Tuesday 19 October 2010

Video game history 50's to 70's

58 years since the first game was made by a guy called A.S Douglas in 1952. He made the first ever video game. A version of tic-tac-toe named ‘OXO’. I found this video on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkiwn7u8i8s&feature=related ) which is a version of what it looked like but isn’t. It’s from an emulator on windows vista not from machine that it was originally on. From watching the video I thought the game looked really boring it looks like some math game. But reading up on it made me think,” Hey wait a minute this is kind of like the first real intelligence from a computer.” You play against a computer. And I kind of see why people would enjoy it, because it was a sense of whose better, me or the machine? I like this idea it kind of reminds me of the video Chris showed us. It’s kind of like the beginning of a war between whose better man, or machine that has forever been going in games that need to be played against a computer. Even in games like Assassins Creed (Yes I know, I love Assassins Creed ^_^) I love in Assassins Creed where you have to time your attacks to defeat your enemies I love how you face the computer in a dual to see whose better, ending in a dramatic death. I guess this is the same with this game apart from the dramatic ending, but instead an inside feeling of “Yes! Come on!”  
The second game was a multiplayer game called ‘Tennis For Two’ in 1958. It was programmed on a EDSAC Vaccuum-tube computer (I have no idea what that is) by a man named William Higinbotham, but anyways it’s basically a light of a tennis court with a green dot as the ball and you have to use these knobs to turn to go up and down and then press a button to hit the ball/ light back. It actually looks really fun just because from the video I’ve seen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6mu5B-YZU8&feature=related). From what I can tell basically you can’t see where your hitting the ball from I don’t understand how you know where you are in the game to hit the ball back. In a way, seems like a hardcore way to play tennis. I really do like how the first two games in history that I’ve found are so completely different from each other. All games these days seem to be so alike it’s insane, so many types of shooters, RPG’s etc. I guess before in those years they didn’t have genres for games.
In 1970’s the first ever arcade game was created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney later to be founders of Atari computers. It was called computer space. Which was based on the game called Spacewar! To me games like this really don’t interest me. I find games like Space Invaders and games like that really boring yet playing an fps game doesn’t, which in a sense is where all shooting games come from.  Thought to be honest my interest in shooting games has only started since the ps3. Before I was interested in games like:
Chaos legion
Tomb raider
Grand Theft Auto
BMX XXX (loved the ragdoll bails)
Though no matter what, games are designed for fun. It doesn’t really matter who created the first game or who thought we can use computers for fun. Seeing as there are so many arguments about who started it. Then, to me it doesn’t matter. As long as games exist, people like us are here, to create them and to have dreams.

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