Blurring the lines between art and virtual entertainment, video games allow you to experience emotions and experiences like no other product.
In this article, we will look back at what has happened to the industry over the past 50 years, look at successes and failures, and other key moments in the industry. Although we won’t be able to talk about all the games that have been released, since even if we talk about the best-selling ones, it would take a few articles. But there are those that need to be remembered 100 percent.
First achievements
In this article, we will focus on video games aimed at a wide audience, so we can miss, but not overlook, important events related to the efforts made in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1950, the game was created «Bertie the Brain» , which was not actually a video game, but rather was created as an engineering advertisement. And here’s the game Spacewar! (1962), could certainly be considered the first true video game, but given that it only ran on DEC’s very expensive PDP-1 computer, it wasn’t intended for the masses either.
To begin our acquaintance with the history of video games over five decades, we must go to the arcades and American homes of the early 70s. Electrical engineers Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney have created their own version of the game “Spacewar!” called «Computer Space» (1971), having developed it to run on special equipment designed exclusively for slot machine halls (or any establishment that could afford it). Although Computer Space was not the first video game in history, it was the first commercially successful game of its time.
Given the fresh memories of NASA’s famous Apollo mission, it’s no surprise that a game in which you have to control a rocket in space and destroy UFOs was of particular interest. There are many online emulators “And most of the images of the games you’ll see in this article are from them, but looking at footage from a real slot machine is probably the best way to feel the game the way people did more than 50 years ago…
The game looks much better than you might expect for its era, but the gameplay (spinning the ship, controlling, launching one rocket at a time) was quite limited. That’s what the average gamer thought, so the company that produced the game, Nutting Associates, was disappointed with the relatively small number of copies sold, somewhere around 1,500.
The following year, Bushnell and Dabney parted ways with Nutting, renamed their business Atari, and struck a deal with Bally, a manufacturer of pinball machines, to develop a new arcade machine.
This was around the same time that the world’s first video game console, the Magnavox, hit the shelves Odyssey. For $100 (about $715 in 2023), you got a device that could draw a few squares and a single line, two box-shaped controllers, colored plastic overlays on a TV screen to create visual effects, and a few game cards that plugged into the device and changed the way it worked.
Screen Covers for Magnavox Odysse
Although the included games were just variants of several similar games (for example, hockey was just tennis with a different overlay on the screen), they were enough to interest people in buying them in reasonable quantities. The success of Odyssey, as well as the popularity of the game of tennis, inspired Bushnell and Dabney to create an improved analogue – and so was born Pong (1972).
The Odyssey games were very simple, even for the time: there were no sound effects, and the rules and scoring were done by the players. In Pong, these issues have been addressed and new additional features have been introduced.
Take a bit, for example – it looks like a continuous block of pixels, but it’s actually divided into 8 parts. Each of them creates a different angle when the ball is struck, which adds extra spice to the gameplay. Other aspects were related to hardware limitations, such as the fact that the player’s bat could not reach the very top and bottom of the screen, but it allowed the player to go unnoticed outwit your opponent.
By 1974, Atari had sold thousands of Pong slot machines, each generating a handsome income to its owner on a daily basis, but delays in obtaining a license for the system meant that blatant replicas soon flooded the market (one, ironically, was created by Nutting Associates).
In Japan, Sega and Taito released their own Pong clones, Pong-Tron and Elepong (both 1973).
In 1975, Atari developed a home version of the Pong and initially partnered with Sears for sales and distribution before releasing it under its own name. The game immediately gained huge popularity despite its $100 price tag ($556 in dollars for 2023), and generated $15 million in revenue over the Christmas period alone.
With the advent of new games, success was not long in coming
Atari, Sega, Taito, and others have released new arcade games that have become absolute hits. Gun Fight (1975), Heavyweight Champ, Speed Race and Breakout (all three from 1976) offered the public new themes and gameplay, such as a PvP shooter or Vertical Scrolling Games, and all of them were very popular — the developers sold thousands of slot machines around the world.
Naturally, the games themselves were still very simple. But their novelty and well-thought-out gameplay have attracted millions of buyers.
No game in the late 1970s demonstrated this as vividly as Space Invaders (1978) by Taito. In four years, the game sold nearly $4 billion in Japan and the U.S. (where the game was released by Midway).
Today, game makers would gladly sell kidneys for a single game to make that kind of money, but in the late ’70s and early ’80s, this was a watershed moment in history.
Simple in its essence, the addictive game simply could not bore people. This paved the way for many companies that were looking to get their share of the profits in the gaming industry. Various home gaming consoles and affordable computers competed for sales and consumer attention.
