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Prologue:
Games People Played
H
umankind has gamed throughout its history. Whether
2000—2000 B.C., that is. They can be found as shareware on
we look at the dice and primitive board games from
the Internet.
King Tut’s tomb or the graffiti representing game boards
You can download shareware versions of games from
used by waiting patricians in the Roman forum, people
ancient history. Games like the Moorish Quirkat, Mayan Bul,
have left artifacts indicating play as part of their legacy.
Chinese Shap Luk Kon Tseung Kwon, and other games from
Is it any wonder that as our technology has
ancient cultures ranging from those of the Egyptians to the
changed, so has our capacity for play?
Vikings. Each game comes with a lot of background and a
Remarkably, it is now possible to
guided tutorial, since you probably have never seen these
play the hottest games of the year
games in your local toy store.
Ancient Egyptian
Senet board and
Windows version
of Senet.
Ancient Egyptian Mehen board.
The Forbidden Game of
the Snake and a screenshot
of the Windows version.
2 HIGH SCORE!
PROLOGUE
Top Left: Patolli
Top Right: Quirkat
Bottom Left: Bul
Bottom Right: Ur
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Intellivision
Origins
Landmarks of Electronic Game Prehistory
wide conglomerate that owns
Leather Company and creates
begins making dollhouse
game companies in the world.
1889
electronics companies, music
leather products for shoes.
furniture. Mattel ultimately
—see page 283
The Marufuku Company
labels, and much more, includ-
Under the guidance of Leonard
creates a game division and
is established in Japan by
ing Magnavox, the company
and Arnold Greenberg,
manufactures the first hand-
1954
Fusajiro Yamauchi to make
that produces the first home
held games and, later, the
Service Games, created by
Hanafuda playing cards,
video game, the Odyssey.
Intellivision console. Still later,
Korean War vet David Rosen,
and by 1907 they expand
Philips also develops the audio-
they find success with their
is formed to export coin-
to Western playing cards. In
cassette and shares the honors
line of games based on the
operated amusement games
1951, the company becomes
with Sony for the development
Barbie franchise.
to Japan. Later, deciding to
the Nintendo Playing Card
of the CD. Later, they also
—see pages 30 and 70
create his own games in Japan,
Company. Nintendo translates
create the CDI system.
as “leave luck to heaven.”
—see page 18
he purchases an old jukebox
1947
and slot-machine company. The
The Tokyo Telecommunications
name of the company becomes
Engineering Company is founded
Sega, for SErvice GAmes.
The original Connecticut Leather
Company building.
by Akio Morita and Masaru
Sega produces many coin-
—see page 230
1918
1891
The Matsushita Electric
In the Netherlands, Gerard
Housewares Manufacturing
Ibuka. They rise to prominence
operated arcade games and
Philips begins to manufacture
Works is established by
Maurice’s sons, the company
when they license transistor
eventually becomes Nintendo’s
incandescent lamps and other
Konosuke Matsushita.
expands into plastic swimming
technology from Bell Labs and
chief competitor in the home
electrical products. Philips
Matsushita is the parent
pools, home toys, and eventu-
create the world’s first pocket
console business during the
eventually becomes a world-
company of Panasonic, who
ally games and game systems
transistor radio. For world-
late 80s and early 90s.
manufactures the first 3DO
under the name Coleco.
wide marketing, they change
—see page 232
consoles and also has their
—see pages 32 and 94
their name to Sony, taken
from the Latin word sonus,
own game development
1945
which means “sound.”
Naming their picture frame
Ultimately, Sony becomes
business, Harold Matson
a giant in the world of elec-
and Elliot Handler combine
tronics and introduces their
their names and end up with
PlayStation to the U.S. in
Maurice Greenberg
Mattel. Using scraps left over
1995, establishing themselves
starts the Connecticut
from making the frames, Elliot
as one of the most important
company in the 90s.
