Origins

Every things started in the 1947  with a device called the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device and it was patented in the United States by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. The game simulated a missile firing at a target and contains knobs to adjust the curve and speed of the missile. This was the true beginning for an industry that today is worth 30 billion dollars worldwide. Various games were created after this one in a period of 20 years. However, all these games shared something in common; the majority ran on university mainframe computers in the United States and these were developed by individuals as a hobby. The limited accessibility of early computer hardware meant that these games were small in number and forgotten by posterity, but this was about to change in the 70s.

 the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device

By the 1970s computer and video game development split to many areas, such as arcade machines, university computers, handhelds, and home computers. These games are called first generation of gaming.

The golden age of video arcade games

Everything started in 1971 when the first arcade was created. The arcade Galaxy Game was installed at a student union at Stanford University. Based on Spacewar!, this was the first coin-operated video game. After this a few more arcade games where mass produced but unsuccessfully due to the long learning-curve that most game at that time had. However, 1972 Atari was founded. This was the first company that successful. Their first arcade video game with widespread success was PONG, released the same year the company was founded. The games was very simple, it consisted on table tennis: a ball is "served" from the center of the court and as the ball moves towards their side of the court each player must maneuver their bat to hit the ball back to their opponent. Despite the success of this game the video arcades where still little known in the world but that was about to change.

The arcade Galaxy Game and PONG

The arcade game industry entered its Golden Age in 1978 with the release of Space Invaders by Taito, a success that inspired dozens of manufacturers to enter the market. In the same year, Atari released Asteroids. Color arcade games became more popular in 1979 and 1980 with the arrival of titles such as Pac-Man. The Golden Age saw a prevalence of arcade machines in malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants and convenience stores. Video Arcade ruled over computer games and it was gaining fans all over the world. After that the Arcade has just gone up.

 University mainframe computers

University mainframe game development blossomed in the early 1970s. There is little record of all but the most popular games, as they were not marketed, or regarded as a serious endeavor. The people, generally students, writing these games often were doing so illicitly, making questionable use of very expensive computing resources, and thus were not anxious to let very many people know what they were doing. There were, however, at least two notable distribution paths for the student game designers of this time.

The PLATO system was an educational computing environment designed at the University of Illinois and which ran on mainframes made by Control Data Corporation. Games were often exchanged between different PLATO systems.

mainframe computer

DECUS was the user group for computers made by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and distributed programs, including games, that would run on the various types of DEC computers.

A number of noteworthy games were also written for Hewlett Packard minicomputers such as the HP2000.

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