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This month, Rylie Revercomb will talk about the origin of the video games that many people have come to know and love.
Other articles in Nostalgia: OG Brainrot.
Video games Through the Years
Video games Through the Years
By Rylie Revercomb
By Rylie Revercomb
Everyone and their mother knows about video games. It seems like every kid has binged through an entire game in a day— whether it may be a classic Nintendo game, a Steam Horror Game, or some old disc found in the garage. For people nowadays, the words "video game" are not foreign. If anything, it has become a part of everyday conversation. However, it wasn’t always this way. As hard as it is for some people to believe, (looking at you, Gen Alpha,) there was a time when video games and consoles were a luxury, not a household regular. There was a time when the first 64-Bit Mario game was seen as a revolutionary invention. So, how have video games changed throughout the years? To know that, one has to know about the first video game ever invented— all the way back in 1958.
While it seems a bit crazy that the first ever video game was invented in 1958, it’s true. Originally, historians and gamers alike believed that the first coded game was Pong— the classic game in which players bounce a ball back and forth across the screen, attempting to get past their opponent’s defenses. However, in the late '50s, a nuclear physicist named William Higinbotham created the first-ever video game. According to APS News, a physics blog by The American Physical Society, “In 1984 he joined Brookhaven National Laboratory instrumentation group… During that time, in October Brookhaven held annual visitors’ days— Most of the existing exhibits were rather dull. Higinbotham thought he could better capture visitors’ interest.” He did so by creating the first-ever video game, a simple mechanic which he titled Tennis for Two. The game had a knob to adjust the angle of the tennis ball on-screen, and players could push a button to hit the ball toward their opponent. The graphics were displayed on a cathode Ray tube, and had none of the fancy graphics and modern animations we see in games today. Nonetheless, it was a hit with the people. It became Brookhaven’s most popular exhibit, and was brought back the next year with a few added features. The screen was bigger, the controls much better, and players could play with weaker or stronger gravity. That’s right-- they could play on Earth, the moon, or Jupiter. The game was an absolute blast with the crowd.
Image by: Brookhaven National Laboratory
Despite all of this, however, the game was retired the next year, and Higinbotham wasn’t recognized for having the first video game until the 1980s. Instead, a more popular game stole his thunder. While there were other small video games created over time, such as SPACEWAR!, (a game created by two MIT college students in the '70s,) video games were not popularized until the release of Pong in 1972. It was extraordinary. Sure, it was just a ball being passed back and forth between two sliders— but for most people who were not at science fairs in the '50s, it was the first and BEST video game they had ever seen. Pong was created by Atari, a well-known name for those who know ANYTHING about video games, and quickly started to make money. This gained Atari some money, and later led to them becoming a company worth over $200 billion dollars. After Pong became so popular, other companies were practically bursting at the seams to run into the same success as Atari. Countless games were created, some of which were popular classics and well-known titles, such as Galaga and Space Invaders. Pong had sparked something that Tennis for Two couldn’t, and video games were becoming all the rage.
This video game influenza spread across the United States, and made its way to other countries, as well. As Atari got rich, far away in Japan, another company was looking for a place in the spotlight. Nintendo. While Nintendo was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamuchi, they of course did not start to look into video games until the 1970s. Originally a company that mass-produced plastic playing cards, Nintendo then caught wind of the video game concept shortly after Pong. It didn’t take long for them to catch on and create their first-ever console, the Color TV-Game, in 1977. Followed by that came the release of another classic— Donkey Kong. This, combined with Nintendo’s Game and Watch units, set the company off in America, as well as Japan. People across the country were hungry for more video games, and Nintendo provided. According to the official Nintendo website, the real American hype began in 1985, when the “Nintendo Entertainment System, NES, launched in America and became a smash hit.” Of course, Nintendo could not deny its customers, and so it started popping out video games left and right. Somewhere in the midst of this (1985 to 1986), Nintendo introduced two of its most popular and recognizable characters- Mario and Link. Even for those who have not played the game, it is easy to recognize the iconic faces that shaped the video game world: Mario and his red cap and mustache, screaming WAHOO! as he leaps through the air— and Link, with his classic green outfit, sword, and shield. They became staples of the Nintendo brand.
However, there was a rival company also being born. Say hello to SEGA. Founded in 1960, this game company would soon bring fan favorites to life— Mortal Kombat, Castlevania, and everyone’s favorite speedy blue blur, Sonic the Hedgehog. While SEGA had not been around for quite as long as Nintendo had been, it quickly grew in popularity. Sonic became the face of the brand, and fans fell in love with the hedgehog and all of his critter friends in the games. The play-through style was much different than Super Mario Bros., which was the other popular platformer game at the time. Unlike Mario, where there is pretty much one set path, Sonic has players going in all sorts of directions depending on their skill. If a player is good, then they will not be caught by traps, keeping them high-up and safe. The more times a player messes up, the lower they will fall. The gameplay for players was so vastly different. That, combined with the improved graphics, instantly made SEGA an intense competitor for Nintendo. This sparked the Mario v. Sonic controversy of the 1990s. The Console Wars. Kids on the playground scorned others if they carried a lunchbox with Mario on it: HOW DARE THEY?! Sonic is better! Arguments started between friends because a household had a SEGA Genesis and not a Nintendo64: WHY WOULD YOU HAVE THAT?! Mario is better! In a post on Resetera, an online gaming forum, a user states, “It has become readily apparent to me over the last few years that Mario and Sonic are both really popular these days with kids. It's like the '90s all over again, when the playground console warz were centered around them as representatives of two neck-and-neck platforms.” And while this made some kids hate each other, it was REALLY GREAT for the companies. The controversy sparked sales, and soon led to more games being created-- that were forced to be bigger and better to outdo their opponent. The console wars might have been the best challenge for these video game companies.
As the 1990s ended and the 2000s rolled around, video game consoles were still as popular as ever, and were now a hit with kids and adults alike. Gradually, games started to become more modern-looking— switching from the pixel, 2-D style of older games to 3-D modeling with improved animation and better voice acting. Games began to include bigger, better plotlines that tied into previous games and connected concepts together. The hype for video games was still contagious! More consoles were popping up and getting better, as well— XBOX, PlayStation, you name it. Consoles were all the rage. And it only led to more gameplay options in the 2010s and onward. With computers now being household items, games started to be sold specifically for laptops. With this, new genres began to become popular. Because of companies such as STEAM, video game makers didn’t NEED to own massive companies and produce consoles to get their games out there. They could code in their basements with some friends and develop something amazing. Platformer games slowly started to fall off, replaced by Platformer, Survival, Horror, and RPG. Horror especially became well-known with the release of games such as Five Nights at Freddy’s. They became popularized because of streamers or YouTubers, such as Markiplier, streaming and uploading videos of them playing the game. Horror soon became an impressive and popular genre. Logging on to just about any gaming platform will result in finding horror games at the top— Poppy Playtime, Bendy and the Ink Machine, and Hello Neighbor. Video games have truly grown from just a ball being passed back and forth on the screen. They are now used to create intricate plots and to sometimes scare the public.
Tennis for Two, Pong, Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, and Five Nights at Freddy’s are all video game names that are known and loved. To think that video game hype started as early as the 1950s, and has only grown stronger as time goes on. From a simple idea at a science fair to a five-hour-long game on easy mode, video games have truly evolved and have come a long way from what they were. It is almost nostalgic thinking about it.
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