—see page 254
1932
Russian immigrant
Sony’s PlayStation
Sega’s
founder,
Dave Rosen
in 1966
3
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Homage
to Pinball
A
full treatment of pinball
games is beyond the
scope of this book. Indeed,
whole books have been written
on that subject alone! We
include this brief retrospective,
however, because for many of
us pinball was the precursor
to our addiction to video and
1871 REDGRAVE
PARLOR BAGATELLE
The first game to use a
spring-loaded plunger.
computer games.
1932 BALLY BALLYHOO
The game that started
Bally Corporation.
4 HIGH SCORE!
PROLOGUE
1876 REDGRAVE ORIGINAL
PARLOR BAGATELLE
Montague Redgrave's 1876 model.
1933 PACIFIC AMUSEMENTS CO. CONTACT
First game to use electricity instead of just
gravity. First game to have an electrical ringing
bell. First game to be designed by Harry
Williams, who later founded Williams Pinball.
1898 REDGRAVE "TWO BELL"
PARLOR BAGATELLE
Note the slot in the spring-loaded
shooter housing.
1932 THE PRESIDENT
Released in February 1933. It is nearly
identical to the Mills official Pin Table
which was released in July 1932.
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1931 AUTOMATIC INDUSTRIES'
BABY WHIFFLE
Generally regarded as the first
production "pin game."
1947 GOTTLIEB
HUMPTY DUMPTY
The first pinball game to use
flippers, forever altering the
direction of pinball games.
Page 5
1936 BALLY BUMPER
The first game with scoring
electric bumpers.
STAR SERIES
Early mechanical baseball
game from Williams.
1931 GOTTLIEB BAFFLE BALL
Gottlieb's first pin game. The game that
launched the entire pinball industry.
1932 MILL'S OFFICIAL
First game to be advertised as "pinball."
The name has been used ever since.
U.S. MARSHALL
U.S. Marshall was produced by Mike Munves Company in the 1950’s. It is
very similar to the ABT Challenger gun game series produced since the
1930’s. The game shot small ball bearings at targets (detail to right).
PHOTOGRAPHS ON THESE PAGES COURTESY OF WAYNE NAMEROW (WWW.PINBALLHISTORY.COM). MECHANICAL
GAMES, THE PRESIDENT AND BALLY BUMPER COURTESY OF RICHARD GARRIOTT (PHOTOS BY RUSEL DEMARIA).
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1890 article in Scientific American
showing Hollerith’s machine.
Early Technology
Advancement to the
which were
designed to auto-
Information Age
mate mathematical
calculations.
W
Herman Hollerith’s census
tabulating machine in 1890.
hile the concept of a computing device may not be as
Babbage was never
ancient as that of playing games, one of the earliest
able to build either one, but his colleague and patron,
such devices, dating back to at least 300 B.C., was the
Augusta Ada Byron, wrote and published several papers
counting board, later the abacus. This was a storage device
describing Babbage’s work. Byron, the future Lady Lovelace,
used to help keep track of numbers. Not true calculating
was the daughter of Lord Byron, and arguably the first
devices, these are still the earliest known aids to
computer programmer. Even though the Analytical Engine
mathematical calculation.
was never built, Byron wrote instruction sets for the solving
Much, much later, but still as early as 1645, Blaise Pascal
of mathematical problems.
invented a mechanical adding machine, for which he
received a patent from King Louis XIV. This could hardly
Only Logical
be called a computer, but it was a calculating device and a
In order for computers to evolve, many key concepts had to
very early step on the road to the computers of today.
emerge. The idea that logic could be represented by machinery was one such concept. An expert on George Boole’s work
Charles Babbage and
Augusta Ada Byron
6 HIGH SCORE!
Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada Byron
of the mid-1800s, American logician Charles Sanders Peirce
Back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, the idea
was able to see that simple true/false calculations of
of a computer that could think intrigued a few intellectuals,
Boolean algebra could be emulated by electrical circuitry,
but frightened most people who even bothered to consider
which could be switched between “on” or “off” states. By
the idea. One man who was particularly obsessed with the
1880, Peirce had devised a “switching circuit” that could be
concept of computing machines was Charles Babbage, a
used to switch states and therefore emulate Boolean condi-
British inventor, astronomer, and mathematician. As early
tions of true/false, on/off. Up to this point, any attempts to
as 1833, Babbage was working on the problem.
make a computing device had relied entirely on mechanical
Babbage conceived of two mechanical computing devices,
the “Analytical Engine” and the “Difference Engine,” both of
PROLOGUE
components. Using electrical switches made possible
smaller, faster, and somewhat quieter machines.
