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In the history of video games, the first generation era refers to the video games, video game consoles, and handheld video game consoles available from 1972 to 1983. Notable consoles of the first generation include the Odyssey series (excluding the Magnavox Odyssey 2), the Atari Home Pong, [1] the Coleco Telstar series and the Color TV-Game series. The generation ended with the Computer TV-Game in 1980 and its following discontinuation in 1983, but many manufacturers had left the market prior due to the market decline in the year of 1977 and the start of the second generation of video game consoles.
Most of the games developed during this generation were hard-wired into the consoles and unlike later generations, most were not contained on removable media that the user could switch between. [2] Consoles often came with accessories and cartridges that could alter the way the game played to enhance the gameplay experience [3] as graphical capabilities consisted of simple geometry such as dots, lines or blocks that would occupy only a single screen. [4] First generation consoles were not capable of displaying more than two colours until later in the generation, and audio capabilities were limited with some consoles having no sound at all.
In 1972, two major developments influenced the future of the home video game market. In June, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded Atari, which would go on to be one of the most well-known video game companies and play a vital role in the early generations of consoles. In September, Magnavox, an established electronics company, released the Odyssey. While highly limited in its capabilities compared to future consoles and a commercial failure, the Odyssey introduced features that became standards in the industry including removable cartridges and multiple detached controllers for two players. Inspired by the Odyssey's ping-pong game, Atari would soon go on to market the game Pong in both arcade and home versions; Nintendo, a well-established Japanese company that made a number of different products, entered the video game console market for the first time in 1977 with its Color TV-Game series. [5]
In 1951, Ralph Baer conceived the idea of an interactive television while building a television set from scratch for Loral in the Bronx, New York. [6] Baer did not pursue the idea, but it returned to him in August 1966 when he was the Chief Engineer and manager of the Equipment Design Division at Sanders Associates. By December 1966, he and a technician created a prototype that allowed a player to move a line across the screen. After a demonstration to the company's director of research and development, some funding was allotted and the project was made official. Baer spent the next few months designing further prototypes, and in February 1967 assigned technician Bill Harrison to begin building the project. [7] Harrison spent the next few months in between other projects building out successive modifications to the prototype. Baer, meanwhile, collaborated with engineer Bill Rusch on the design of the console, including developing the basis of many games for the system. By May, the first game was developed and by June, multiple games were completed for what was then a second prototype box. This included a game where players controlled dots chasing each other and a light gun shooter game with a plastic rifle. By August 1967, Baer and Harrison had completed a third prototype machine, but Baer felt that he was not proving successful at designing fun games for the system; to make up for this he added Bill Rusch, who had helped him come up with the initial games for the console, to the project. [7] He soon proved his value to the team by coming up with a way to display three dots on the screen at once rather than the previous two, and proposing the development of a ping pong game. [8]
As Sanders was a military contractor and not in the business of making and selling commercial electronics, the team approached several cable television industry companies to produce the console, but were unable to find a buyer. By January 1969 the team had produced the seventh and final prototype, nicknamed the "Brown Box". [9] : 12 After a Sanders patent attorney recommended approaching television manufacturers, they found interest first at RCA and finally at Magnavox, who entered negotiations in July 1969 and signed an agreement in January 1971. [8] [10] Magnavox designed the exterior of the machine, and re-engineered some of the internals with consultation from Baer and Harrison; they removed the ability to display color, reduced the number of controller types, and changed the system of selecting games from a dial to separate game cards that modified the console's circuitry when plugged into the console. Magnavox named the console the Magnavox Odyssey and announced the system's launch date for September 1972. [8] [11]
