Events
British professor A.S. Douglas created OXO, also known as noughts and crosses or a tic-tac-toe, as part of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Cambridge.William Higinbotham created Tennis for Two on a large analog computer and connected oscilloscope screen for the annual visitor’s day at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.Steve Russell at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented Spacewar!, a computer-based space combat video game for the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor-1), then a cutting-edge computer mostly found at universities. It was the first video game that could be played on multiple computer installations.Developers at Sanders Associates, Inc., led by Ralph Baer, invented a prototype multiplayer, multi-program video game system that could be played on a television. It was known as “The Brown Box.”Atari released a home version of Pong, which was as successful as its arcade counterpart.,Atari released the Atari 2600 (also known as the Video Computer System), a home console that featured joysticks and interchangeable game cartridges that played multi-colored games, effectively kicking off the second generation of the video game consoles.The release of the Space Invaders arcade gameThe launch of Activision, the first third-party game developer (which develops software without making consoles or arcade cabinets)the North American video game industry experienced a major “crash” due to a number of factors, including an oversaturated game console market, competition from computer gaming, and a surplus of over-hyped, low-quality games, such as the infamous E.T., an Atari game based on the eponymous movie and often considered the worst game ever created.The video game home industry began to recover in 1985 when the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), called Famicom in Japan, came to the United States. The NES had improved 8-bit graphics, colors, sound and gameplay over previous consoles.Nintendo, a Japanese company that began as a playing card manufacturer in 1889, released a number of important video game franchises still around today, such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid.Nintendo made waves again by popularizing handheld gaming with the release of its 8-bit Game Boy video game device and the often-bundled game Tetris. Over the next 25 years, Nintendo would release a number of successful successors to the Game Boy, including the Game Boy color in 1998, Nintendo DS in 2004, and Nintendo 3DS in 2011.Sonic the Hedgehog was releasedSega created the Videogame Rating Council in 1993 to provide descriptive labeling for every game sold on a Sega home console. The council later gives rise to the industry-wide Entertainment Software Rating Board, which is still used today to rate video games based on content.Sega released in North America its Saturn system, the first 32-bit console that played games on CDs rather than cartridges, five months ahead of schedule.the Playstation 2, released in 2000 and able to play original Playstation games, would become the best-selling game console of all time.Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s Playstation 3, and Nintendo’s Wii kicked off the modern age of high-definition gaming.Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure brought video games into the physical world. The game required players to place plastic toy figures (sold separately) onto an accessory, which reads the toys’ NFC tags to bring the characters into the game. The next few years would see several sequels and other toy-video game hybrids, such as Disney Infinity, which features Disney characters.the WII U was releasedthe playstation 4 and Xbox One were relasedthe nintendo switch was released
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