The History of Video Games By: Abena Johnson

Before the Video Game Era  In 1889 before it was called Nintendo it was called Marufuku. (Marufuku a company that makes cards called Hanafuda) which is a type of playing cards; popular at that time.  In 1946 Akio Morita founded Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company. Later changes it's name to Sony, from the Latin word Sonus, which means sound.  Ralph Baer an employee at Loral suggest to put interactive games in TV's, management scratch the idea.  1954 David Rosens created a company called Service Games ;SEGA for short.

The New Era Begins  Steve Russel a student at MIT creates a game called Spacewar on a large system called Programmed Data Processor-1.  1970 Nolan Bushnell & Steve Russel creates a smaller version of Spacewar and renamed it Computer Space; later a company called Nutting purchased it.  In 1971 Nutting released 1500 computer space machines, it was the 1 st arcade game, public hates it due to its difficulty to operate.

1972 Continued  Magnavox had purchased Ralph Baer’s, game, remade it; named it the Odyssey a home version game.  Bushnell starts his own company called Atari after leaving Nutting, Atari means to check in American Chess.  Atari makes pong, sales slump, and Atari tried to distribute pong in the arcades.  Magnavox releases the Odyssey which sold almost a 100,000 copies.

New Companies & Controversies  Home Pong was released; it became the hottest selling item during the Christmas of First & only sold in Sears at that time.  1976 Coleco Vision was introduced in the market. Atari was sold to Warner Brothers for $28 million and a controversial game was release called death to race 2000 which was taken off the market.  1978 Milton Bradley an handheld game system called Microvison was created.  1980 Intellivison was competing against Atari, Pac man was released by Namco which rate the best arcade game of all time. Nintendo moves to America.

Crash of Video Games and Nintendo’s success  1981 Nintendo released Donkey Kong, became a huge success.  SEGA releases SEGA master system to compete with Nintendo in  1983 Video game crash, too much similar games in market, many video game company’s went out of business.  Atari released an estimate of 10 system throughout the decade.

Nintendo Era - Late 1980’s Early 1990’s  1989, Nintendo get the rights to a game name Tetris which became one of Nintendo’s most popular games. Nintendo releases Game Boy which has huge sales and SEGA releases SEGA Genesis which attracted American audience.  1990 Nintendo release Mario Brothers 3 the best selling video game of all time.  In 1991 Nintendo release new system called Super Nintendo which was a huge hit.  1993 Atari releases the Atari Jaguar.

Nintendo vs Playstation  1995 Nintendo released a system called Nintendo 64, sales slowed down due to lack of games.  Sony released a video game system called Playstation.

Extreme Competition Rise  Nintendo and Playstation lower their price to compete in the market.  Nintendo release the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time in 1998 which transforms platform games to 3 dimensional. Nintendo also released Game Boy Color.  Sega released the Dreamcast System in 1998.

The New Millennium  Sony released Playstation 2 which plays DVD’s and enables a P2P connection to play video games.  Game Boy Advance is released by Nintendo in  Game Cube a video game system is released by Nintendo.  Microsoft releases a video game system called XBOX.

XBOX  XBOX is owned by Microsoft (Bill Gates)  Graphics 100%, DVD player, Copy music  Customer Dislikes: Oversize Controllers, company has improved controllers.

Game Boy Color  Owned by Nintendo  System: Handheld  Facts: This is the most popular video game system ever; 100 million sold

Playstation 2  Playstation 2 is owned by Sony.  Holds the record for the quickest selling system with 980,000 sold in 48 hours.  Enable users to play DVD and Playstation 1 games.

Nintendo’s Game Cube  Game Cube owned by Nintendo.  Disks for the Game Cube are only 3 inches in diameter.  The Controllers :Comfortable than XBOX & Playstation 2 controllers. It is designed for a child hands.

Nintendo 64  Owned by Nintendo  Failures: Not a CD based system, could not compete with XBOX and Playstation 2. Nintendo invention on the N64DD was scrapped  Benefit: High sales volume on 1 st entry in market