In the late 1960s, Nolan Bushnell saw Spacewar! at Stanford University. Spacewar! is a 1962 mainframe game developed by a group of students and employees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bushnell had worked at an amusement park, and felt that an arcade game version of the game would be very popular. [12] The high price of computers capable of running the game, however, meant that any such arcade game would not be economically feasible. By 1970, however, minicomputers were beginning to come down in price. [8] [13] He and his office mate, Ted Dabney, agreed to work together to try and design a prototype of the game. [14] By the end of November 1970, the pair had abandoned the project as untenable, as economically feasible computers were not powerful enough. Dabney soon thought of a way to manipulate the video signal on the screen without a computer controlling it, and from there Syzygy Engineering came up with the idea of removing the computer altogether and building specialized hardware to handle everything for the game instead. [8] [13] Computer Space , the first commercial arcade video game, was released by the pair as Syzygy Engineering through Nutting Associates at the end of 1971 and after its release they incorporated as Atari in the following year and began designing more games. Bushnell saw a demonstration of the Odyssey console playing its Table Tennis game in early 1972 and assigned their first employee, Allan Alcorn, to produce an arcade table tennis game. The result, Pong , was the first major arcade video game success, and inspired a large number of arcade and dedicated console versions and clones, including Atari's Home Pong in 1975. [8]
The first generation of consoles did not contain a microprocessor and were based on custom codeless state machine computers consisting of discrete logic (TTL) circuits comprising each element of the game itself. Over the generation, technology steadily improved and later consoles of the generation moved the bulk of the circuitry to custom integrated circuits such as Atari's custom Pong chips and General Instruments' AY-3-8500 series. [15] : 119
Graphical capabilities were limited throughout the generation, often supported with physical accessories and screen overlays, but saw some improvement towards the end of the generation. While the Odyssey could only display 3 square dots in black and white, as the generation progressed, consoles started being able to display color as well as more complex shapes and text. [16] Early consoles such as the Odyssey and TV Tennis Electrotennis required players to keep track of scores manually but later, many introduced score counters on the display to assist players in score tracking. [17] [18] : 252 Audio capabilities were slow to improve over the generation, starting with the Odyssey, which had no audio, and later moving on to consoles which had buzzers that could produce a small range of beeps and buzzes. [19] [20] [21]
In 1976, General Instruments produced a series of affordable integrated chips that allowed companies to simplify console production and lower costs. [22] Due to this, many companies had entered the home console market by the late 1970s. [23] : 147 A significant number released consoles that were essentially clones of Atari's Home Pong and many were poorly made and rushed to market, causing the home console market to saturate. [24] The demand for the chip was so high that General Instruments could not supply enough to satisfy all the orders it was receiving causing problems for some smaller companies. [22] Coleco received their order early on, allowing them to build up strong production capabilities and have success with their Telstar range. [25]
The start of the second generation and the next major advancement in home console technology began in 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F. [26] [27] : 116 The technology behind the first generation quickly became obsolete as consumers had the ability to purchase new games for second generation consoles instead of having to purchase new systems when they wanted new content as with the dedicated consoles of the first generation. [28] In comparison to the limited game library for each dedicated console, the Atari VCS launched with Combat, a cartridge containing 27 games. [29] As people transitioned to the newer systems, some companies were left with surplus stock and were selling at a loss. The combination of market saturation and the start of the second generation caused many companies to leave the market completely. [9] : 22 [22] These events became known as the video game crash of 1977, as sales of second generation consoles were only modest for the next few years until the arrival of the killer app, the home port of Space Invaders for the Atari VCS in 1980. [30] [31]
There were hundreds of home video game consoles known to have existed in the first generation of video games. [32] This section lists the most notable.