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Humble Beginnings
several major innovations in computing including the use of
Hermann Hollerith’s 1890 census tabulating machine may
binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing,
not seem important to you, but if you play
games on a Windows machine, consider
and separation of memory and computing functions.”*
For many years the patents and glory went to John
that this humble invention was more or
Mauchley and J. Presper Eckert, the designers of the ENIAC,
less a direct ancestor of the original IBM
which for years was considered to be the first all-electronic
PC. Hollerith’s company became the
computer. It wasn’t until 1973 that a court ruled in favor of
International Business Machines Corporation,
known more simply as IBM.
In the 1930s, IBM funded the development of an
Atanasoff as creator of the first electronic computer.
Above: Vacuum
tubes from the
ENIAC era.
ENIAC was impressive, however, if only for sheer size.
Consisting of 30 separate units, it weighed in at more than
electromechanical computer known as the Mark I. By the
30 tons and contained 19,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays,
time it was completed in 1944, however, it was already
and hundreds of thousands of other pieces. Its electrical
obsolete. Already, the speed of innovation was outstripping
consumption was a whopping 200 kilowatts, and it required
the speed of development.
a forced-air cooling system.
General Purposes
pre–solid state computer, whose model for computer design
Like Hollerith’s census tabulation device, early computing
is the basis for modern computers.
Despite its monstrous size, ENIAC was a modern,
machines were designed to accomplish a specific task.
However, in the 1930s, British mathematician Alan Turing
envisioned a machine whose entire function would be
IBM’s original logo,
c. 1924.
*Source: Iowa State University Web site at
http://www.cs.iastate.edu
described by the instructions it was given. Instead of a
machine dedicated to one purpose only, Turing’s machine
would be useful for multiple purposes. Turing’s concepts
bore fruit in the hands of another mathematician, John
Von Neumann, who created the concept of the stored
computer program.
Tubin’
While the Mark I was under construction, John Atanasoff
and Clifford Berry were conceiving the first electronic
computer, which used vacuum tubes in place of the mechanical relays used in previous devices. Their ABC, or AtanasoffBerry Computer, “was the world’s first electronic digital
computer. It was built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford
Berry at Iowa State University during 1937-42. It incorporated
Left: 1946
photograph
of ENIAC.
7
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1947: A Tiny Breakthrough
The transistor was perhaps the single most important
development in the history of electronics. Now electronic
Based on experiments in quantum physics, researchers
devices that once required a forklift to move could be
became intrigued by the predicted behavior of certain
held in the palm of your hand. They were more reliable
crystals when electricity was run through them. These crys-
and produced less heat. The electronics revolution truly
tals behaved neither as conductors nor insulators, and came
began with the development of the transistor. In 1955,
to be known as semiconductors. William Shockley headed
Shockley founded Shockley Semiconductor in Palo Alto,
one team of researchers that included Walter Brattain and
California, which ultimately set the stage for other
John Bardeen. The trio of Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain
semiconductor companies to move into the area. Because
ultimately discovered how to run and modulate electricity
of its flourishing semiconductor industry, the area came
through a semiconductor and created the first transistor.
to be called Silicon Valley.
The first transistor.
Shockley and his team at work.
Believe it or not, the
monstrosity above is a
transistorized calculator.
