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Anatomy of the First Video Game, Born 1958
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 23, 2008 07:33 PM
from the go-ahead-and-present-your-counter-theories dept.
from the go-ahead-and-present-your-counter-theories dept.
afabbro writes "Fifty years ago, before 'Pong' and 'Space Invaders,' a nuclear physicist created 'Tennis for Two,' a 2-D tennis game that some say was the first video game ever. Built in 1958, it was 'gynormous.' 'In addition to the oscilloscope screen and the controller, the guts of the original game were contained in an analog computer, which is "about as big as a microwave oven."' 'We have to load it into the back of a station wagon to move it. It's not a Game Boy that you put in your pocket.'"
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Writing quality? (Score:4, Informative)
The prefix "gyn" means female. Maybe you meant "ginormous", but even so...
Re:Writing quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Re:Writing quality? (Score:5, Funny)
With all the rental services around now, that's inexcusable.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. Using ginormous at all is a sure sign of a retard, but misspelling it is next level.
Re:Writing quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed! Clearly "hugantic" is the preferable adjective.
Parent
Re:Writing quality? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Where can I download the emulator? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like a great game!
And I don't want to play pong tennis. I want the whole analog computer emulated in some way and the oscilloscope's vector graphics too.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends how anal you want to be - you could write code that would put out the relevant signals from a soundcard using 3 channels - one for X, one for Y, one for Z (brightness), or perhaps add another channel and run dual-trace with the second one generating the net along the bottom. A standard old dual trace scope for £50 from eBay would be fine for the display.
Shopping Cart Pants. (Score:2)
"Built in 1958, it was 'gynormous.' 'In addition to the oscilloscope screen and the controller, the guts of the original game were contained in an analog computer, which is "about as big as a microwave oven."' 'We have to load it into the back of a station wagon to move it. It's not a Game Boy that you put in your pocket.'"
Guess no one had the foresight to invent baggy pants. Youngsters have it easy now.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's because marine aircraft were smaller in those days. You wouldn't more than three of today's planes into the back of a 1950s station wagon, and even they'd be a tight fit.
Nope, it was the second video game. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nope, it was the second video game. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Not the first (Score:3, Insightful)
Tax money (Score:2)
Games as inspiration (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember the first computer I ever saw, on display in a mall, circa 1975-76. Some homebrew thing, probably about as beefy as a VIC-20. It was playing the old "guess the card" game: think of a card? Is it red? Is it a spade? Is it higher than 8? And so forth, guessing your card fairly quickly (basic binary search).
At 9 years old, I thought that was pretty cool. My dad bought me a few computer mags of the day (Creative Computing and the like), and I got the gist of basic. I remember writing out my first "program" in a Hilroy scribbler, trying to clone what that computer did. Basically 52 or so IF/ELSE statements for every case. Brute force, but hey, I was 9. When I learned that I could use variables to reduce it to a few lines of code, I was hooked; there was no going back.
Got my first computer, an Exidy Sorcerer (Z-80, 1Mhz or so), and had a great time learning the ins and out, writing and selling a few games, pimping it out, and pushing it to the limits. Even got a job (at 11) working on an APL Interpreter for the Z-80. (I was basically paid in hardware :).
On through the PC generation, university, 286, 386, a career in programming, emergence of the Internet, founding a .COM (worth $100M on paper at one time, whoo hoo, damn paper :), and two more subsequent companies.
But it all really started seeing that 8080 play a simple game of "guess the card." If it weren't for seeing that, and getting inspired, who knows where the career might have led.
I'm not sure if today's games could inspire kids in the simple way that old game did for me. The skills and techniques involved in a modern rendered game are so far beyond the grasp of the average kid, the inspiration might be lost, requiring too great a leap to "get it."
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PhotoGuy:
I read a sf story about 25 years ago about a human expedition to a planet with a humanoid civilization at a roughly mediaeval level. They identified a native scientist who was on the brink of discovering Newtonian mechanics, and be
It's not a _video_ game (Score:4, Insightful)
It'S not a video game, it has nothing to do with video. It's just an analog computer game, that's all. No video involved. And computer games are in fact probably even older, even digital ones.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Spacewar! - mistakenly said to be the first video game ever.
Magnavox - first ever commercially available home videogame
Nolan Bushnell's - Atari
All with more detail than the main article, along with video.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
spacewars was the first game on something recognizable as a "computer", and so on.
if stretching the definition of computer to include oscilloscope is valid, then I propose as first video game gladiators fight, which uses swords as controller and display the game trough a high fidelity real real
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It is nice that the summary informs me that something the size of a microwave is, in fact, NOT a gameboy and I can't put it in my pocket. I woulda never figured that out.
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Re:Thank you, captain obvious. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Man do you fail. "Vector" games used CRTs much like oscilloscopes. Some even used storage scopes. The video in video game does not need to be a raster display.