Inventions Through Time: Home Video Games
by Kalob
Introduction / invention #0
"The Moving Line" by Ralph Baer
1966
Back in 1951, Ralph Baer had the idea of an interactive television while building a television from scratch. He let this idea sit in the back of his head until August of 1966 when he held the position of chief engineer and manager of the Equipment Design Division at Sanders Associates. By December of the same year he had a prototype he had built with a technician that allowed the player to move a line across the screen. After Ralph demonstrated this primitive form of a video game, he was given funding for a more complete project. Ralph Baer is recognized as the father of video games.
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Invention #1
"The Brown Box/Magnavox Odyssey" by Ralph Baer & Magnavox
1969
After many unsuccessful months of looking for a company to buy, and produce their consoles. six non successful prototypes later, the device dubbed "the brown box" was conceived. This console had the ability to display three dots on the screen at a time. This console is recognized as the first video game console ever. A sanders patent attorney recommended reaching out to television manufacturers to produce this device, and with this advice, the team managed to garner interest from a company called Magnavox. With a few changes to the internals and exterior, the Brown Box was turned into the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console ever.
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Invention #2
"Atari Home Pong" by Atari
1975
After the runaway success of the arcade version of pong, Bushneil, the co-founder of Atari, pushed his employees to create new products. A new technology called the large-scale integration chip (LSI chip) had recently become available, which inspired Bushneil to create a reduced version of pong for a home system. The chip initially was very expensive, costing around $50,000. luckily the process become much cheaper to mass-produce.
In 1975, Atari engineer Harold Lee proposed a home version of pong that would connect to the television, much like the Magnavox Odyssey and similar systems. It was given the ingenious name: Home Pong
Alcorn, a fellow engineer, along with Lee worked tirelessly to design and debug the device. Bob Brown, yet another engineer, helped Lee and Alcorn to prototype Atari Home. the prototype was a device attached to a wooden pedestal containing over a hundred wire, which was later replaced by a single chip designed by Alcorn and Lee. Bushneil and Gene Lipkin, Atari's vice-president of sales, approached many toy and electronic retailers to attempt to sell Home Pong. Retailers rejected them due to the products high cost. Atari noticed an advertisement for a Magnavox Odyssey from Sears Sports Goods and opted to contact them with their proposition. Initially, Atari declined Sears' terms but contacted them again after failing to find anyone else.
Pong is arguably one of the most influential games ever made, and bringing this classic to a home console inspired many other companies to do the same. some of the most recognized classic consoles, and their brands, got their start cloning this device.
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Invention #3
"Color TV-Game 6" by Nintendo
1977
Well this device is not known by many people other then hobbyists, and didnt have much impact outside of japan, it was the start of an era. Today Nintendo is one of the biggest companys in gaming, and this small device was the beginning of their global empire, because this was their first big foray into Home gaming.
Nintendo had no prior knowledge of manufacturing technology, so they enlisted the help of Mitsubishi to mass produce their own take on a home pong system. Nintendo acquired a license from magnavox so they could create a pong-like system. the device retailed for a significantly lower price then competing systems, which was a very good marketing tool.
much like the name implies, the console had six variations on the table tennis like game. some versions changed the size of the paddles, well some added extra things for the ball to bounce off of
This console was a commercial hit, it sold roughly one million units during its retail lifespan. this huge success inspired Nintendo to continue pursuing the video game market, which as we know today, proved to be a huge success.
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Invention #4 & #5
"Famicon" by Nintendo
&
"Sega SG-1000" by Sega
1983
You may be wondering why I decided to do these two consoles together, and that's because they both pioneered what is known as the 8bit era of gaming.
On July 15, 1983, The Japanese company's Nintendo and Sega both released their revolutionary consoles to the Japanese market. The companies both intended to keep their consoles to the Japanese market, but following the huge success in Japan, they both pursued a broader market. The two would become rivals during this generation, Sega later adopting the catch phrase: "we do what nintendon't"
Famicon
Nintendo decided to approach the American company Atari, which had the largest share of the home video game market in North America, with a proposal for Atari to license and distribute it. The agreement was supposed to be signed at the Consumer Electronics Show in July of that year, but got postponed due to an issue with the rights of one of Nintendo's properties. By the time the issue was resolved, the video game crash of 1983 had occurred and Atari began to lose a lot of the influence on the market. Nintendo took this as an opportunity to ditch the competition and enter the market on its own.
The famicom was sold under a different name in north america, one that almost anyone under the sun will recognize: The NES, or nintendo entertainment system. When you think of classic video games, you think of the NES. The game Super Mario Bros was released on both systems. "Mario" quickly became a household name. The game was very innovative for platformers, especially since it was one of the first.
Sega sg-1000
The sega SG-1000 was made in response to a downturn in arcades in 1982, it was Sega's first step into Home gaming. well Sega wasn't as successful as nintendo in the gaming industry, their name is still one of the most recognized. The sega sg-1000 was released the exact same day as Nintendo's Famicom, solidifying their rivalry.
