A brief history of video games (Part I) - Safwat Saleem — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:08Hi, I'm Medium Invader
2. 0:10from the classic video game Space Invaders,
3. 0:12and I want to tell you a little bit
4. 0:14about where video games came from.
5. 0:17A video game is an electronic game
6. 0:19that has an interface designed for human interaction
7. 0:23on a video device.
8. 0:25Simple.
9. 0:26Video games are used by scientists,
10. 0:29the military,
11. 0:30and people like you,
12. 0:31and their evolution has spread across arcades,
13. 0:35consoles,
14. 0:35computers,
15. 0:36smart phones,
16. 0:37and all kinds of other electronics.
17. 0:40These days video games are everywhere,
18. 0:42but they were actually made in science labs.
19. 0:45In fact, the earliest U.S. video game patent on record
20. 0:49was in 1948,
21. 0:50and at the time it was referred to
22. 0:52as a cathode-ray tube amusement device.
23. 0:56That's a mouthful!
24. 0:57Some of the earliest video games include
25. 0:59the Nimrod computer,
26. 1:01OXO,
27. 1:02Tennis for Two,
28. 1:04and my personal favorite, Spacewar!
29. 1:08But none of these early video games
30. 1:10were ever sold to the public
31. 1:12because they were either too huge
32. 1:14or too expensive
33. 1:15to get out of the lab.
34. 1:17This all changed when a man named Ralph Baer
35. 1:20looked at his television screen and wondered
36. 1:23how else it might be used.
37. 1:25In 1972, Baer's idea to get video games
38. 1:28out of the science lab and into the living room
39. 1:31led to the release of a game console
40. 1:33called Odyssey.
41. 1:34Odyssey allowed you to play a game on your TV.
42. 1:39At about the same time,
43. 1:40two other people, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney,
44. 1:43were working on something similar
45. 1:45in a little company called Atari.
46. 1:47You might have heard of it,
47. 1:49and even if you haven't,
48. 1:50I'm sure that your Dad has.
49. 1:52Atari's first major game release was in 1972,
50. 1:56an arcade game called Pong.
51. 1:58It was an immediate hit,
52. 1:59and it's credited
53. 2:00as the first commercially successful video game.
54. 2:03Atari then released a home version of Pong in 1974.
55. 2:06By 1978, competition between Atari
56. 2:09and another game company called Midway
57. 2:12was heating up.
58. 2:13Midway had licensed an arcade game
59. 2:14for the Japanese company, Taito,
60. 2:16that put them on the map.
61. 2:17The game:
62. 2:19Space Invaders.
63. 2:20It featured iconic actors, like me,
64. 2:23and it went on to become
65. 2:24the second highest selling arcade game of all time.
66. 2:28Space Invaders also helped kick off
67. 2:30what is known as the Golden Age of Arcade Games.
68. 2:32In response, Atari followed
69. 2:34with the release of the arcade game Asteroids,
70. 2:36which ranked sixth on the list
71. 2:38of highest selling arcade games.
72. 2:39It was a good game,
73. 2:40but it's no Space Invaders.
74. 2:43By 1980, color came to arcade games,
75. 2:46and this was also the year
76. 2:48that another video gaming milestone was born.
77. 2:51Pac-Man, created by the Japanese company Namco,
78. 2:53was brought to the U.S. by Midway.
79. 2:55Important to the spread
80. 2:57of video games into popular culture,
81. 2:59Pac-Man was a character that could be licensed.
82. 3:01It wasn't long before it had a song on the charts,
83. 3:04a Saturday morning television show,
84. 3:06and all sorts of other products.
85. 3:08In just a year, Pac-Man arcade games
86. 3:10made over one billion dollars in quarters.
87. 3:14Then, in 1981, a company called Nintendo
88. 3:17started making waves in the U.S. video game market
89. 3:19with their release of Donkey Kong.
90. 3:22It was the earliest video game
91. 3:23to have a story line.
92. 3:24The story went a bit like this:
93. 3:26Donkey Kong is the pet
94. 3:28of a carpenter named Jumpman.
95. 3:30Jumpman mistreats his pet ape,
96. 3:32so the ape steals his girlfriend,
97. 3:34leaving the game player to assume the role
98. 3:36of Jumpman and rescue the girl.
99. 3:38Jumpman was eventually renamed to Mario.
100. 3:41Other iconic arcade games from the early 80s include
101. 3:44Frogger,
102. 3:46Dragon's Lair,
103. 3:47and Mario Brothers.
104. 3:50Perhaps the last iconic game considered
105. 3:52to be part of the Golden Age of Arcade Games
106. 3:54is Double Dragon.
107. 3:55It was the first really successful example
108. 3:57of the beat-them-up genre.
109. 3:59It was released in 1987,
110. 4:01and, like Donkey Kong,
111. 4:02it featured a damsel in distress storyline,
112. 4:05a storyline common in many video games.
113. 4:09By the mid-90s, the Golden Age of Arcade Games
114. 4:11was coming to an end,
115. 4:13and the home game console
116. 4:14was gaining in popularity.
117. 4:16While arcade games continued
118. 4:17to decline in sales over the years,
119. 4:19the popularity of video games was merely beginning,
120. 4:22and we'll talk about that
121. 4:23and a lot more
122. 4:24in part two of a brief history of video games.