History of Video game consoles

How far Console Video Gaming has come

Computer gaming began in the 1950’s and a decade or two later console gaming emerged. To date there are eight generations of gaming consoles that have been released dating back to 1972 when Magnavox released the first home video game console which could be connected to a television set. This also changed the display from vector to analogue video screen. The new console gaming era has developed to where players can ‘physically be inside the game’ with programming such as virtual reality games. Xbox 360 Konnect, PlayStation 3 Move and Nintendo Wii U are examples of producers of this kind of technology {^1}.     

The late 1970 arcade games were at its peak with coin operated machines. These machines were used in bars, restaurants, amusement parks and other businesses. This golden era of arcade games went through the 1980’s and were still popular in the 1990’s though the decline of popularity was obvious in the western world when video game consoles made the transition from 2D to 3D. Today Arcade games like this still remain popular in Asia {^2}

In 1967 the first home console system was developed by Ralph Bear and his associates. It took two years to finish a working prototype called the Brown Box, which was demonstrated to various potential licensees with Magnavox eventually licensing this technology - producing the world’s first video game console. This was released in the USA in 1972. It was called the Magnavox Odyssey. This system uses cartridges that mainly consist of jumpers that enabled or disabled various switches inside the console, altering circuitry logic. In the first year Magnavox Sold about 100,000 Odysseys consoles {3}  

In 1977, manufacturers of older, out of date consoles and pong were forced to sell at loss in order to clear stock which created a pause on the golden era of gaming causing.  Other companies such as Fairchild and RCA abandoned their console gaming campaign leaving only Atari and Magnavox in the home gaming market, even though these two companies were suffering losses through the 1977 and 1978 period {4)

The crash finely came to an end when Taito’s ‘space invaders’ was released in 1978 which sparked a revitalisation for the video gaming industry thus paving the way for the golden age of arcade games. After Space invaders was licensed for the Atari VCS system (later known as Atari 2600) it became the first “Killer app” skyrocketing console sales, and helping Atari recover from previous losses. The home video game market was revived until the North American Version crashed in 1983 {5}

During the 1980’s a new innovation was released into the console gaming market which was called the Genre Innovation which introduced numerous games in specific areas, for example Action Adventure, ‘beat em up strategy’, first person shooters , role playing games (RPG), vehicle games (driving) and many more types of genre games.

In the late 1970’s the first Hand held game console was released by Milton Bradley which used interchangeable cartridges. The console was called Microvision. It was a modest success in the first year of production due to lack of games, and its small screen-size {6}

In 1980 Nintendo released the first of its own kind of handheld gaming console called the ‘Game & Watch line’ which spurred dozens of other game and toy companies to make their own portable games, many of which were copies of the ‘Game & Watch’ titles or adaptations of popular arcade games which improved Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technologies. This meant that new handhelds could consume less battery power than the Light Emitting Diode (LED), and Vacuum Florescent Display (VFD) games- most only needing watch batteries. These could be made much smaller than most LED handhelds small enough you could wear them on your wrist like a watch. The company Tiger Electronics borrowed this idea of video gaming with affordable handhelds and still make games in this model to the present day.

At the end of 1983, the console gaming industries crashed once more though this time it was more severe than the 1977 crash. It was marked as ‘the crash of the video gaming industry’ and included the bankruptcy of several video game console, and home computer producers through North America from late 1983 to early 1984. The second generation of console gaming was at an end. To blame for the crash was the overall production of poorly designed games including the most famous ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’ and ‘Pac-man’ for the Atari 2600 console. Popular myth surrounding the now legendary crash tells of E.T sales being so poor that Atari buried thousands of unsold games in a landfill in New Mexico.

In 1985 the American Video game console market was revived with Nintendo’s unveiling of the 8-bit ‘Famicom’ also known outside of Asia as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was bundled with the smash hit ‘Super Mario Bros’ which is still a popular game today. The NES system dominated the markets in both North America and Japan until the rise of the next generation of consoles in the early 1990’s. Due to heavy competition from PC’s like the ZX Ppectrum and Commodore 64, NES was prevented from having the same success in European markets which allowed consoles to find an audience such as the ‘Sega Master System’ in Australia and Brazil. 

