Video Games History

Video games and consoles have changed as newer technology has been discovered. When video games were first created, they were very basic. Some being as basic as players keeping a ball bouncing between two paddles. Gaming systems in the 1970s did not have a fast computer to run the system. As time progressed, computers ran faster, data storage grew, and video graphics became more in depth. Today, some gaming systems have the capacity to store five hundred hours of videos! The games can either be stored on the hard drive of the system, or they can be read off of a compact disc or a cartridge. When Atari first introduced the game Pong in the early 1970s, it was an immediate hit. People would use their joystick to control a slide that bounced

In December of 1975, Atari sold almost 50,000 of the Atari branded Pong units, and people waited in lines for hours to try purchase one (Atari, 2012). Even forty years ago, people stood in lines to get their hands on the hottest product of the year. In 1977, Atari introduced the Atari 2600 that included two controllers, two joysticks, two-player games with multiple variations of Combat. As the Atari grew in popularity, it was determined that it needed to be sold all year long and not just during the holidays. This ended up being a huge marketing move since they sold nearly 400,000 units resulting in a net profit of 20 million dollars (Atari,

It was said that title of the games is what caught the attention of the audience. Out of all the titles that were released up to this point, Super Mario Bros. was the one that became a hit around the world (Nintendo, 2017). Some studies were completed around the same time and found that children were more familiar with Mario as they were with other cartoon characters. Within fifteen years of the introduction of video games, they have evolved from some slides or paddles that would bounce a ball back and forth, to surviving a course to reach the end. The Legend of Zelda was the first world game that allowed a character to move through a map. Also, the game cartridge had a battery in it that allowed the players to be able to save their progress and start back where they were killed in the game. This helped change the gaming industry. Now, the people playing the game would not have to start the level from the beginning after they lost a life, they could pick up from that