8 HIGH SCORE!
PROLOGUE
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A Look at Nearly 30 Years of Integrated Circuits
The transistor led to the development of the integrated circuit, or IC, which combined several transistors on a wafer-
1985: Intel 80386
Clock speed: 16-33 MHz
275,000 transistors
like board, called a “chip.” ICs became smaller and more complicated over the years. Originally intended for specific
purposes, such as calculators, they evolved into fully programmable, highly miniaturized devices incorporating millions of
transistors and very complex, almost invisible circuitry—the foundation of modern computers.
1971: Intel 4004
Clock speed: 108 kHz
2,300 transistors
1972: Intel 8008
Clock speed: 200 kHz
3,500 transistors
1974: Intel 8080
Clock speed: 2 MHz
6,000 transistors
1982: Intel 80286
Clock speed: 6-12 MHz
134,000 transistors
1979: Intel 8088
Clock speed: 5 MHz
29,000 transistors
1997: Intel Pentium III
Clock speed: 450-600 MHz
9,500,000 transistors
1993: Intel Pentium
Clock speed: 60-133 MHz
3,100,000 transistors
1989: Intel 80486
Clock speed: 25-50 MHz
1,200,000 transistors
1993: Intel Pentium Pro
Clock speed: 150-200 MHz
5,500,000 transistors
1997: Intel Pentium II
Clock speed: 233-300 MHz
7,500,000 transistors
In the Background
2000: Intel Pentium IV
Clock speed: 400+ MHz
42,000,000 transistors
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Tennis for Two:
“Tennis for Two” is the earliest known electronic game.
The First Electronic Game?
chance to play it. However, Higginbotham had no interest in
Tennis for Two was a big hit, and lines formed to get a
marketing the idea. For one thing, he later said that if he
Willy Higginbotham was a renowned physicist working at
had patented the idea, it would have been assigned to the
Brookhaven National Laboratories in the 1950s. As a
U.S. government and he would have made maybe ten dollars
designer of electronic circuits for the Manhattan Project
on it. In any case, Tennis for Two remained operational for
during World War II, Higginbotham came to Brookhaven
two years and was finally dismantled in favor of an exhibit
when it opened in 1947. In 1958, as head of instrumenta-
that showed cosmic rays.
tion design, he decided to put some pop in the annual
This is the setup at
Brookhaven with
several displays,
including Tennis
for Two (right).
10 HIGH SCORE!
The whole thing would probably have been forgotten
visitor day by creating a little interactive game using an
except that teenager David Ahl saw it on a field trip to
oscilloscope, an analog computer, and some basic push
Brookhaven. Ahl later founded Creative Computing
buttons. The result was a simple tennis game, more than a
Magazine, the pioneer magazine of the electronic age,
decade before the advent of Pong. Willy Higginbotham’s
and wrote of his experience with Higginbotham’s game.
PROLOGUE
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HOW
TO
Page 11
PLAY
BY WILLY HIGGINBOTHAM
The display showed a twodimensional side view of a tennis
court. A horizontal line, below
center, represented the floor of
the court. A shorter vertical line
in the center represented the
net. Before the start of play the
ball was shown at a fixed position above one or the other end
of the court. Each player had a
small box, which he held in one
hand. On the box were a knob to
aim at the ball (up, down or
level) and a push button. To
start play, the person with the
ball at his or her end of the
court would select an angle and
push the button, whereupon the
ball would proceed over the net
or hit the net and bounce back.
If it went over the net, the other
player would select an angle and
attempt to return the ball. He
could hit the ball as soon as it
passed the net or after it
bounced, or wait and see if it
landed beyond the end of the
court. There was some wind
resistance, as some energy was
lost in each bounce. The racquet
was not shown and the strike
Willy Higginbotham and his schematic diagram for Tennis for Two.
At left, Higginbotham’s own description of how Tennis for Two was played.
velocity was pre-set. We had
controls for velocity but judged
that a player would have trouble
operating an additional control.
11
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Spacewar!
