User:Masem/sandbox/History of video games

1940s to 1960s=

1970s

Mainframe games

Moving into the 1970s, mainframe computers transitioned from batch processing into interactive systems, in which users could see results of what they entered immediately on teleprinters or primitive monitors. Interactivity enabled more people to learn how to use computers, typically at universities, and the creation of easily-learning computer programming languages like BASIC and C. While these languages were made for utilitarian purposes, a number of simple games were also programmed, most commonly as demonstrations of how to use these languages, but which were often shared among students. Standardization of operation systems also aided in portability to share games across multiple systems. The first general computing magazines such as Creative Computing (1974) came during this period which allowed users to share their game code with others.

While these games were strictly text-based as to be able to play by reading the output on a teleprinter, a number of influential titles bore out from this period, among them including Star Trek (1971) by Mike Mayfield, the hide-and-seek game Hunt the Wumpus (1972) by Gregory Yob, the simulation games Hamurabi (or The Sumer Game) (1973) by Doug Dyment, and the strategic war game Empire (1977) by Walter Bright. Several of these were compiled in the book 101 BASIC Computer Games first published in 1973. One of the most influential games was Colossal Cave Adventure (1976) by Will Crowther and later expanded by Don Woods in 1977; it is recognized as the first adventure game and influenced a number of subsequent titles.

The PLATO system was developed at the University of Illinois and connected hundreds of users all over the United States via remote terminals using high-quality plasma displays and allowed users to interact with each other in real time. While intended for education uses, the system was allowed to host an impressive array of graphical and/or multiplayer games, including some of the earliest known computer role-playing games, most based on Dungeons and Dragons. Initial games were top-down dungeon crawls like The Dungeon (1975) and The Game of Dungeons (1975), more commonly referred to today by their filenames, pedit5 and dnd, but soon transitioned to a first-person perspective with games like Moria (1975), Oubliette (1977), and Avatar (1979), which often allowed multiple players to join forces to battle monsters and complete quests together. Like Adventure, these games ultimately inspired some of the earliest personal computer games.

Arcade games

Nolan Bushnell had been invited to play Spacewar! by a colleague at Stanford University's labs around 1969, and came up with the idea of transitioning the game from a mainframe onto a smaller microcomputer housed in a cabinet, attaching a coin-operated mechanism, and installing such units in bars. With Ted Dabney, they developed Computer Space with Nutting Associates, the first arcade game, released in November 1971. Computer Space was only a modest success, but the idea had immediately caught on with other manufacturers in the coin-operated entertainment space. To stay ahead, Bushnell and Dabney formed a new company Atari, Inc., and brought on Allan Alcorn to develop Pong, based on gameplay Bushnell had seen with the Mangavox Odyssey. Pong was a Iphones With Fortnite Installed Selling For Thousands On Ebay |first =

Home consoles and the video game crash of 1977

Introduction of home computers

While arcade and home consoles were growing, technology advances were still being made in general computer systems. Mainframes had been suitable reduced from room-sized to much smaller microcomputers, and by 1977, the first affordable home computers were available, notably the "1977 Trinity" of the Commodore PET 2001-8, Apple II, and TRS-80 Model I. Besides their use for home applications, games were also popular software.