernobyl radioactive zone. The game has an open world and many factions fighting among themselves.
Revival of the classics

2008 - The role-playing game “Fallout 3” is released. The reincarnation of the great role-playing game series is taking place, but now in three-dimensional form. (After this resounding success, developers from other companies are starting to revive many old forgotten game series and characters).

Also coming out this year is Grand Theft Auto IV. The imitation of a game city reaches a new qualitative level.

Of course, several volumes can be written about the modern gaming industry - this is the emergence of the latest games, and the creation of XBOX-One, and PS4, and much, much more. But these are modern realities, and what I wanted to talk about, to reveal the history of all this, it seems that I brought it to you.

When thinking about how the gaming industry began, many people immediately think of Pong. Although the acclaimed arcade machine took the industry to a whole new level, its creation was preceded by more than twenty years of experimentation. And the earliest of them is considered to be the project of the American inventor Thomas Goldsmith, developed almost seventy years ago.

1948 - Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device

In 1948, physicists Thomas Goldsmith and Astle Ray Mann were granted the world's first patent for an electronic interactive game. The patent describes a game in which the player sits or stands in front of a CRT monitor mounted in a cabinet.

Goldsmith and Mann, who worked with radar during World War II, decided to make something like a rocket simulator. Using special knobs, the player had to adjust the trajectory of the projectiles in order to hit the targets.

Scientists did not have any hopes for the resulting game. This was just a small demonstration of the capabilities of DuMont Laboratories, of which Goldsmith was listed as a director. The patent was never used, and the matter did not go beyond a manually created copy.

1948 - Turbochamp

The legendary English mathematician Alan Turing developed a chess program with his colleague David Champernow in 1948. Having finished it in 1950 and calling it Turbochamp, Turing tried to implement the project on Ferranti Mark 1, but the attempts were in vain - the computer did not have enough power. Then Alan decided to play an experimental game against his friend, scientist Alik Glenny, in which he, acting according to the created algorithm, acted as his program. Each move took Turing half an hour, and after 29 moves he lost to Glenny. However, the experiment showed that Turbochamp is capable of playing like a human. Later, in a similar experiment, Alan managed to win against Chempernovna’s wife. And the first full-fledged chess game would be written by Alex Bernstein in 1957 and run on an IBM 704 computer.

In 2012, the famous chess player Garry Kasparov played a game against Turbochamp and defeated it in 16 moves.

You can watch that same game against Glenny.

1950 - Bertie the Brain

The first game with any visual component was Bertie the Brain. Joseph Cates developed a game of Tic Tac Toe for the Canadian National Exhibition. To do this, he needed a four-meter-tall computer that invited exhibition visitors to compete in a classic game with artificial intelligence.

Cates built Bertie the Brain in part to promote his invention, his version of the vacuum tube, which he called the Additron tube.

Bertie the Brain turned out to be quite difficult, and Cates had to manually adjust the difficulty for each visitor. The player pressed one of nine buttons, and the result was displayed on the screen hanging in front of the players in the form of an “X” or “O”.

Immediately after the exhibition, they forgot about the game. Due to rapid technological progress, the same thing happened with the lamps he invented.

Cates once said: “If the solid-state revolution had come ten years later, my invention would have made me a billionaire.”

1951 - Nimrod

It all started when the British electrical equipment company Ferranti promised the Deputy Prime Minister of England, Herbert Morrison, to contribute to the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition. John Bennett, an Australian employee of the company, was contracted to do this job. John had an idea to build a full-fledged computer for playing Nim. Bennett wanted to demonstrate the computing power of a computer, and the mathematical "Nim" was an excellent example.

The booklet accompanying the computer read: “It may seem that we are wasting time by creating a machine for games, but this is not true. Game theory is extremely complex, and a machine that can play a complex game can be programmed to solve useful problems.”

However, with the exception of a few, the public was not interested in Nimrod's mathematical abilities, but in the gaming factor.

After demonstrating the Nimrod at a couple more exhibitions, Ferranti forgot about the computer and moved on to other projects.

1952 - Thoughts and Crosses

Noughts and Crosses is considered the first computer game with a graphical interface. In 1952, British scientist Alexander Douglas presented it as an appendix to his PhD thesis on human-computer interaction.

Just at that time, the University of Cambridge completed the creation of the electronic computer EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), the world's first computer built on von Neumann principles (joint storage of commands and data in computer memory). Douglas took advantage of the opportunity and programmed a simple game of Tic Tac Toe.

Noughts and Crosses (a game of Tic Tac Toe) was displayed on a 35x16 pixel display, and the game itself was one of the first uses of artificial intelligence.

Douglas's project was well received, earning him a doctorate and launching a successful scientific career. It is interesting that in his entire life the scientist never wrote another game.

1958 - Tennis for Two

Tennis for Two was the first multiplayer game. Physicist William Higinbotham developed it specifically for an open house at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he worked.