In Spacewar, two
B-movie–style rocket ships (called
In the summer of 1961, Steve “Slug”
the “Wedge” and
Russell* and some friends were trying
to figure out how to best demonstrate
the “Needle”
the new PDP-1 computer that was being
because one
installed at MIT. In a time when most
was shaped
computers received input and delivered
like a fat cigar
and the other
output in the form of punch cards or paper
looked like a
tape, the PDP-1 was remarkable in that it had a
long slender tube)
monitor display.
battled in computer-
In a 1981 article in Creative Computing Magazine, J. M.
generated space. Players
Graetz, one of those involved in brainstorming the idea for
would flick toggle switches to make
Spacewar!, reported that they came up with the following
three precepts:
● It should demonstrate as many of the computer’s resources
as possible, and tax those resources to the limit;
● Within a consistent framework, it should be interesting,
which means every run should be different;
● It should involve the onlooker in a pleasurable and active
way—in short, it should be a game.
Inspired by E. E. “Doc” Smith’s The Lensman and Skylark
12 HIGH SCORE!
much like the zero-G Asteroids ships that would animate
coin-op and Atari 2600 screens almost two decades later.
Each ship could fire up to 31 torpedoes that would, in turn,
appear as little dots traveling in the direction of the other
ship. If the dot actually managed to intersect the shape of
the other ship, it “exploded” and the ship disappeared. There
were no particle effects and no stereo sound effects to mark
the explosion. The other ship simply disappeared and was
novels, Spacewar was the first real computer game, as
replaced by a mad scramble of dots to represent the debris
opposed to Higginbotham’s Tennis for Two, which used
of the destroyed ship.
hard-wired electronic circuitry, not a computer, to achieve its
A PDP-1 terminal.
the ships change direction, and the ships would respond
Even in 1962, the programmers/designers were discover-
goals, and a model of great game design that’s still fun to
ing the trade-offs between realism and playability. Peter
play today. The game was programmed into the PDP-1 in
Samson decided that the random-dot star map that Russell
1962, and for several years after that it was disseminated to
had originally programmed was insufficient. He used a
college campuses across the country, ultimately spawning a
celestial atlas to program the star map as the actual galaxy
number of rather significant ripples in the fabric of
down to fifth magnitude stars, calling it (with typical hacker
space/time or, more importantly, in the history of electronic
humor) “Expensive Planetarium.” Another student added a
games. Among the many whose first influence could be
gravity option. Another added a hyperspace escape option,
traced back to Spacewar are Nolan Bushnell, founder of
complete with a nifty stress signature to show where the
Atari, and Joel Billings, founder of SSI.
ship had left the system. The problem with hyperspace was
PROLOGUE
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Page 13
Screen from original Spacewar.
you never knew where you’d
end up, and if you reappeared
too close to the Sun and couldn’t
escape its gravity, well, you were
toast. Later, “Slug” himself messed
“
with the reliability of the torpedoes, but this was not well
received by players, who liked their torpedoes to be accurate
and reliable. Russell’s refinements had leaped beyond his
audience’s ability to appreciate them.
Spacewar remains one of the truly great milestones in
electronic game history. It directly influenced several of the
great pioneers who came later. It was created before there
was an industry, on a computer whose $120,000 price tag
made it an unlikely commercial product. And yet, it remains a
true gem of a game, as much fun to play today as it was then.
*”Slug” was Russell’s nickname because, according to coworker Graetz,
“he was never one to ‘do something’ when there was an alternative.”
Steve “Slug” Russell and friends playing the original Spacewar game.
In the late 60s or early 70s, while hanging around at
the Stanford University Student Union, I happened
upon a machine that was the closest I had come to
science fiction in real life. It was an electronic game,
but not a pinball game. It consisted of nothing more
than a TV-like screen and some buttons. It was, in fact,
Spacewar, although by that time, the original toggle
levers had been replaced by buttons. It also featured
other improvements, including sun/no sun and
negative/positive gravity (or none with no sun).
My friend Steven and I played it pretty much
undisturbed at the beginning of the summer break.