Atari’s second console, the VCS (later Atari 2600), was a modest success during the first few years of sales, but in 1980 Atari’s popularity took off when they acquired the rights to Taito’s version of Space Invaders. With sales reaching more than 2 million units this year alone, Atari set out on the path of bringing arcade games to consoles.
In Japan, Nintendo released its first console Color TV-Game (1977), which proved to be very popular, although it was never sold outside of its home country. At the same time, Atari had plenty of competition in the U.S. — Magnavox, Coleco, and Mattel were getting into the game, and when it came to choosing a home console, the buyer was already a bit spoilt for choice.
With the average retail price of all these devices around $220 (roughly $1000 in 2023), and games cost almost a third of that amount. The fact that they were still so successful in sales is a testament to how strong the desire people had to play video games.
And what games they were! Galaxian Game from Namco (1979) combined simple but exciting shooting, great colors and movement; Atari’s Asteroids In the same year, it used a completely opposite approach, with simple vector graphics and complex gameplay. However, both games were received with a bang by the public and were released on numerous platforms over time, as well as spawning many clone games.
Home game consoles and early computers found their way to analogues of the best arcade games, both licensed and otherwise. But not all games of the 70s were associated with colorful sprites, sound effects, and frenetic action. Text-based adventure games such as Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), Zork (1977) and Adventureland (1978), served as a source of inspiration for the development of MUD (1978), and modern MMORPGs can trace their history back to these games.
With the beginning of the decade, video games have already become a part of popular culture. Game Pac-Man from Namco (1980), with its basic graphics and sounds, concealed a complex structure of elaborate gameplay and features that became a source of inspiration not only for numerous imitations, but also for theand for game design in general. Pac-Man was so successful that an equally successful animated TV show was created on its basis, as well as a huge number of related products were sold.
It could be argued that Pac-Man was the beginning of video game characters becoming a mainstream of game design – invented personalities that defined the theme and style of the game. And it was Nintendo that was most active in developing this direction, starting with the game Donkey Kong in 1981. Arguably the first platformer to use jumping and climbing, Donkey Kong had features that have become key to many other games, such as story scenes and different level stages (instead of repeating the same pattern over and over again).
However, the protagonist was initially nameless, then Nintendo briefly settled on Jumpman and eventually Mario.
This character in a hat with a mustache Mario Bros (1983), has become one of the most recognizable in gaming culture.
From cutting-edge technology to turnkey solutions
The main problem faced by video game console companies was their high cost with limited use options. For example, the console Coleco Telstar (1976) sold for less than $100 and offered only three games, all variations on the same theme.
Advances in processor technology began to make computers suitable for purchase not only in business and industry, but also for home use.
In 1979, Atari introduced its models Atari 400 and 800, which used this advantage for the first time, despite their high price of $550 and $1,000, respectively.
Boulder Dash was a real hit on Atari 8-bit computers
However, despite their high price, they sold surprisingly well, which can be attributed to the lack of strong competition and the availability of high-quality games for the platform. But where such a market exists, there will always be enterprising people who are ready to invest in it.
At a time when arcade machines cost thousands of dollars and required special chips, the early 1980s saw the rise in popularity and availability of cheap home computers. These devices, based on simple microprocessors, were mass-produced and had an attractive price-performance ratio.
The best-selling examples of such computers were Commodore 64 and Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum. Being polar opposites in terms of price (the former was almost 4 times more expensive), these computers generally abandoned the use of cartridges and instead loaded games released on cassettes.
Despite the longer loading times for games compared to cartridges, the abandonment of expensive ROM chips has led to a decrease in the cost of games. Using this medium also made it easy for people to copy and share games, while at the same time meaning that with the time, effort and necessary knowledge, anyone could create their own game and sell it.
Retail store shelves were filled with low-cost games, although some of them were of extremely poor quality. The Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum catalogs eventually numbered more than 10,000 games each, offering a wide range of choices for players.
Since slot machines were designed to be continuously recharged, the games available on them were limited by this factor – short, intense gameplay, albeit still better graphics and sound, was the order of the day.
Home computers were free of this kind of stuff and allowed game developers to be more creative as they explored new and unexplored gameplay features. It didn’t matter what genre and style of play you preferred, there were a large number of games to choose from.
In 1984, you could choose between an infinite game world in Elite (top left) and adventure strategy Lords of Midnight (top right), an anarchic fun game Skool Daze (bottom left) and funny comedy Deus Ex Machina (bottom right).
All of these and numerous other games were true pioneers in this new world and became the inspiration for many of today’s popular genres.
Many of today’s largest game development companies started working on basic home markets for the first timepewters. DMA Designs, Creators Grand Theft Auto (1997) consisted of young programmers who met regularly in the in the same computer club.