In 1972 Magnavox released the world's first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. [33] It came packaged with board game paraphernalia such as cards, paper money and dice to enhance the games. [33] It had features that became industry standard in subsequent generations such as detachable controllers, light gun accessories and interchangeable game cartridges. [15] : xvii While no game data was stored on the cartridges as they would be in future consoles, they could be used to select one of the twelve games built onto the hardware. Magnavox licensed its video game patents to other companies for a fee and prosecuted companies who released consoles without a licensing agreement. [34] [35]
It was with the Odyssey that Nintendo first became involved in the home video game market. According to Martin Picard in the International Journal of Computer Game Research: "in 1971, Nintendo had – even before the marketing of the first home console in the United States – an alliance with the American pioneer Magnavox to develop and produce optoelectronic guns for the Odyssey, since it was similar to what Nintendo was able to offer in the Japanese toy market in [the] 1970s." [36]
In 1974 Philips purchased Magnavox and released a series of eight Odyssey consoles in North America from 1975 to 1977. All of them were dedicated consoles, and each subsequent release was an improvement over the previous, adding features such as additional game variations, on-screen displays, and player-controlled handicaps such as smaller paddle sizes and variable ball speed. [33] [37] Three Odyssey series consoles were also released in Europe with similar features from 1976 to 1978. [38] [39]
On September 12, 1975, several months before the release of Home Pong in North America, Epoch released Japan's first home console, the TV Tennis Electrotennis. The technology was licensed from Magnavox and it contained a single ball and paddle style game that resembled Pong but without an onscreen score display. [40] The game controls were contained within the base unit and it connected to a television set through an ultra high frequency (UHF) antenna, as opposed to being directly connected, which was unique to the console at the time. [36] Compared to popular consoles of the generation, it performed poorly with an approximate 20,000 units sold. [40]
In late 1975 Atari released a home version of their popular arcade game Pong. [41] It was the first use of a microchip in an Atari product and had been in development since 1974 under the lead of Allan Alcorn and Harold Lee. [9] By the end of 1975, Atari had become a major company in the home console market due to Home Pong. [42] Following Pong's success, Magnavox filed suit against Atari for infringement on its technology patents and ended up settling out of court with Atari becoming a licensee of Magnavox. [35]
Home video games achieved widespread popularity with the release of a home version of Pong and its success sparked hundreds of clones, including the Coleco Telstar, which went on to be a success in its own right with over a dozen models, and the Binatone TV Master by British company Binatone. [43] : 33
Starting in 1976, Coleco released a series of fourteen dedicated consoles up until 1978, [44] when they suffered a significant loss due to the combination of dock workers' strike, preventing it from shipping the final product in time for the holidays, and the start of the second generation. [15] : 121 [45] [46] The series featured a number of different styles of ball games and external accessories to enhance gameplay such as the Telstar Arcade, which had a unique triangular design that came with a light gun and steering wheel attached to the casing. [18] : 272 The series was marketed at a lower price than its competitors and sold well with over a million sales. [47]
In the late 1970s, Nintendo released a series of five consoles for the Japanese market. The first of the series and the first console created by Nintendo, [48] the Color TV-Game 6, was released in 1977 [36] and contained six ball-and-paddle games. The last, the Computer TV-Game, was a 1980 [49] port of Nintendo's first arcade game, Computer Othello . [50] The third console in the series, the Color TV-Game Racing 112, was the first project of Shigeru Miyamoto, who would go on to become the creator of some of the most well-known video game franchises. [51] [52]
Name | Magnavox Odyssey | Odyssey series (11 consoles) [lower-alpha 1] | TV Tennis Electrotennis |
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Manufacturer | Magnavox | Magnavox, Philips | Epoch Co. |
Image | |||
Launch price | US$100 (equivalent to $700 in 2022) [58] | US$100–230 (equivalent to $544–1251 in 2022) | JP¥19,500 [59] (equivalent to ¥ 36,600in 2019) US$66(equivalent to $359 in 2022) |
Release date |
| ||
Media | Printed circuit board | Inbuilt chip | Inbuilt chip |
Accessories (retail) | Light gun (sold separately) [61] | None | None |
Sales | 350,000 [3] | Unknown | 20,000 [40] |
Name | Home Pong | Coleco Telstar series (14 models) [lower-alpha 2] | Color TV-Game series (5 consoles) [lower-alpha 3] |
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Manufacturer | Atari, Sears Tele-Games | Coleco | Nintendo |
Image | |||
Launch price | US$98.95 (equivalent to $538 in 2022) [63] JP¥24,800 (equivalent to ¥46,500in 2019) [59] | US$50 (equivalent to $257 in 2022) | JP¥9800–48,000 (equivalent to ¥15,559–65,347 in 2019) [50] US$36–179 (equivalent to $174–636 in 2022) |
Release date |
| ||
Media | Inbuilt chip | Inbuilt chip (most models) Cartridge (Telstar Arcade, 1977) [18] : 15 | Inbuilt chip |
Accessories (retail) | None | Controller styles | None |
Sales | 150,000 [43] : 33–36 [66] | 1 million [47] | 3 million [67] |