By the end of that summer, though, there were crowds
six deep around the machine, and a satellite monitor
had been mounted high on the wall so people could
watch the games in progress. I wish I had understood
what Nolan Bushnell had known when he saw the same
game at the University of Utah. It represented the
beginning of a new era. (RDM)
“
p.2-16
Galaxy War, a version of
Spacewar, appeared on the
Stanford University campus in
the early 70s and may be the
first coin-operated electronic
game, as it may have been on
display and open for business
even before Computer Space
and Pong.
Reputed to be the original PDP-1 of Spacewar fame, now residing at the
Computer History Museum at Moffet Field in Mountain View, California.
13
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Page 14
Games on the TV?
Fox and Hounds
“With that simple
Today it seems obvious that television sets were designed for
arrangement, we
playing games. Right? Well, in the early days of TV, it wasn’t
played a ‘Chase
obvious—except to one engineer, Ralph Baer. Baer is a con-
Game’ in which we
summate inventor, and, convinced that games and TVs were
pretended that one
made for each other, he became the “Father of Video Games.”
spot represented a
After a stint in Army Intelligence in World War II, Baer
The original notes from the bus
station where the first idea of video
games was formally documented.
obtained a degree in television engineering. His goal was to
spot represented a ‘hunter’ or a ‘hound.’ The object of the
build television receivers. By 1951, he was working at Loral,
game was to have the ‘hound’ chase the ‘fox’ until he
then a small military contractor. He was given the job of
‘caught’ him by touching the ‘fox’ spot with the ‘hound’ spot.
building the “best TV set in the world.” At that early date,
It was primitive, all right, but it was a video game, it was fun,
Baer was already thinking about building TV sets with
and we were encouraged to forge ahead.”
games built in.
“Somewhere along the line I suggested that we might
Until this point, the entire effort was unofficial and had
game! That got the predictable negative reaction, and that
nothing at all to do with the work he was supposed to be
was the end of that!”
doing. But Baer figured that he now had something to
show, so he invited Herbert Campman, the company’s
thought to the matter, but in 1966, he was still just about the
corporate director of research and development, to see
only one doing so. Working at the time for another military
what he and Tremblay had created. The response was
contractor, Sanders Associates, Inc., he scribbled some notes
positive, and Baer received his first funding for the
in a bus station in New York, and on Sept. 1, 1966, he wrote
project—$2,000 plus $500 for materials.
a four-page paper outlining his ideas for a TV game system.
innovation involved a toy gun, and Harrison designed some
ic of his proposed system.
circuitry that allowed it to shoot the dots on the screen.
“Now we could ‘shoot’ at that spot, and when we ‘hit’ it, the
on the screen. One of Baer’s early decisions was
spot disappeared from the screen. Having the other player
to send the signal through the antenna input
move the spot rapidly and randomly around the screen gave
(the only one available) and to use channels 3
us a moving target. Gun games were born!”
and 4, which are the channels still used today
for video game consoles attached to the TV.
Baer got Bob Tremblay involved, and
PROLOGUE
Bill Harrison joined the team in January 1967. Baer’s next
Within five days, he had completed a schematThe first task was to make something appear
14 HIGH SCORE!
Shooter
include some novel features, like adding some form of TV
It wasn’t until 15 years later that Baer gave serious
Below: Ralph Baer surrounded by
his inventions.
fox and the other
The gun was a hit with Campman, too, and the team
got more money and time to develop. New ideas and
directions continued to flow, including some initial work
Tremblay built a vacuum tube device that
with creating games to be played over cable TV. New
could place two movable spots on the screen.
people joined the project, including Bill Rusch, who had
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Page 15
the idea to turn the video spot into a ball. “We batted
around ideas of how we could implement games such
as Ping-Pong, hockey, football, and other sports games.
I am not sure that we recognized that we had crossed
a watershed, but that’s what it amounted to.”
Brown Box
By November 11, 1967, the team had produced a working
two-player Ping-Pong game. What followed was a system
for programmable games, culminating in what Baer calls
the “Brown Box.”
What remained
was to find a way to
market the device.