These new consoles boasted the Gamepad or Joy-pad which took over from the Joysticks, Paddles and Keypads as the default gaming controllers included with the systems. The new games included the design of an eight directional-pad or ‘D-pad’ as well as with 2 or more action buttons which became the standard. This generation marked the shift in dominance of the home video game system away from the United States, to Japan {7} 

  

The 1990’s saw the revolution of video gaming which promoted the transition from raster graphics to ‘3 Dimensional’ (3D) graphical capabilities. This gave rise to several genres of video gaming like first-person-shooter, real-time strategy and Massive Multi Online game (MMO) which allows players to challenge each other via the internet. Hand held gaming became even more popular through the decade. This was due to the release of the Game Boy in 1989. In the early parts of the 1990’s, arcade games were still relatively popular but began to decline as more people switched over to home gaming consoles. One of my favourite games, even though it was black and white, was Pokemon One. The first one I played was Yellow then the Silver was introduced, progressing to Red then Gold and eventually playing all of the first generation Pokemon. I still like the games to this day while the graphics improved and more colour was added increasing its appeal.

With the introduction of the 16 and 32 bit consoles, home and video games started to reach the graphics seen in arcade games which increased numbers of players who would wait for popular arcade games to be transferred over to consoles rather than going to ‘spacies parlours’. During the mid-1990’s arcade games were revitalised with games such as Street Fight II, and Mortal Combat and other games in the one-on-one fighting games in this genre, as well as racing and sport games. Thus arcades continued to decline, forcing some to close down. Classic coin operated games have now become the investment of dedicated hobbyists. Arcade games were moved from arcades to attractions for movie theatres, restaurants and other establishments.

The gap left by the old corner arcades was partly filled by large amusement centres, driven to provide clean, safe environments, and expensive game control systems not available to home users. These were usually based on sports like cycling, skiing along with rhythm games such as Dance, Dance Revolution which carved out a massive slice of the market.  

With the decline of arcades and the rise of home gaming consoles, the gaming companies changed to the leaders in the gaming console competition. It is now a rivalry between three companies, Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation with Nintendo and PlayStation battling it out over hand held devices.

The hand held game is old territory for the Nintendo Company as they have time and time again released great handheld consoles starting with the Gameboy then Gameboy Colour, progressing to Gameboy Advance then Gameboy Advance SP and Nintendo DS, and the company is still advancing. PlayStation has decided to step into this territory of console and is doing very well competing with Nintendo’s line of hand held devices in the market.

While Xbox has remained a home console, all three devices are now moving to motion sensor types of gaming where a camera feeds the players actions and puts it ‘inside the game’. Though companies have just begun in this area, it is a massive step forwards for gaming. Perhaps the biggest drawback with the ‘Konnect and Move’ is that players cannot move quickly and have to do nearly everything in slow motion. While with Nintendo Wii, you can move faster but it is harder to keep ‘inside the zone’ where the camera is viewing.

Watch this space…

References

1.a^ Consoles 1967-2005 (2012) History of video game console retrieved         from:    http://www.time.com/time/interactive/0,31813,2029221,00.html

1.b^ Final fantasy wiki (2012) Playstation 2 Retrieved from:

          http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/PlayStation_2

1.c^ Comptalk (2012) Playstation 3 Retrieved from:

          http://www.comptalks.com/top-10-ps3-games-of-2012/

1.d^   Console wizard (2012) Xbox 360 Retrieved from:

          http://www.xbox360repairservice.co.uk/

1^ "The First Video Game". Brookhaven National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy Retrieved from:           http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp

2^ Arcade games (2012) History of arcade games Retrieved from:

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_game

3^ History of Video gaming (2012) History of video games Retrieved from:

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games

4^ Nick Montfort & Ian Bogost (2009). Racing the beam: the Atari Video computer system. MIT Press. p. 66. ISBN 0-262-01257-X. Retrieved 2011-05-01

5^ Jason Whittaker (2004). The cyberspace handbook. Routledge. pp. 122–3. ISBN 0-415-16835-X

6^ Melanson, Donald (2006-03-03). "A Brief History of Handheld Video Games". Weblogs, Inc.. Retrieved 2009-09-20.

7^ Arnie Katz, Bill Kunkel, Joyce Worley (August 1988). "Video Gaming World". Computer Gaming World. p. 44

all game images were either drawn by me or taken by Iphone