History Of Video Arcade Game

The first video game was invented by Willy Higginbotham. Willy was no teenage computer wizkid, however. In the early 1940s he worked on advanced radar displays for B28 bombers and went on to work for the Manhattan Project where he designed the timing mechanism for the first atomic bomb. In 1958, bored by the displays of the Brookhaven National Labs annual open-day exhibition, Willy designed a tennis game simulation, the world’s first video game. It was called Tennis For Two. Willy did not take out a patent but even if he had the royalties would have been paid to the US government.

Game development on main frame computers continued through the years, with Spacewar! being one of thefirst and certainly one of the most known games. Launched in 1962, it was programmed on a DEC PDP-1 by Steven Russell.

The first game console was called the Brown Box, created by Ralph Baer in 1966 to control a video home console ping-pong game. Baer sold the console to Magnavox Odyssey and went on to design the first game light gun for the Shooting Gallery game.

The first coin-operated video arcade game, Galaxy Game, was launched in September 1971 by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck. However, it was beaten to the commercial market by Computer Space, launched two months later by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. In November 1972 Bushnell launched PONG for his Atari company. It would become the first significantly successfull coin-operated video arcade game. Atari would continue with releases, including the famous Asteroids shooting game (pictured), legandary amongst ardent arcade gamers.

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