After showing it to
all the major TV
makers, a negotiation started with RCA. However, the RCA
The “Fox and Hounds”
game hardware.
deal fell apart. But Bill Enders left RCA and joined Magnavox.
At Magnavox, Enders championed Baer’s game product, and
ultimately the deal was struck.
Above: Ralph Baer’s 1971 patent for
“Television Gaming and Training Apparatus.”
Above left: Ralph Baer with
Odyssey Game, 1972.
The first home video game system,
the Magnavox Odyssey, was launched in
1972. The Odyssey’s legacy was farreaching. Although it was a marginal
The Brown Box
system that
became the
Odyssey.
commercial success, partially hampered
by Magnavox’s marketing strategies, it
may have been the inspiration for Nolan
Bushnell’s introduction of Pong. (See the
story on page 19.)
Ralph Baer didn’t stop with the
Odyssey. He helped develop Coleco’s
Telestar gaming system and invented
Simon, Maniac, and a lot of other games
and devices. He holds many patents and
is still consulting.
15
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Page 16
out. I originally planned to do it based on a Data General
Sometimes a
Great Notion
1600—to have a minicomputer running multiple games. My
technical addition, as I originally saw it, was going to be a
very cheap monitor. Then what kept happening, the computer kept running out of cycle time—it was so blindingly slow.
I thought the cost of the machine would outstrip its ability to
earn. I almost gave it up. I cut down to four games, but that
put the economics on the edge. I kept having to make the
T
he first part of Nolan Bushnell’s story takes place
monitors smarter, taking over tasks. Then I had my real
in the mid-1960s. The day Nolan Bushnell first
epiphany. ‘Hell,’ I thought, ‘I’m not going to use the Data
encountered Spacewar was the day that may have changed
General. I’ll do it all in hardware.’ So I went from using a
history. It was on the campus of the University of Utah. The
$4,000 computer to maybe $100 worth of components.”
discovery was especially fortuitous because Bushnell not
creating the whole thing in hardware. But he still had to
what it could become.
find a way to market it. How that came about was another
Bushnell reveals, “In some ways I was smitten by Spacewar
not just because it was fun to play, but I also saw commercial
bit of serendipity.
“I had a dentist appointment and my dentist had another
opportunity; I knew how much good games earned. But it was
patient who worked at Nutting & Associates. I was chatting
something I put at the back of my mind. It was running on an
with the dentist through a mouthful of cotton about what
IBM 7900 or something like that. A big IBM machine. Certainly
I was working on. He said you should talk to this guy. And
too expensive to be feasible economically.
“Now fast-forward to me coming to California in 1969
that’s how I first heard about Nutting. They were a company
who had done one product and were in trouble. They were
to work at Ampex,” continues Bushnell. “I was an amateur-
not particularly successful at that time; they were looking for
ranked Go player, and one of the guys I played Go with
anything, so they jumped at it. Maybe a stronger company
worked up at the AI lab at Stanford. He told me about the
would not have taken the risk.”
Spacewar game they had and I told him, ‘I played that in
Computer Space released in 1971. It is widely considered an
college. I’d like to see how it works.’ So he took me up
unsuccessful debut, but it did make money, and, more impor-
there one evening and we played a lot of Spacewar. That
tantly, it gave Bushnell some idea of the demographics of
rekindled my enthusiasm for the game and my belief in
video arcade games at a time when there was no such thing.
its commercial potential.”
Bushnell’s first project was Computer Space, a single-
“Computer Space did very well on college campuses and in
places where the education level was higher. However, there
player version of Spacewar that he created in his spare time.
weren’t any arcades as such back then. You had to put machines
For his workshop, he converted his daughter’s room, and
in bowling alleys and beer bars. That was the market. If you
two-year-old Britta slept in the living room.
couldn’t do well in Joe’s Bar and Grill, you had no chance.
“My original plan was quite different from how it turned
16 HIGH SCORE!
Ultimately, he completed the design of Computer Space,
only recognized a good game when he saw it, he knew
PROLOGUE
Computer Space did horribly in the typical American beer bar.”