Evolucion in Videogames

South Inernacional School
Student:Anderson Andrade
Class:Tegnology
Teacher: Miss Roxana
Tema :Evolution in videogames

The 1970s: The Rise of the Video Game
The 1970s saw the rise of video games as a cultural phenomenon. A 1972 article
in Rolling Stone describes the early days of computer gaming: This scene was
describing Spacewar!, a game developed in the 1960s at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) that spread to other college campuses and
computing centers. In the early ’70s, very few people owned computers. Most
computer users worked or studied at university, business, or government
facilities. Those with access to computers were quick to utilize them for gaming
purposes.
Arcade Games
The first coin-operated arcade game was modeled on Spacewar! It was
called Computer Space, and it fared poorly among the general public because
of its difficult controls. In 1972, Pong, the table-tennis simulator that has
come to symbolize early computer games, was created by the fledgling
company Atari, and it was immediately successful. Pong was initially placed
in bars with pinball machines and other games of chance, but as video games
grew in popularity, they were placed in any establishment that would take
them. By the end of the 1970s, so many video arcades were being built that
some towns passed zoning laws limiting them (Kent, 1997).
The end of the 1970s ushered in a new era—what some call the golden age of
video games—with the game Space Invaders, an international phenomenon
that exceeded all expectations. In Japan, the game was so popular that it
caused a national coin shortage. Games like Space Invaders illustrate both
the effect of arcade games and their influence on international culture. In
two different countries on opposite sides of the globe, Japanese and
American teenagers, although they could not speak to one another, were
having the same experiences thanks to a video game.
Video Game Consoles
The first video game console for the home began selling in 1972. It was the
Magnavox Odyssey, and it was based on prototypes built by Ralph Behr in
the late 1960s. This system included a Pong-type game, and when the arcade
version of Pong became popular, the Odyssey began to sell well. Atari, which
was making arcade games at the time, decided to produce a home version
of Pong and released it in 1974. Although this system could only play one
game, its graphics and controls were superior to the Odyssey, and it was sold
through a major department store, Sears. Because of these advantages, the
Atari home version of Pong sold well, and a host of other companies began
producing and selling their own versions of Pong (Herman, 2008).
Several groups, such as Magnavox, Coleco, and Fairchild, released versions

of cartridge-type consoles, but Atari’s 2600 console had the upper hand
because of the company’s work on arcade games. Atari capitalized off of its
arcade successes by releasing games that were well known to a public that
was frequenting arcades. The popularity of games such as Space
Invaders and Pac-Man made the Atari 2600 a successful system. The late
1970s also saw the birth of companies such as Activision, which developed
third-party games for the Atari 2600 (Wolf).
Home Computers
The birth of the home computer market in the 1970s paralleled the
emergence of video game consoles. The first computer designed and sold for
the home consumer was the Altair. It was first sold in 1975, several years
after video game consoles had been selling, and it sold mainly to a hobbyist
market. During this period, people such as Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple,
were building computers by hand and selling them to get their start-up
businesses going. In 1977, three important computers—Radio Shack’s TRS-
80, the Commodore PET, and the Apple II—were produced and began
selling to the home market (Reimer, 2005).
The 1980s: The Crash
Atari’s success in the home console market was due in large part to its
ownership of already-popular arcade games and the large number of game
cartridges available for the system. These strengths, however, eventually
proved detrimental to the company and led to what is now known as
the video game crash of 1983. Atari bet heavily on its past successes with
popular arcade games by releasing Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. Pac-
Man was a successful arcade game that did not translate well to the home
console, leading to disappointed consumers and lower-than-expected sales.
Additionally, Atari produced 10 million of the lackluster Pac-Man games on
its first run, despite the fact that active consoles were only estimated at 10
million. Similar mistakes were made with a game based on the movie E.T.:
The Extra-Terrestrial, which has gained notoriety as one of the worst games
in Atari’s history. It was not received well by consumers despite the success
of the movie, and Atari had again bet heavily on its success. Piles of
unsold E.T. game cartridges were reportedly buried in the New Mexico
desert under a veil of secrecy (Monfort & Bogost, 2009).
As retail outlets became increasingly wary of home console failures, they

