The Video Game is 50 Years Old
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23-11-2022 11:13pm#1
When Pong was launched by a fledgling Atari in November 1972, 50 years ago this month, it was an overnight sensation and from there began the age of the video/computer game.
Arcades flourished for a long while in the late 20th Century but eventually the home game console took over the market. Two generations of adults have now grown up on video games.
With half a century of video games passed now, where will the next 50 years take us? Did virtual reality, much touted back in the 1990s, ever really take off?
What was your first video game? Do you still regularly play computer games, either by yourself or with others online? Do you have a favourite one at the moment?
And....would you still play Pong? 😎😁😁👍
Post edited by JupiterKid on14
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Pedantic but true. I believe there were computer games of sorts among the 1960s early mainframe programmers, but these were not widely known or available.
I heard of Computer Space coming out in 1971, but it was prohibitively expensive, not very user friendly and was a failure.
Pong, on the other hand, was the real beginning of the era of the video game. In its first few weeks of operation in November/December 1972, the arcade machines were jamming up with coins as it was so popular, particularly with college students at the time. 😁
It also made Atari and Noel Bushnell an absolute fortune!
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I got this one Christmas in the early 1980s, it ate batteries at an alarming rate, so my uncle got it to run off a Hornby railway transformer with the wires that connect to the rails soldered to the battery terminals, how we didn't burn the house down...
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It's been a good 50 years. Ups and downs, highs and lows, and to look at Pong above, and now be at the graphical levels of modern AAA games, it's quite a short time. We had Pong in the house, but it wasn't an official Pong console. After much searching, I found out it was called the Optim Sport T-338. Many hours playing the "different" games on it.
The rest of the siblings, all older, weren't that interested in gaming, but the parents still ended up buying multiple Atari 2600 (Jr's apparantly, would be called Slim by todays wording):
We apparantly kept spilling drinks on them, which immediately killed them. I think she said they ended up buying 4, and the price was equivalent to around €700 each adjusting for inflation. Siblings lost all interest soon and I took over as the only gamer in the house. I used to visit a neighbour who were good family friends, and their 4 years older than me daughter had a NES, so I got plenty of use out of that.
Then, Christmas either '94/'95, while the rest of the family went to the pub for Xmas eve, mam stayed at home with me as I was still too young to be in a pub/little bollix that would only causes issues in a pub. I was thick, of course, that I was being excluded from the pub fun, but I quickly and immediately forgot about everyone and anyone else when mam sprung the SNES Super Mario All-Stars bundle out to me. I will never forget the yellow box and the fact I was now an owner of a games console! They had to force me to bed at some ungodly hour, only for me to wake up an hour or 2 later to start playing again. This console cemented my love of gaming:
Never got into Sega. A mate in secondary school had a Megadrive once it came out. I tried a few games on it, but Sonic and the other Sega games just weren't doing it for me. Sonic felt like a pish-poor Mario to me at the time, and Mario was leagues ahead of it. Many memories of going to that game shop on Roches Street in Limerick to rent SNES games. Can't remember what it was called, there's a travel agents there now, just below the Eir customer care building.
Anyway, a few years later, mam being the legend that she is, upgraded me to a PS1. In another DID NOT EXPECT THAT! moment, my sister worked in a hairdressers and I was waiting in there for her to finish and mam bringing us both home on Xmas eve. Mam had fecked off somewhere, I thought nothing of it. When she came back, and most likely because I was in foul form for some reason, she immediately showed me my Xmas present. The whole population of that hairdressers saw pure childhood excitement right then. I'll never forget it, because it was the year that the electricity went for a week over Xmas. We were driving home, me having read every inch of every booklet already, and lights were out on houses. We got near home and noticed lights on there, so I thought I'd be fine. Electricity was on, I hooked everything up, heard the start of that amazing PS1 start up sound and bang, electricity gone for a week. It was horrible, but once it came back you couldn't get me off of it. Destruction Derby 2 and Tomb Raider 1 & 2 kept me going for a long time. Mind blown with the level of realistic graphics compared to the SNES.
That hasn't changed since then. I've had the PS2, PS3, X360, Wii, PS4, PS4 Pro, XSX and PS5 since. I've spent thousands on gaming peripherals over the years, steering wheels, fancy controllers, aim controllers, etc. Bought into PSVR when it came out and it really was a different experience. While VR has not really taken off yet, it still has a market that plenty of people are providing content for, and the upcoming PSVR2 may help rejuvenate the platform.
Now, thanks to how crap humanity is in general, I'm unsocial and spend most my time gaming. I've lived 100s of different lives. Experienced varied and amazing worlds. I continue to have my mind blown by certain games; Subnautica is a stunning game which took over me for a few weeks. God of War and recently Ragnarok shows how amazing action-adventure games can be, almost film like at times. Racing games are near photo realistic. Sports games are... well, they're predatory, full of MT's and barely change but people still buy them in the millions.
I'm very excited for the future of gaming. I don't think I'll get it in my lifetime, but I'd love something like Ready Player One.
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