Early Video Games (1950-1970)

A little look back at games

So… What are video games about? Games have been around longer then people – the mother's pups play fight early on to learn essential tools to survive, social and physical. There is an inbuilt instinct in all animals to play, to learn to survive. As people progressed we started to acquire spare time and moved away from playing physical games with our siblings and neighbours and looked towards more intellectual games to play with our friends, family and peers. Board games have been first recorded from ancient Egypt from around 3,500 BC where they played a game called "Senet" http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/life/activity/main.html . Games have developed to serve many functions; personal, social, political, and religious even. In mezzo-America they would incorporate ball games with religious sacrifices; the games at the Coliseum were cruel yet entertaining to the masses & displayed the glory of the Roman Nation. Today if you watch the sports channel you will see a hundred different sports, game shows and quizzes of varying popularity, and in a way social standing…Games have always had a key role in society. Today it is more unified and revolves around the flow of currency – Just look at the Call of Duty franchise and the Manchester United football team. There is a lot of money involved especially with the growth of population and communications.

 

War-games http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cch0wrwg4tg (music from "Cannon Fodder" Sensible Software, 1993)

Video games are a recent spin incorporating digital technology to display and interact with the game. War is good for a few reasons (very bad for a million). War is a catalyst for production basically – do your very best to beat your neighbour by any means. *As an interesting side note the Civil War in America actually made the foundations for the development of their own "Classical" music - Jazz. The abundance of marching instruments left over meant available music for the masses. They soon grouped the instruments together and formed bands… This is actually the origins of what has become the drum kit*. The Second World War helped greatly to improve technology and early computers would evolve from calculators used for anti-ballistics. There was an early British computer called Electronic "Delay Storage Automated Calculator" or EDSAC for short which was finished in May 1949 (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/conference/EDSAC99/statistics.html).

A fella named A.S Douglas created the first videogame for this system. It was as you would expect very primitive. It was Noughts and Crosses (Tic-Tac-Toe is American) and had a simple program but shows fundamental Artificial Intelligence (AI). Ironically if you know the game or have seen the film "War-Games" you would know that there is no way of winning unless your opponent makes a mistake. I could imagine these games would have been more of a programming exercise then for fun. It was developed at Cambridge University by the Maths Lab – Is weird to think there was no computers study – These guys invented it by exploring calculations. Here is a link to an EDSAC simulator http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~edsac/ .


 

Spacewars!

In 1958 there was a game created which was very similar to Pong called "Tennis for Two" which I would give a mention. It's not really a game in its own right, it's a simulation of tennis and there were also flight simulators about which aren't really games either. The first proper videogame was of course "Spacewar!"

Have a go? http://spacewar.oversigma.com/

2 Player game

    Left    Right    Thrust    Shoot

P1    A    S    D    F

P2    K    L    ;    '

Quick Review

Is pretty good actually! I like the fluid analogue feel of the acceleration – A key feature to the Super Mario series, which adds a lot of variables and skill to the gameplay. Don't play Pong without an analogue controller (mouse or modern pad will do) you just miss out on the feel behind the game. Can see where asteroids came from – Another classic game. Is nice seeing this, for its day it was obviously cutting edge – Taking Sci-Fi influences from the "Lensman Series" of books by Edward Elmer "Doc" Smith.


 

The Television

TVs were new back around then and it took a man name Ralph Baer to incorporate games with it. In 1969 he finally (after nagging military and television establishments) produced two games... "Chase" and another Tennis game. He went on and produced the "Odyssey" console.

There are a thousand different consoles of all shape and sizes dedicated to this game – Few had new innovations like rotating the paddle and multi players. I'm not going too far into Pong as everyone knows what it is – Crappy table tennis. I did however like block breaking variations later made in the 80s – "Arkanoid" was my favourite, but "BreakOut" was its daddy, made in 1976 by Atari.

http://www.play.vg/games/10-Breakout.html = Play Breakout

One thing these games have retained is playability. The graphics are now primitive but the play is fluid – On Breakout there is that sweet "Analogue" variable I mentioned before the ball bounces vary on the area of the bat, this is a fundamental element (if maybe the only) to the play in these bat and ball games. With all of the flash and bang that you get in modern they often neglect the core of the game – how it feels. In my opinion Skyrim isn't all that – The gameplay is stale, my character is stuck to playing the same way now until I make a new one, I will be for hours sneaking and hiding as my other skills are weak/useless. I prefer RPGs in the Japanese vein, a little more number crunching, equipment & character building and imaginative foes.


 

Atari & The Golden Age of Arcade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_video_arcade_games

 

The Atari I see as the first definitive console – It had a slot so you could change games easily and had a variety of original games – Pacman being the flagship game. There were too many games to go into. This Console revolutionised the gaming industry, and truly broght videogaming to the masses. Even though its RAM was only 128 bytes… My PC is 4GB which is about 10,000,000 more powerful – enough said. In 1978 "Space Invaders" Was an Arcade breakthrough and paved the way for many more.

Please if you haven't seen it watch the film "King of Kong" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/
this documentary follows the people who have passionately guarded their arcade high-scores for thirty years, and gives a glimpse into the sad, seedy, and competitive world behind arcade games.