began stocking fewer games on shelves. This action, combined with an
increasing number of companies producing games, led to overproduction
and a resulting fallout in the video game market in 1983. Many smaller
game developers did not have the capacity to withstand this downturn and
went out of business. Although Coleco and Atari were able to make it
through the crash, neither company regained its former share of the video
game market
The Rise of Nintendo
Nintendo, a Japanese card and novelty producer that had begun to produce
electronic games in the 1970s, was responsible for arcade games such
as Donkey Kong in the early 1980s. Its first home console, developed in 1984
for sale in Japan, tried to succeed where Atari had failed. The Nintendo
system used newer, better microchips, bought in large quantities, to ensure
high-quality graphics at a price consumers could afford. Keeping console
prices low meant Nintendo had to rely on games for most of its profits and
maintain control of game production. This was something Atari had failed to
do, and it led to a glut of low-priced games that caused the crash of 1983.
Nintendo got around this problem with proprietary circuits that would not
allow unlicensed games to be played on the console. This allowed Nintendo
to dominate the home video game market through the end of the decade,
when one-third of homes in the United States had a Nintendo system (Cross
& Smits, 2005).
Nintendo introduced its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the

United States in 1985. The game Super Mario Brothers, released with the
system, was also a landmark in video game development. The game
employed a narrative in the same manner as more complicated computer
games, but its controls were accessible and its objectives simple. The game
appealed to a younger demographic, generally boys in the 8–14 range, than
the one targeted by Atari (Kline, et. al., 2003). Its designer, Shigeru
Miyamoto, tried to mimic the experiences of childhood adventures, creating
a fantasy world not based on previous models of science fiction or other
literary genres (McLaughlin, 2007). Super Mario Brothers also gave
Nintendo an iconic character who has been used in numerous other games,
television shows, and even a movie. The development of this type of
character and fantasy world became the norm for video game makers.
Games such as The Legend of Zelda became franchises with film and
television possibilities rather than simply one-off games.
Other Home Console Systems
Other software companies were still interested in the home console market
in the mid-1980s. Atari released the 2600jr and the 7800 in 1986 after
Nintendo’s success, but the consoles could not compete with Nintendo. The
Sega Corporation, which had been involved with arcade video game
production, released its Sega Master System in 1986. Although the system
had more graphics possibilities than the NES, Sega failed to make a dent in
Nintendo’s market share until the early 1990s, with the release of Sega
Genesis (Kerr, 2005).
Console Wars
Nintendo’s dominance of the home console market throughout the late 1980s
allowed it to build a large library of games for use on the NES. This also
proved to be a weakness, however, because Nintendo was reluctant to
improve or change its system for fear of making its game library obsolete.
Technology had changed in the years since the introduction of the NES, and
companies such as NEC and Sega were ready to challenge Nintendo with 16-
bit systems
The Console Wars Continue

Sega gave its final effort in the console wars with the Sega Dreamcast in
1999. This console could connect to the Internet, emulating the sophisticated
computer games of the 1990s.
A major problem for Sega’s Dreamcast was Sony’s release of the
PlayStation 2 (PS2) in 2000. The PS2 could function as a DVD player,
expanding the role of the console into an entertainment device that did more
than play video games. This console was incredibly successful, enjoying a
long production run, with more than 106 million units sold worldwide by the
end of the decade (A Brief History of Game Console Warfare).

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South Inernacional School

Teacher: Miss Roxana

Tema :Evolution in videogames

Several groups, such as Magnavox, Coleco, and Fairchild, released versions

As retail outlets became increasingly wary of home console failures, they

Nintendo introduced its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the

The Console Wars Continue

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