Sega opted to make their consoles off of easy to find, off the shelf components to keep costs down, and production up. Sega only released the SG-1000 in japan, but sold it under rebranded consoles worldwide. The SG-1000 never made it to the USA, but its upgraded, much more recognizable version, the Master System was. The SG-1000 itself is considered a flop, but it paved the way for one of the most beloved retro consoles ever made.
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Invention #6
"Master System" by Sega
1986
The
Sega Master System was initally called the Sega Mark III, an upgraded
version of the Sega SG-1000. even though the Master system was an export of
an already Japanese console, it got re-exported back to japan under the
Master System branding. though this wasnt a completly useless corporate
desicion; the Master System had a few extra features compared to the
SG-1000, such as a built in FM chip. Just like Nintendo released the NES
over seas, Sega wanted a cut of the American-Home-console-market pie, and
thus the Master System was in direct competition with Nintendo.
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Invention #7
"PlayStation" By sony
1994
The playstation was created by Ken Kutaragi, a Sony executive, Who was later dubbed “The Father Of The Playstation” for obvious reasons. Kutaragi's interest in gaming stemmed from watching his daughter play games on Nintendo's famicom. The story behind the inception of the playstation goes that Nintendo and Sony were attempting to create a system together; A sort of floppy disk reader for the NES’ proceeding console. Much like the name of the storage medium, the project flopped. Funny enough, this device was also named the playstation. During the production of this system, the team focused on making the console 3D graphics based, this was the first ever video game console to focus primarily on 3D graphics.
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Invention #8
"Nintendo 64" by Nintendo
1996
The Nintendo 64 is another console renowned for its futuristic 3D graphics (atleast at the time). It all started when a company called Silicon Graphics, Inc. developed a supercomputing chip within the “MIPS R4000” family. This chip could [Insert technical jargon about wattage input over output here]. The company decided they wanted to put this funky sci-fi chip into a video game console. They asked sega first, with nintendo being a backup option. Sega declined this offer. I personally choose to believe this is what began the beginning of the end of their console days. The Nintendo 64 was unveiled to the public in a playable demo on november fourth 1995, at Nintendo’s 7th Annual Shoshinkai trade show, hoards of japanese children huddled in the cold outside to get a chance to try nintendo's new revolutionary device. When the device was released in japan, the initial 300,000 unit shipment was sold out within the day, and people were already reselling them for hundreds of dollars over their retail price. The device shipped out with two games, Pilotwings 64, and super mario 64. The latter is the most successful 3D platformer to ever exist, and it was the device's best selling game. Remember the MIPS chip? Nintendo paid homage to it in the form of a rabbit, named Mips, living in the castle's basement in the Hit game. The Device came to north america on September 26, 1996 to similar affection.
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Invention #9
"wii" by Nintendo
2006
The Wii was Nintendo's attempt at broadening their demographic. Instead of catering to “gamers” Nintendo was trying to create a system for the whole family. And they very well succeeded in that. There is a very good chance that if you yourself don't own a wii, more than one of your family members or friends do. Well a lot of people rightfully call the wii gimmicky, it took gaming into the mainstream. No longer a niche hobby that got looked down upon, rather a fun family activity. The wii itself was bundled with wii sports, a collection of sports games like bowling, boxing, and baseball. The wii is the fourth best selling console to date. Sony and Microsoft (i'll touch on them in the honourable mention section) attempted to compete with the Wii, but failed almost completely.
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Invention #10
"Nintendo Switch" By Nintendo
2017
The Nintendo Switch is technically not a home console, But a Hybrid console. it can be hooked up to the TV and played as a normal console, or used as a portable handheld console. It is the first mainstream hybrid console ever. The controllers can be taken off the side of the main tablet and be used individually, or as one controller reminiscent of the wiis remote and nunchuk peripheral. The Switches success very well might have saved the company as the last console they made, “the will U'' was such a laughable failer that it very well almost deserved a section in of itself. Much like the Wii, the switch has a very large demographic, catering to almost everyone. There's competitive games with tournaments you can compete in for real cash prizes like splatoon 2 or super smash bros ultimate, or games to exercise in, like Wii sports. There's collections of board games, art games, and puzzle games. This device really has everything, and as such is recognized by a very large group of people world wide.
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Honorable mentions
Sony Vs Microsoft
All of the Playstation and xbox consoles were very important, and today are the best selling consoles on release. They weren't omitted from this presentation because of unimportance, but rather because this presentation would be twice as long, so to paraphrase all of that: all of them were important, and there was a lot of them.
SNES
The snes was the proceeding console from the NES. I put it here simply because this console contained the game “Chrono trigger” in my opinion, the best video game ever made.
Most early Sega consoles
Similar issue with sony and microsoft. Just so many of their consoles, and I have no idea how to approach them in this presentation.