Some of the most famous hits of that era were designed and written entirely by one person – River Raid (1982), Jet Set Willy (1984) and Uridium (1986) vividly demonstrated what heights can be achieved with the necessary knowledge and aspiration.
At a time when arcade machines and expensive home computers had powerful hardware capable of handling the many colors and sprites on the screen, there were other gaming platforms with more limited features. Hardware constraints required game developers to be as creative as possible to achieve their goals.
The developers of the hugely successful Knight Lore (1984, top left) used sprites and a single color to create a detailed isometric world, and the game Fairlight (1985, top right) boasted two-channel sound on the ZX Spectrum, despite the fact that the hardware didn’t support it. The encoders achieved this by alternating between the two audio tracks very quickly – so fast that it sounded like a true multi-channel sound to the ear.
No game has embodied this approach better than Tetris (1984). Created entirely by Alexei Pajitnov, on a Soviet computer “Elektronika 60” with no real graphics capabilities, only a text display, no hardware allowed him to fully concentrate on bringing the gameplay to perfection. The fact that the game became Nintendo’s second best-selling Game Boy game (1989) and is still enjoyed today Huge Popularity, testifies to her excellent work.
While cheap home computers were very popular in Europe, in the United States the choice was made in favor of an updated version of Nintendo’s 1983 Famicom system.
Priced at just $180 (equivalent to $500 in 2023) Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was an instant hit. Its hardware was basic, but perfectly tuned for gaming. For five years in a row, all of the best-selling games in the United States have been released on this platform, with the Super Mario Bros series outselling all other games several times over.
In the early/mid 1980s, the video game industry faced a Crisis due to the high prices of consoles and a large number of mediocre games. However, thanks to the advent of 8-bit home computers and the NES gaming system, the market quickly recovered and began to grow at a tremendous rate by the end of the decade.
Fierce competition between NEC, Nintendo, Phillips, and Sega in the console market, and Atari and Amiga in the home computer market, led to superior computing power and graphics being made available to the general public. Slot machines were still the cream of the crop, but gamers playing at home were not going to be left out.
Sixteen is the magic number
In 1985, Atari introduced its next line of home computers, starting with Atari ST ($1000 with color monitor). In the same year, Commodore released Amiga 1000, but this model was even more expensive — $1,285 was a lot of money, even though the computer was equipped with some of the best hardware at the time.
These models included more modern technologies compared to the previous generation (32-bit processors with a 16-bit address bus) and had a significantly larger amount of RAM. However, the graphical output remained relatively simple.
Both the ST and A1000 could only display a limited number of colors at a time, and from a relatively small color palette (9-bit and 12-bit, respectively). However, that hasn’t stopped developers from creating impressive games for both platforms.
Source: Lemon Amiga (Starglider 2 (left) | Stunt Car Racer (right))
Dungeon Master (1987) introduced real-time battles to the RPG genre and an active experience point system (an active experience system is a mechanism in which a character gains experience for performing specific actions, such as attacking enemies or completing quests, as opposed to a passive system where experience is simply assigned for killing enemies or completing levels), and Starglider 2 (1988, top left) and Stunt Car Racer (1989, at the top right) surprised fans of the genre with its graphics.
Mid Arcade Machines The 1980s also switched to Use of complex hardware resources, which used the full 16-bit palette, although such systems were five times more expensive than home computers. One of the first games to use more advanced graphics technology was Sega’s Space Harrier (1985). Although this game was nothing more than a “rail shooter”, it was fast-paced, colorful, and hugely popular all over the world.
In the meantime, since most players in the gaming world still had 8-bit consoles and home computers, they had to settle for simplified ported arcade hits such as Commando, Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins and Paperboy (all 1985). Gameplay tended to remain intact when transferred, but the image almost always degraded substantially.
It didn’t really matter, though, as there were an impressive number of original games that made the most of the platforms they ran on. Adventure games such as Metal Gear (1987, bottom left), rewrote the RPG template, where the main emphasis was on story and exploration rather than loot and experience points.
And the developers of the game Driller (1987, top right) have made astonishing advances in coding, providing pseudo 3D graphics on machines that just a few years ago could barely handle playing a few sprites.
By the end of the 1980s, the gaming industry had fully recovered thanks to the sheer number of consoles and home computers that were popular around the world. U.S. and Japanese manufacturers realized that it was time for new devices capable of running games with graphics comparable to those found in arcade machines, but without the high price tag that characterized the Atari ST and Amiga 1000.