All of the handheld systems from the first generation are dedicated consoles and started late into the first generation. It was not until the second generation and the release of the Microvision that players could purchase games separately for the systems. [68] : 46 The early dedicated handheld consoles were eventually eclipsed in popularity by programmable video games, which became popular in the fourth generation with the introduction of the Game Gear. [23] : 316
One notable example is the Mattel handheld game series, which were released from 1976 to 1982. The first to be released were Mattel Auto Race and Mattel Football, while some of the latter models like the Mattel Speed Freak and the Mattel Competition Football handhelds are closer to the end of the first generation (1982) [71] . They were followed by other titles based on sports and some licensed properties such as Battlestar Galactica . Each game had basic controls, a simple LED interface and a buzzer for sound. [15] : 70 The series was popular, sold well and, at times, was difficult to find due to high demand. [72]
In the same year, Coleco began to release handheld consoles after the end of the Telstar home console series. [15] : 121 They released Electronic Quarterback , which expanded on the popular American football style games by adding new features. [73] Alongside Mattel Football, it became the other popular sports game of the period. [74]
The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System, it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridges, a format first used with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976. The VCS was bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a game cartridge—initially Combat and later Pac-Man. Sears sold the system as the Tele-Games Video Arcade. Atari rebranded the VCS as the Atari 2600 in November 1982 alongside the release of the Atari 5200.
ColecoVision is a second-generation home video-game console developed by Coleco and launched in North America in August 1982. It was released a year later in Europe by CBS Electronics as the CBS ColecoVision.
Pong is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released on 29 November 1972. It was one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work and decided to manufacture the game. Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. In response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.
The history of video games began in the 1950s and 1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframes. Spacewar! was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student hobbyists in 1962 as one of the first such games on a video display. The first consumer video game hardware was released in the early 1970s. The first home video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, and the first arcade video games were Computer Space and Pong. After its home console conversions, numerous companies sprang up to capture Pong's success in both the arcade and the home by cloning the game, causing a series of boom and bust cycles due to oversaturation and lack of innovation.
The video game crash of 1983 was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality. Waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers also played a role. Home video game revenue peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985. The crash abruptly ended what is retrospectively considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. To a lesser extent, the arcade video game market also weakened as the golden age of arcade video games came to an end.
The Magnavox Odyssey is the first commercial home video game console. The hardware was designed by a small team led by Ralph H. Baer at Sanders Associates, while Magnavox completed development and released it in the United States in September 1972 and overseas the following year. The Odyssey consists of a white, black, and brown box that connects to a television set, and two rectangular controllers attached by wires. It is capable of displaying three square dots and one line of varying height on the screen in monochrome black and white, with differing behavior for the dots depending on the game played. Players place plastic overlays on the screen to display additional visual elements for each game, and one or two players for each game control their dots with the knobs and buttons on the controller by the rules given for the game. The console cannot generate audio or track scores. The Odyssey console came packaged with dice, paper money, and other board game paraphernalia to accompany the games, while a peripheral controller—the first video game light gun—was sold separately.
1972 marked an important landmark in the history of the video game industry with the releases of Pong and the Odyssey home console. Electronic games rose substantially in profile this year and a number of companies began to explore the distribution of video games on a larger scale.
In the history of video games, the third generation of video game consoles, commonly referred to as the 8-bit era, began on July 15, 1983, with the Japanese release of two systems: Nintendo's Family Computer and Sega's SG-1000. When the Famicom was released outside of Japan, it was remodeled and marketed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). This generation marked the end of the video game crash of 1983, and a shift in the dominance of home video game manufacturers from the United States to Japan. Handheld consoles were not a major part of this generation; the Game & Watch line from Nintendo and the Milton Bradley Microvision that were sold at the time are both considered part of the previous generation due to hardware typical of the second generation.
A home video game console is a video game console that is designed to be connected to a display device, such as a television, and an external power source as to play video games. While initial consoles were dedicated units with only a few games fixed into the electronic circuits of the system, most consoles since support the use of swappable game media, either through game cartridges, optical discs, or through digital distribution to internal storage.
