NEXT-GEN Nescot week 10-11 - history of video-games and video-game consoles

The history of video-games and consoles dates back to the early 1950's when computer scientists began designing ideas for simple games and simulations within their research. During this time, a scientist by the name of Ralph H. Baer had the idea of a home video-game in 1951, this lead to the creation of the first video-game in October 1958, the game was created as a simple tennis game similar to the popular 1972 game "Pong".

The following link is a video of the game being played (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY5jdf7Popk)

Because of this success, in the late 1950's Baer, while working for Sanders Associates, created a series of video-game console designs, however these console designs wouldn't fully be created until the early 1970's (with the first being released in 1972). After this point, the first video-games (arcade games) began appearing in the 1960's and were played on massive computers connected to vector displays (arcade machines) instead of analog televisions.

Also, during 1972 "Sonar" was created and is regarded to be the first 3.D game ever made. They did this by having a model inside the arcade machine and using the Pepper's Ghost illusion to make it appear as if the submarines in the game were in the middle of the model. Pepper's Ghost is an illusion Technic used primarily in theaters and other forms of media. It is named after John Henry Pepper who popularized the effect in 1862.

The following link is to the wiki page for Pepper's Ghost for more information.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost)

Then in 1972, the first video-game console was released called the "Magnavox Odyssey²" and sold roughly 2,000,000 units worldwide. This then started the first generation of video-game consoles and the 1970's were known as the golden age of video-games and arcade games.
This was followed up by, in 1979, the first R.G.B (red-green-blue pix-elated) video-game being created called "Galaxian". Not only that but, once "Galaxian" had been created, more and more games began using R.G.B colour, leading to the creation and large usage of colour consoles.

The consoles sold during this time include, but are not limited to: the "Intellivisoin" (roughly 3,000,000 units sold), the "ColecoVision" (roughly 2,000,000 units sold) and the "Atari 2600" which was released in 1977 in the US, 1978 in Europe and 1983 in Japan.
The "Atari 2600" dominated the market by selling roughly 30,000,000 units worldwide and subsequently may have caused the infamous video-game crash of the 1980's (1983-1985).
The video-game crash of the 1980's (or the Atari shock in Japan) was a large-scale recession in the video-game industry due to market saturation.

However, leading up to 1989 this video-game crash slowly dissipated with the release of the first hand held gaming consoles, starting with the "Game Boy" in 1989 selling roughly 118,690,000 units sold, it was closely followed up by the "Atari Lynx" in 1990 (3,000,000 units sold), "Game gear" in 1991 (10,620,000 units sold) and "TurboExpress"in 1991 (1,500,000 units sold).

After this the video-game industry boomed with the creation of new genres such as the newly made "interactive movies", "MMO.RPG games" and "role-playing games" in the 1990's. This was further backed up by, in 1992, the release of (Sega's) "Virtual Racing" (which was one of the first fully 3D games) and the increasingly prominent appearance of super hero characters in games.

The release of new revolutionary consoles such as the "Dreamcast" in 1998 (roughly 9,130,000 units sold), "PlayStation2" in 2000 (roughly 155,000,000 units sold), "GameCube" in 2001 (roughly 21,740,000 units sold) and the "Xbox" in 2002 (roughly 24,000,000 units sold) also helped improve the video-game industry in a substantial way. Currently, up until 2018 the "PlayStation2" is still the most sold console ever made, closely followed by the hand held console the "Nintendo DS" at 154,020,000 units sold.

Finally came the release of a new league of consoles, redefining how we perceive video-games and graphics. These consoles include but are not limited to: the "Xbox-one" (roughly 34,000,000 units sold), "PlayStation 4" (roughly 70,600,000 units sold) and "Nintendo Switch" (about 10,000,000 units sold) which are not only are the most recent (to this post '2018') consoles to be released but they have opened a whole knew world of opportunities for the future and I personally cannot wait to see what comes next.