Timeline
1951- Ralph Baer pitches his idea for the video game, but is shot down by his managers.
1952- Noughts and Crosses is created by A.S. Douglass at Cambridge University.
1954- David Rosen creates the company SEGA, Service Games.
1958- William Higinbotham creates Tennis for Two on an oscilloscope to entertain visitors of Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.
1961- Steve Russell, a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) creates Spacewar, the first interactive computer game.
1966- Baer revisits his idea for the TV game system. He gets the funding and means to do so from the company he is employed at, Sanders Associates.
1967- Bear and his team successfully create two interactive TV games, a chase game and a tennis game. They also made a toy gun able to recognize spots of lights on the TV screen.
1970- Magnavox licenses Baer's TV game from Sanders Associates.
1970- Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney (the future creators of Atari), make an arcade version of Spacewar and call it Computer Space.
1971- Computer Space, the first arcade game, is released, but ended up flopping.
1972- Magnavox releases The Odyssey (pictured below), the first home game console.
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(image courtesy of thehottestgadets.com) |
1975- The first home version of Pong was created by Atari.
1977- Atari creates the first multi-game home console, the Atari 2600 (pictured below).
 (image courtesy of news.cnet.com) |
1979- Activision is created by four former Atari employees. The company is the first to create games without creating game consoles or game arcade cabinets.
1980- Puck-Man or Pac-Man is created (Google did a tribute to the game this year. View it at :http://www.google.com/pacman/).
1981- Nintendo creates one of the company's best known characters, Donkey Kong. They also released the first multi-leveled games.
1982- Microsoft joins the video game industry and creates the game Flight Simulator.
1985- Alexey Pajitnov creates Tetris.
1989- Maxis creates the first ever Sims game with Sim City.
1990- The Super Nintendo is released as a response to the popular SEGA console, Genesis.
1992- Mortal Kombat is released and is the brings about a new realism in video game history by using real actors and making human actions, like bleeding to death, a reality.
1979- Activision is created by four former Atari employees. The company is the first to create games without creating game consoles or game cabinets. |
1980- Puck-Man or Pac-Man is created (Google did a tribute to the game this year. View it at :http://www.google.com/pacman/).
1981- Nintendo creates one of the company's best known characters, Donkey Kong. They also released the first multi-leveled games.
1982- Microsoft joins the video game industry and creates the game Flight Simulator.
1985- Alexey Pajitnov creates Tetris.
1989- Maxis creates the first ever Sims game with Sim City.
1990- The Super Nintendo is released as a response to the popular SEGA console, Genesis.
1992- Mortal Kombat is released and is the brings about a new realism in video game history by using real actors and making human actions, like bleeding to death, a reality.
1994- Video game ratings are used. This gives consumers information needed to know before playing a game.
1995- SEGA releases the first 32-bit CD based game console, Saturn (pictured below).
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(image courtesy of wii.mmgn.com) |
1996- Nintendo 64 is launched and is the first 64-bit game console.
1999- The Sega Dreamcast is released. It is the first game console to have VMS memory card /PDA and built-in 56 Kbps modem, which enables online play of videos through the system.
2000- The Playstation 2 is released by Sony. It is the first 128-bit console and adds a new feature of allowing DVDs to be played on it.
2004- The Nintendo DS is released.
2005- Sony releases the Playstation Portable. Allows users to play games and watch movies.
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Sony Playstation 2 (image courtesy of pugo.org) |
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Nintendo DS (image courtesy of digitaltrends.com) |