In Tennis for Two, two players control a light dot that flies across the oscilloscope screen. By twisting the controller handle you can change the angle of the ball's flight and launch it by pressing the red button.

In addition to being the first sports game, Tennis for Two was the first to use two controllers for two players, taking another step towards interactivity.

Despite its popularity, Higinbotham did not obtain a patent for the game, and the components of Tennis for Two were used for other projects.

In May 2011, the game was recreated specifically for the MEGA (Museum of Electronic Games & Art) project.

1961 - Spacewar!

After MIT acquired a copy of the PDP-1 computer, Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Whithanam were tasked with developing a program for it. As a result, their attempts to utilize the capabilities of a computer in one program turned into Spacewar!

Inspired by Japanese sci-fi films, the game is a duel between two spaceships. Over time, elements such as asteroids and hyperspace were added, allowing players to teleport at random while avoiding enemy torpedoes.

Spacewar! decided to distribute it free of charge, and the game was pre-installed on all subsequent copies of PDP-1 computers. The creators also provided the source code to everyone, completely free of charge.

Although Spacewar! and did not give birth to the gaming industry, it had a significant influence on developers, and, in the end, became the prototype for the world's first arcade machine, Computer Space.

You can evaluate Spacewar! for yourself, for example.

1967 - Inventions of Ralph Baer

American inventor Ralph Baer can be called the real father of the gaming industry. It was he who moved from short-term experiments like those described above to action, proposing the use of televisions for games. It’s interesting that Baer came up with this idea back in 1955, and he waited eleven years for the right moment and conditions for its implementation.

As Baer recalled, “At that time, forty million television sets in the United States were literally begging their creators to use them for something other than watching the news.”

In 1966, together with engineer Bob Tremblay, Baer designed a device that allowed players to move a white dot around the screen and change its size. Baer compiled these features into the Chase game and offered it to Sanders. The company provided Baer with $2,500 in funding on the condition that he come up with more interesting things to add to the gameplay.

With two more engineers on board, Baer developed several prototypes over the course of a year, which were eventually combined into the world's first video game console, The Brown Box.

The console also included a joystick and one of the world's first light guns, a la the NES Zipper. But, despite the interest in the console from such giants as Motorola and General Electronics, companies were in no hurry to take the risk of releasing such an innovative project. Only four years later, Baer managed to sign a contract with Magnavox and release the “brown box” under the name Odyssey.

Odyssey ran on batteries, did not produce sound, and had graphics that consisted of white dots and lines, requiring a lot of imagination from players. And yet, the console quickly gained enormous popularity - more than 100,000 units were sold in a year.

1971 - Computer Space

After fellow engineers Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney played Spacewar! on the huge PDP-1, they became obsessed with bringing the game to a smaller device. After some experimentation with programmer Larry Bryan, and even the creation of a company for the occasion, Syzygy, Bushnell and Dabney came to the conclusion that instead of making a direct port of the game from the PDP-1, they should re-create Spacewar! with the help of other technologies, which, by the way, were already promoted by Ralph Baer.

Having completed development, Syzygy entered into a contract with Nutting Associates to produce two types of slot machines called Computer Space: for one and two players, respectively. The gameplay of Computer Space was still a little different from Spacewar!. The attraction to the center of the screen has disappeared, and the need to dodge attacks from third-party ships moving back and forth across the screen has been added.

Unfortunately for the developers, the game turned out to be too difficult for ordinary bar visitors, where slot machines were most often found. Bushnell and Dabney began to develop new ideas and soon gave the world the famous Pong on behalf of their new company Atari.

After Computer Space, each step in the industry was much broader than the previous one:

• 1975 - Atari's Pong became the most popular Christmas gift.
• 1976 - Coleco releases its first Telstar console.
• 1977 - Atari released its first video computer system, which used cartridges.
• 1978 - Midway introduces the acclaimed Space Invaders.

In the 70s alone, the industry made a giant leap in development and subsequently only continued to gain momentum.

The first computer game was created in 1952 by A. S. Douglas. Douglas created his first game at the University of Cambridge (one of the most prestigious universities in England). The world's first computer game was programmed on an EDSAC computer, the image on which was formed using cathode rays. Another computer scientist, William Hijinbasam, created his first video game around 1958. His video game was called Tennis for Two. In 1962, Steve Russell invented SpaceWar! It is worth saying that this game, SpaceWar!, was the first computer game that was intended specifically for playing on a computer, that is, for computer use. Steve Russell used a mainframe computer to design his game. But, just five years later, in 1967, Ralph Baer first wrote a video game that could be played on a TV. The game that Ralph Baer managed to write was called “Pursuit”.

The fact is that at that historical period, Ralph Baer worked in an organization dealing with military electronics. In 1971, Bushnell, along with Ted Dabney, created their first game - a maze, a gallery. This game was called "Space". “Space” was based on, that is, when it was created, Steve Russell’s earlier game Spacewar! was taken as a basis. Just a year later, in 1972, the Pong needle was created. Pong was created by Nolan Bushnell and Al Corn. In 1975, Atari released Pong as a home video game.

