A History Of Computer Games Part One: 1950s - 1970s

The first computer game that was ever created was made in 1952 by a man called A.S Douglas, he created a tic-tac-toe. but the first video game, which is disputed ferociously,was created by the Head of the Instrumentation Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory William Higinbotham in 1958, the game that he created was called tennis for two, people argue and say that because this game did not deliver any video signals, it was not a video game. He created the game so that people that visited the nuclear power plant where he was working at the time would have something to do. The game used an oscilloscope which simulated a game of tennis; this game was based on analogy rather than digital computing.
Shown below is a link which shows tennis for two, to us it looks very basic level game but at the time it was a cutting edge exciting game which entertained people for hours on end.

http://www.pong-story.com/tennis1958.htm

And from here on in the games world has not looked back, it has been growing and improving year in year out.



The first game I remember playing was the Prince of Persia game on the pc. I can remember me and my brothers sat in my Dad’s study playing from morning, I would say till dawn but our bed time was about 9 so till late. The game at the time had everything, it had awesome graphics, the backgrounds were incredibly detailed and bright for that era of gaming, and it also had a great story line and trials that kept you on the edge of your seat. But once me and my brothers got the cheats on the MS-Dos version the game lost its challenge because we could skip to any level!!! But I would now love to be able to play that game and complete it fair and square.
















The first console I got was a Sony Playstation I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. That Christmas Eve going downstairs before anyone else and sat in front of it playing if I recall correctly Oddworld: Abe’s oddysee and Actua Soccer 2. From then I have always been interested in pretty much any football game, in fact at the moment the game that I am totally hooked on is football manager 2007. And also my most favourite video game is any of the recent pro evolution soccer games. Give me pretty much any video game to do with football and content to play it hours on end! I just recently played half life and thought that game was awesome.












There is a big technological gulf between Prince of Persia and the Pro Evolution Soccer games, for instance the Pro Evolution games are extremely more detailed than Prince of Persia, this is due to the fact people’s knowledge and understanding of computers is more advanced than before when Prince of Persia was first released. the main thing that has kept me gaming is the fact I know technology is always improving, and it is a fact that if it is always improving then video games will get better, and knowing this excites me because the next generation of games if they stay true to form will be AMAZING!!!