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# Notes for PowerPoint
# Video game definition
Video game definition (Merriam-Webster): an electronic game in which players control images on a video screen
# First video game
There are a few contenders, with the first game for a computer being an adaptation of tic-tac-toe, and one of the first games with some kind of video being Tennis for Two on an Oscilliscope. The most widely accepted "first video game" is Spacewar, a game created by MIT students in the 1960's for the PDP-1 computer made to break the limits, and was the first game to use a more usual display. (Smithsonian)
# First console
Ralph Baer created the first video game system after creating a device that could produce a dot. His first prototype for the most advanced version he had made was nicknamed the "Brown Box." The company who owned the rights to the system licensed it to Magnavox, and it was released in 1972 as the Magnavox Odyssey. One of its most popular games was a virtual table tennis game.
# Early arcade games
Nolan Bushnell remembered playing Spacewar while going to the University of Utah and came up with the idea of "Computer Space," a clone of Spacewar making one of the first video games to show up in arcades. The problem is, Spacewar was too complex for the casual player, and Computer Space was even more complex because of the change from two players to one player. He then came across the Magnavox Odyssey, seeing a demonstration of its aformentioned table tennis game, and started Atari soon after, working with his business partner, Ted Dabney, to create "Pong," a similar game made for arcades. The first machine was placed at a bar, and the bar called Atari for service after only a few days. The issue? Too many quarters were put in the machine!
# Console explosion
Atari partnered with Sears, Roebuck and Co. to produce a home version of the game, and this made Magnavox notice. They sued Atari for patent rights infringement. They could prove that Bushnell saw the demonstration, and even played the game! Atari settled with Magnavox because they knew they couldn't win anyway. The home version was just as successful as the arcade version, selling 150,000 units in one year while the Odyssey took three years to sell only 200,000! Other companies were catching on, and creating their own home versions of Pong. Even Magnavox started to make modified Odysseys that could only play the original game! This made the first generation of gaming consoles, with the most successful being the Coleco Telstar, made by a company also popular for the Cabbage Patch Doll that kids adored in the early 1980's. Coleco was the first company to to place a large order for the main chip used in most Pong clones. When General Instruments, the maker of the chip, couldn't produce enough, Coleco was top priority. Coleco's competitors waited for chips while Coleco was cornering the market.
# Video game crash of 1983
The next generation of consoles was beginning, going from simple Pong consoles to the Atari VCS, the Intellivision by Matell, and the ColecoVision. These consoles had interchangeable cartridges that contained a ROM (Read-only Memory) chip containing each game, instead of all of the games being hardcoded into each console. Many companies started to make games for these consoles, some of them being of great quality, and still remembered today. Other games, however, were of horrible quality. There were also way too many consoles to choose from, and computers no longer needed a whole room, giving them even more competition! Sales of consoles and games crashed in 1983 and 1984. Mattel and Magnavox stopped selling their games completely, and Atari struggled to stay afloat. Video games remained popular in arcades, however, they suffered a bit too. On March 29th, 1984, Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater, an arcade famous for selling pizza and putting on animatronic shows and concieved by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, filed for bankruptcy.
# The rise of Nintendo
Fusajiro Yamauchi began a small business manufacturing "Hanafuda" playing cards in Kyoto, Japan in 1889, and, towards the end of the 70s, the President of Nintendo came up with the idea of the "Game & Watch" after watching a man playing with a calculator on a plane ride. In 1980, Nintendo of America, Inc. was founded to sell the product line in the United States. In 1981, a man named Shigeru Miyamoto developed the "Donkey Kong" game for nintendo, which was the hottest-selling game in the arcade business for a while. The game featured a carpenter named Jumpman, who raced to save his girlfriend, Pauline, from a crazy gorilla. Nintendo later nicknamed Jumpman "Mario" because of his resemblance to the American office's landlord, Mario Segali. In 1983, they developed a full video game console called the "Family Computer," trying to separate it from the video game consoles that had started to fail in America soon before. This console was technically superior to the second generation consoles, starting the third generation. In 1984, Japanese studies showed that children were as or more familar with Mario as other characters like Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny. The Famicom was released as the "Nintendo Entertainment System" with a modified design in America in 1985, and in Europe in 1986. One of the most popular games ever released for the NES was "Super Mario Bros," with the aformentioned Mario and his brother Luigi. Other games were created for the system, such as "The Legend of Zelda."
# Handheld gaming
Video game consoles were becoming successful again, and Nintendo found a great way to capitalize on the growing popularity. Some people wanted something as convenient as a Game & Watch with the ability to change cartridges like the NES! Nintendo released the Game Boy with a cartridge of the Russian puzzle game Tetris, aiming to market to everyone and not just little boys with characters like Mario. Many popular games on the NES had adaptations to the Game Boy, and the successful Pokémon games started on the platform, allowing children to trade by connecting their consoles together with a cable.
