The earliest known interactive electronic game was by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann on a cathode ray tube. The patent was filed on January 25, 1947 and issued on December 14, 1948. The game was a missile simulator inspired by radar displays from World War II. It used analog circuitry, not digital, to control the CRT beam and position a dot on the screen. Screen overlays were used for targets since graphics could not be drawn at the time.
Alan Turing, a British mathematician, developed a theoretical computer chess program as an example of machine intelligence. In 1947, Turing wrote the theory for a program to play chess. His colleague Dietrich Prinz later wrote the first limited program of chess for Manchester University's Ferranti Mark I. The program was only capable of computing "mate-in-two" problems and was not powerful enough to play a full game. Input and output were offline, there was no "video" involved.
On May 5, 1951, the NIMROD computer, created by Ferranti, was presented at the Festival of Britain. Using a panel of lights for its display, it was designed exclusively to play the game of Nim; this was the first instance of a digital computer designed specifically to play a game. This machine was based on an original design built by E.U. Condon in 1941, after having acquired a patent in 1940. The machine weighed over a ton, and a duplicate was displayed at the New York World's Fair. NIMROD could play either the traditional or "reverse" form of the game.
In 1958, William Higinbotham made an interactive computer game named Tennis for Two for the Brookhaven National Laboratory's annual visitor's day. This display, Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, was meant to promote atomic power, and used an analog computer and the vector display system of an oscilloscope.
In 1962, MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen created the game Spacewar! on a DEC PDP-1 mini-computer which also used a vector display system.[1][13] The game, generally considered the first shooter game,[citation needed] spread to several of the early mini-computer installations, and reportedly was used as a smoke test by DEC technicians on new PDP-1 systems before shipping, since it was the only available program that exercised every aspect of the hardware.[16] Russell has been quoted as saying that the aspect of the game that he was most pleased with was the number of other programmers it inspired to write their own games.
The Oregon Trail is a computer game originally developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974. The original game was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. The player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding his or her party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley on the Oregon Trail via a covered wagon in 1848.
Pong, also by Bushnell and Dabney, used the same television set design as Computer Space, and was not released until 1972 – a year after Computer Space. It was the first successful arcade video game and led to the popularization of the medium.
Space Invaders is an arcade video game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally
Asteroids is an arcade space shooter released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. and designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg. The player controls a spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers.
Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. It was licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway and released in October 1980.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 adventure video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600 video game console. It is based on the film of the same name, and was designed by Howard Scott Warshaw. It is known to be the worst video game ever made.
Super Mario Bros. is a 1985 platform video game internally developed by Nintendo R&D4 and published by Nintendo as a pseudo-sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros.
Double Dragon is a 1987 beat 'em up video game developed by Technōs Japan and distributed in North America and Europe by Taito.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, known as Zelda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce in Japan, is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console
Mortal Kombat is an arcade fighting game developed and published by Midway Games in 1992 as the first title in the Mortal Kombat series. It was subsequently released by Acclaim Entertainment for nearly every home video game platform of the time.
Half-Life is a science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation, the company's debut product and the first in the Half-Life series.
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is a 2003 third-person racing video game developed by Stellar Stone and published by GameMill Publishing for Microsoft Windows PC systems. Also known for being one of the worst games ever made.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an open world action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a 2007 first-person shooter video game, developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii. A handheld game was made for the Nintendo DS
Mario Kart Wii is a 2008 racing video game and the sixth major and most successful installment in the Mario Kart series, developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii video game console
The Last of Us is an action-adventure survival horror video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close