Between 1987 and 1991, four new consoles appeared on store shelves, all of them in one form or another called “16-bit”: NEC TurboGrafx-16, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Nintendo Super NES (SNES) and SNK’s Neo Geo. However, only the Neo Geo offered full 16-bit graphics, although the SNES was pretty close; The NEC game console was actually still 8-bit.
Despite this, the new machines surpassed the old guard in speed and functionality, and the first games took advantage of better hardware in terms of graphics and sound. Game design, however, remained largely the same as it had been in the last decade – arcade hack’n’slash or scrolling beat’em ups were almost universal.
When Sega released the Mega Drive in the U.S. (known as the Sega Genesis), the initial lineup of games included one sports game, and all the others were like Altered Beast, Golden Axe (below) and Space Harrier II.
Arcade-style games were certainly Sega’s forte, but not all new releases followed the path of success. Nintendo Unveils SNES Games in North American Market SimCity and Pilot Wings The last game was a simplified flight simulator that was used to demonstrate the graphical capabilities of the console.
Part of the reason that many games were either arcade versions or clones was that the cost of semiconductor components like ROM and RAM was still very high, and since consoles still used cartridges to store all of the game’s assets, their options were limited.
Luckily, there were developers who refused to follow the crowd. Foundational Game Phantasy Star II (1989, bottom) for the Mega Drive/Genesis was hugely sized, its 6 Mbps ROM was larger than any other game of the time. This turn-based combat RPG combined many gameplay elements that are still in use today.
Old platforms have not been left out either. With tens of millions of 8-bit and 16-bit users in North America, Europe, and Japan, there was a huge market for developers to target.
Game Populous (1989) was released for the Amiga 1000 and was later ported to many platforms and became an instant hit. Game Prince of Persia, released in the same year, was not a commercial success, as it was released on the Apple II. Less, its story and animation were outstanding, and later versions for earlier devices sold well.
With the development of big industry come great games.
However, all the game developers wanted to create another game in the style of Space Invaders or Pac-Man – something that would become a cultural phenomenon and generate profits through the release of products and other related products. For Nintendo, it was, of course, Mario, and Super Mario Bros 2 became the best-selling game in the U.S. for most of 1989.
Two years later, Sega followed suit with the release of the game Sonic the Hedgehog (1991, below), specifically designed to outperform Nintendo in their own game.
What Super Mario Bros did for the NES, Sonic repeated for the Genesis, and this allowed the platform to be strengthened in the North American market before the SNES was released overseas.
Sales of Nintendo and Sega consoles were so high that NEC and SNK could not compete with them, despite the extremely high price of the latter ($650 per console, two controllers and one game).
Other games released at the time didn’t do wonders for computer and console sales, nor did they expand the depth and variety of video game design, but they did become the starting point for new franchises that people were looking forward to, such as Streets of Rage, Road Rash and Shining in the Darkness (all 1991).
This was the era of sequels, and arcades and consoles rarely boasted anything fresh and new. For gaming innovations, you had to turn to other platforms.
Originally released for the Amiga, the game Lemmings (1991, above) was perhaps the best proof of this – being a puzzle/strategy game standing amidst countless shooters, racing, and platformers, the game sold so well that it’s a tribute to its genius.
At that time, games such as The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), Wing Commander (1990), Civilization (1991) and Alone in the Dark (1992) represented the best achievements in the world of PC computer games.
Alone in the Dark
Whether it’s finely crafted gameplay, professionally crafted scenes, or the emergence of entirely new genres, all of these games marked key changes in game creation.
In the 1990s, developers began to fully explore the capabilities of consoles and computers, and games began to incorporate more complex design and programming. Like in the era of cheap 8-bit home computers, developers didn’t ask themselves what could be done on a particular platform, but instead took a brief and said, “We’ll make it work no matter what.”
F-Zero (1990) and Super Mario Kart (1992) took full advantage of the rendering power of Mode 7, giving the racing genre a healthy dose of modernity thanks to pseudo-3D graphics. Game Wolfenstein 3D (1992) was a real breath of fresh air on the PC, because its addictive gameplay was not limited to rudimentary 3D rendering. This game was the impetus for the creation of the legendary Doom (1993) is a landmark project in terms of popularity, impact on the industry and technical level.
Sometimes it wasn’t just the great graphics that were important. For example, the soundtrack to the game Secret of Mana (1993, below) surpassed even the game’s impressively crafted sprites. Nintendo’s SNES console arguably had the best sound capabilities of any gaming platform at the time.
In the near future, we can expect not just exciting new games that push the boundaries of what hardware can do, but an entirely new paradigm for consoles, computers, and video games.
In the second part, we will learn how games evolved during the rest of the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium. New developments will change not only the look and feel of games, but also the way we play them
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