# Violence in video games and ESRB
The first "console war" was fought between Japanese rivals Nintendo and Sega in the late 80s and into the early 90s. Nintendo had many recognizable characters, but Sega had superior hardware. A game named "Mortal Kombat" was released for Sega's superior hardware, partially due to the fact that Nintendo had tight control over those wanting to release games on their hardware, especially in preventing similar things to the crash in 1983 from happening again, and keeping games family-friendly. This game had realistic fighting, blood, and gore, sparking changes to how parents of the time looked at video games. Parents had no idea if any game that their child purchased would be appropriate for them, and for anyone for that matter. The Interactive Digital Software association saw the need for ratings similar to movies and TV shows showing what games might have in store in terms of violence or other inappropriate content. They founded the ESRB, or Entertainment Software Rating Board, in 1994 to categorize the game into one of five rating categories, "Early Childhood," "Kids to Adults," "Teen," "Mature," and "Adults Only." In 1998, the "Kids to Adults" rating was changed to the "Everyone" rating, and the first PSAs featuring celebrities were launched. In 2005, the "Everyone" rating still wasn't clear enough, as some games classified with the rating still had violence, and parents were required to look very carefully at the game to see. The "Everyone 10+" rating was created to show this more effectively. Game cases found at physical stores as well as games purchased on the internet easily show the rating given to them by the ESRB.
# Rise of 3-dimensional games
Games were becoming more and more complex, and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, successor to the NES released in 1992, was showing great capabilities in two-dimensional games. However, one year after its release, an add-on chip placed inside cartridges, such as the game "Star Fox," allowed pseudo three-dimensional games to become popular. Nintendo worked with Sony, aiming to create a CD drive for the console, adding more complexity. Nintendo and Sony had some disagreements, and Nintendo eventually abandoned the project. Sony, however, did not give up. They continued working on a console of their own, managing to beat Nintendo out the door by a year. Their new console was called the PlayStation, based off of a name suggested for the SNES addon. This console ran exclusively on CDs, using the experience Sony had working with Nintendo. While Sony was working on the PlayStation, Nintendo worked with a company named SiliconGraphics, who was experienced in making workstations for 3D animation, to begin working on their next home console. It's goal: to bring home three-dimensional games to the masses. The Nintendo 64 launched in 1996 to great acclaim with Super Mario 64, the first 3D platformer game like the original NES game. This game set the standard for how to control similar 3D games. More games came out in recognizable series, many by Nintendo, and others by competitors Sega and Atari. Sony was also attracting newer game developers, with new characters introduced along with them. Sega and Atari were starting to struggle, and Sony had released a new console, the PlayStation 2, just five years after the original. Microsoft had something cooking behind the scenes, however. The popular operating system maker had a team inside creating a new console called the "DirectX-Box," later shortened to Xbox. After fighting with management to release it, it was finally released to great acclaim in 2001.
# High-definition graphics
Just four years later, however, technology was increasing to the point where the old, bulky CRT televisions were going out of style in favor of new high-definition flatscreens. The gaming industry grew to accomodate the families with older TVs, but also support the newer format. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were the first consoles to support it, innovating with new disc formats to replace the DVD. Each system had games made to show the exceptional quality of the new TVs, which many people can hardly distinguish from the highest resolutions today! Both systems had compatibility with the older consoles in their respecive lines. The controllers were changing to be very similar to controllers today, with only slight design changes being made over time. The PlayStation 3 was prohibitively expensive, however, so the Xbox 360 won the battle for that generation.
# The Wii
There was one issue. You may have noticed, the longest running company didn't have a high definition console. The reason why: to make it affordable. Nintendo had many other ideas for their new console too. The controllers that games had been used to since the NES were about to be thrown out of the window. Nintendo released the Wii to great acclaim in 2006, getting families all across the world engaged in sports with the included game, featuring bowling, golf, baseball, tennis, and boxing. Nintendo reached out to families with this console, sparking interest in games inside the minds of children around the world.
# Modern consoles
Nintendo followed up the Wii with the Wii U, which was confused as an accessory for the original instead of a whole new console by many. The console utterly failed in the marketplace, with many keeping their old Wiis and being content. Microsoft introduced the Xbox One, which had backlash for requiring you to have a motion sensing camera called the Kinect always plugged in to use it, have a constant internet connection, and buy all your games new at full-price, prohibiting sharing and used games. Microsoft later reverted these decisions. Sony poked fun at the announcement of their new console, aptly named the PlayStation 4. They showed a video on how to share games on PS4, with one man handing a game disc to another man, and the other man thanking him. The PS4 was the better-selling console of the two. Nintendo, however, was developing something. Some people found leaked information about the console and started making concepts of how they thought it would look. Many were wrong, and people were still shocked at their new release, the Nintendo Switch. The Switch acted like both a handheld and a home console, switching between the two with the use of a dock and removeable controllers. The Switch was the only console of its generation for a few years, since it was released in 2017. Microsoft and Sony were improving their consoles with extra revisions called the Xbox One X and the PlayStation 4 Pro. A few years later, however, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S and X were released. These just improved further on the more powerful revisions of the previous consoles, and are just more powerful. We have yet to see which one is going to win overall.