I ‘member coming home from school one day when I was seven, and seeing an odd black box with bright red buttons set up in the room. My dad told me it was his new toy. A MegaDrive to be precise. From that day onwards I was hooked on Sonic the Hedgehog and my dad rarely got to play on his toy… unless we were playing a two-player of course.
Slowly my gaming experience widened as I began to play games such as Gex for the Panasonic, Pokémon (from Pokémon Red riiiiight through to Pokémon Diamond!), and Adam’s Family for the Amiga (I miss that thing.)
These days I’m more hooked on the likes of World of Warcraft (I have no soul! T.T) and FreeCell… (Yes, the card game, heh.). Don’t have the time nor money for other consoles. Though I have dabbled with the Kingdom Hearts series and Guitar Hero.
Now let us delve into the history behind my dad’s MegaDrive and my adventures in Azeroth! I’m sure it can’t be that boring, right? ;3
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In 1952 some guy from the University of Cambridge, A.S. Douglas used the knowledge most likely gathered from his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction, to create the first graphical computer game... that is to say a game that you could see... rather than a text-based one. It was a version of Tic-Tac-Toe.
A couple of years later, in '58, Mr William Higinbotham came along and created the "first video game ever!" This was rather unimaginatively named, "Tennis for Two" (ten points for guessing what you had to do). The game was designed to be played on a laboratory's oscilloscope. I wonder whether that would be technology akin to that of the PS2...
In 1962 the first game designed for actual computer-use was invented by a man called Steve Russell. Named Spacewar! Yet another intriguing name. Leaves one wondering… is it waging war on space? …or waging war in space? I have noticed that most of the early ‘retro’ games seemed to have a very heavy sci-fi, laserpewpew aliens! type of feel.
Seems video game technology was coming along slowly but steadily in this era. I wonder if they even dreamed that one day we would be playing games to the graphical and technologic standards of the PS3...
Ahh, now we come into the turning point! 1967, the birth of the first video game that would be played on a television set. Ralph Baer developed ‘Chase’ while working for an electronics firm. Though, he had the idea in mind for many years, even before Douglas and his Tic-Tac-Toe!
So almost twenty years have passed and things are only just moving into games to be played on the TV. They haven’t even invented a true console yet!
Well that’s enough pointless ramblings for one entry.
- The dougalBUG.
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