It is worth saying that Larry Kerekman was one of the first to create video games. In 1972, the first commercial video game console was released. Thanks to this remote control, you could play video games at home, meaning there was no need to go anywhere. Also, it is worth saying that such a commercial remote control for a video game was quite an expensive pleasure, which, however, is not surprising. Any thing that appears for the first time is always very expensive, because in this case such a thing practically claims to be exclusive.

Today, any child cannot imagine his childhood and youth without computer games. Today, a computer and everything that is necessary for a full-fledged and exciting game is quite accessible to anyone, even a not very well-to-do family. However, it is worth reminding our little computer geeks that it is not worth playing computer games for a long time, as this can damage your eyesight. Some games can cause cybernetic gambling addiction - this is what psychologists call addiction to computer games. It is much more fun to play outdoor games with your friends, run in the yard, or play any kind of sport.

Since the times of ancient Rome, people have demanded “bread and circuses.” Entertainment and relaxation have always been one of the main components of any civilization. The very first game in the world, created for fans of virtual space, marked the beginning of a new era in the entertainment industry.

Today there are a great variety of computer games. New games come out almost every day. People who are fond of virtual games today do not experience the slightest difficulty in choosing a suitable toy that can brighten up their leisure time. Computer games today will satisfy even the most demanding connoisseur. But the market for such entertainment has not always been so abundant. After all, earlier computers did not have much power; there were no games for them at all.

The beginning of the era of virtual entertainment

This happened in the immemorial year of 1962. The game was called Spacewar. She could work on a computer with 9 kilobytes of RAM. Today's gamers will only smile when they see such funny numbers. By the way, modern computer machines can accelerate to 2 billion. And gadgets on the Android platform can easily handle the newest toys; there are even games with augmented reality.

The very first game in the world left an indelible and vivid imprint on the entire history of computer games. By the way, similar games have been created before; the creators of Spacewar were not pioneers in that sense. Back in 1952, A. Douglas came up with a game that was essentially an analogy of ordinary tic-tac-toe. In 1958, U. Hijinbasam created a game under the romantic name “Tennis for Two.” It was all just ping-pong. But Spacewar had a slightly different purpose, because it had to be played on a computer, which fundamentally distinguished it from its predecessors.

Creating a cosmic masterpiece

The first computer game was a battle between two ships in space. She is the embodiment of the vastness of the universe, cold, merciless and bottomless, like an abyss. The game was created by a group of programmers working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It took them two months to work on the game. The leaders of the group were S. Russell and M. Gretz.

Fate brought them together in a tourist club at the university. Both were attracted to science fiction, and on this basis they became serious friends. At first they made a simple program, which after a month turned into a game with two missiles shooting at each other. The goal of the game was simple - you had to throw your opponent off balance before he beats you.

Players have equal chances of winning. Each of them has a supply of energy, embodied in two types: passive and active. Passive energy is needed to support the force field protection function. Without active energy, it will not be possible to perform such necessary active actions as jumping, traveling through space, fighting and camouflage.

Each player himself determines the style and rhythm of the game. He can only rely on himself, he is responsible for his actions and mistakes. Victory will be achieved by the one who shows great prudence and composure. Moments of calm are sweet for the player, because in such rare moments active energy is revived. But at the same time, they are dangerous for him.

A fragment of the starry sky was displayed on the display; two players, using the keyboard, had to shoot at the enemy and maneuver in zero gravity. Fuel supplies and combat equipment were limited. In order to avoid being shot, you had to turn around a star located in the center of the map or decide to make a super jump. The last method to bypass enemy missiles was the hyperspace function, but this method was very dangerous and unpredictable, as the ship could explode when used.

The peculiarity of the game was that the first version of the starry sky background was imperfect. Samson did not like this at all, and he decided to write a program based on real diagrams of stellar space. After the successful implementation of this innovation, at least 50 percent of the stars became visible. The game has become a real inspiration for many game creators. Some are simply copies of the game, while others differ from it in such characteristics as the intensity of acceleration, different levels of gravity, and the presence of shields.

Followers of the first developers

In 1971, a similar game was created called Computer Space, but it did not gain much popularity. Spacewar, after ten years, has earned the title of the first commercial game. All in the same 1971, a machine with a different version of Spacewar - Galaxy Game - was installed in the building of the Stanford Student Union. This game enjoyed undoubted success for six years. The creator of the machine, B. Pitts, managed to quickly return the 60 thousand dollars he invested in the project.

The creators of Spacewar did not receive much financial benefit from their brainchild. They achieved only small fees by advising the courts in the 1970s in cases involving the gaming industry. And, of course, they improved their skills as programmers. Everyone who in one way or another took part in the creation of Spacewar is still associated with computers, and their name will remain for centuries. The very first game in the world opened the way for many talented programmers and developers who continue the work begun by the Americans and delight modern gamers with new products and surprises from the computer gaming industry.