The First Video Game
There are a lot of different forms of entertainment and pastimes in today’s world, ranging from fine dining, art, sport, travelling, films, and video games, among many others. Video games have become a huge part of pop culture over the last 30 years, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone that doesn’t enjoy video games in some form or other. Computer games, console exclusives, mobile apps, and even smart watch games are available to anyone who wants to pass the time and have a little fun.
If you look at the modern shooter, or, it’s quite an incredible piece of engineering. A real, working physics engine that utilizes gravity, weather, and physical force, often set against a beautiful world of colour, vibrancy and life. It wasn’t always like this, though, and looking back at some of the world’s first video games can show you just how far they’ve come. But it does beg the question, what was the first video game?
The Classic Arcade Games
Back in the day, long before Canadian mobile casinos were around, the arcade was the only place you could play a video game, and while arcades have mostly fallen out of fashion due to modern gaming systems, many will remember going to arcade and trying out all the latest releases. The arcade was where games such as Asteroids, Pac Man, and Pong gained their fame, and most consider these to be the genesis of all modern video games.
Pong, in particular, is often regarded as the first of them all. It’s simplistic nature of bouncing a small ball (or square, back in the day) turned out to be an incredible amount of fun, and even today there is nothing quite like playing Pong with a friend. Pong was released by Atari in 1972, an age ago in terms of modern gaming, and was also the reason for the rise of modern consoles, thanks to the first Pong consoles that were released for home-use. Pong, no doubt, is a huge part of the reason that video games caught on the way that they did; but despite all this, Pong cannot lay claim to being the first of them all. That title belongs to a different game that was almost twenty years older.
The First of The First
The very first modern video game was Tennis for Two, an extremely simple game that used a radar panel to work, and was the brainchild of physicist William Higinbotham, in 1958. Higinbotham was an employee of MIT’s Radiation Lab division, and had extensive knowledge on radar systems and how they functioned. He was also part of a special visitor’s day that was held by the Brookhaven National Laboratory, where scientists much like Higinbotham could display their work.
It was here where the idea for a game first sparked in his head, after being bored from all the other exhibits. Using his experience and knowledge with radars, Higinbotham designed a system where the player was able to turn a knob for direction, and then press a button to hit the ball back at the other play.
The Rest Is History
It was the first digitized version of tennis, and the godfather to all of the video games and mobile games we have today. With something as simple as Tennis for Two, more advanced games were thought up and released, and they took the world by storm.
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