The history of video game consoles, both home and handheld, began in the 1970s. The first console that played games on a television set was the 1972 Magnavox Odyssey, first conceived by Ralph H. Baer in 1966. Handheld consoles originated from electro-mechanical games that used mechanical controls and light-emitting diodes (LED) as visual indicators. Handheld electronic games had replaced the mechanical controls with electronic and digital components, and with the introduction of Liquid-crystal display (LCD) to create video-like screens with programmable pixels, systems like the Microvision and the Game & Watch became the first handheld video game consoles.
1975 had new titles such as Western Gun, Dungeon and dnd. The year's best-selling arcade game was Taito's Speed Race, released as Wheels and Wheels II in North America.
A dedicated console is a video game console that is limited to one or more built-in video game or games, and is not equipped for additional games that are distributed via ROM cartridges, discs, downloads or other digital media. Dedicated consoles were very popular in the first generation of video game consoles until they were gradually replaced by second-generation video game consoles that use ROM cartridges.
The Color TV-Game is the first video game system ever made by Nintendo. The system was released as a series of five dedicated home video game consoles between 1977 and 1983 in Japan only. Nintendo sold three million units of the first four models: one million units of each of the first two models, Color TV-Game 6 and 15; and half a million units of each of the next two models, Block Breaker and Racing 112. The Color TV-Game series has the highest sales figures of all the first generation of video game consoles.
In the history of video games, the second-generation era refers to computer and video games, video game consoles, and handheld video game consoles available from 1976 to 1992. Notable platforms of the second generation include the Fairchild Channel F, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, and ColecoVision. The generation began in November 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F. This was followed by the Atari 2600 in 1977, Magnavox Odyssey² in 1978, Intellivision in 1980 and then the Emerson Arcadia 2001, ColecoVision, Atari 5200, and Vectrex, all in 1982. By the end of the era, there were over 15 different consoles. It coincided with, and was partly fuelled by, the golden age of arcade video games. This peak era of popularity and innovation for the medium resulted in many games for second generation home consoles being ports of arcade games. Space Invaders, the first "killer app" arcade game to be ported, was released in 1980 for the Atari 2600, though earlier Atari-published arcade games were ported to the 2600 previously. Coleco packaged Nintendo's Donkey Kong with the ColecoVision when it was released in August 1982.
A ROM cartridge, usually referred to in context simply as a cartridge, cart, or card, is a replaceable part designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer, video game console or, to a lesser extent, electronic musical instruments.
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry.
Magnavox Odyssey is the general brand name of Magnavox's complete line of home video game consoles released from 1972 through 1978. The line includes the original Magnavox Odyssey console, the Magnavox Odyssey series of dedicated home video game consoles, and the Magnavox Odyssey 2 ROM cartridge-based video game console released in 1978. Philips Odyssey is the brand name that includes the Philips Odyssey series of dedicated home video game consoles.
The 1970s was the first decade in the history of the video game industry. The 1970s saw the development of some of the earliest video games, chiefly in the arcade game industry, but also several for the earliest video game consoles and personal computers.
An arcade video game is an arcade game where the player's inputs from the game's controllers are processed through electronic or computerized components and displayed to a video device, typically a monitor, all contained within an enclosed arcade cabinet. Arcade video games are often installed alongside other arcade games such as pinball and redemption games at amusement arcades. Up until the late 1990s, arcade video games were the largest and most technologically advanced sector of the video game industry.
In the video game industry, the market for home video game consoles has frequently been segmented into generations, grouping consoles that are considered to have shared in a competitive marketspace. Since the first home consoles in 1972, there have been nine defined home console generations.
Like Pong, Telstar could only play video tennis but it retailed at an inexpensive $50 that made it attractive to most families that were on a budget. Coleco managed to sell over a million units that year.
color tv-game.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)Nintendo entered the home market in Japan with the dramatic unveiling of Color TV-Game 6, which played six versions of light tennis. It was followed by a more powerful sequel, Color TV-Game 15. A million units of each were sold. The engineering team also came up with systems that played a more complex game, called "Blockbuster," as well as a racing game. Half a million units of these were sold.