Gaming has come a long way in the past few decades. From the old style games such as Space Invaders, we can now play role-playing games against people all over the world with live chat features with graphics so realistic that it’s almost as if you’re in a warzone in your own front room!
Video games as we know them first hit the mainstream in the 1970s and 1980s and haven’t looked back since. The technology within them has developed so much, changing how we play from single player games in our bedrooms to saving your progress on an external device, (like a USB stick – visit http://www.usbmakers.co.uk/ to find the various sizes and styles), so we can play anytime anywhere as long as we have a console.
Ralph Baer and his team of developers created the first console back in 1966. Magnavox officially licensed the product in 1972 and released it in the USA under the name the “Magnavox Odyssey” which used cartridges to create the games – a concept that was still used in devices such as the GameBoy, (pictured), and other Nintendo devices into the 90s.
In 1978, the arcade game era took off with the release of Space Invaders. The success of this particular game inspired a number of other manufacturers and developers to start getting involved and creating similar concepts and styles of games, prompting the gaming industry to boom.
The development of home computers throughout the 1980s and early 90s prompted manufacturers to look beyond the console, targeting users on a variety of platforms and giving them the opportunity to play a variety of games. Thanks to this, they were soon playing all kinds of games from flight simulators to football and racing Mario characters to fighting with ninjas.
The Internet then came along and transformed the industry one again, and this time it was huge. The ability to play online had its challenges with dial-up speeds proving particularly problematic, but gamers were soon able to play people all over the world from the comfort of their own homes. This provided the springboard for the modern era of gaming, with users now sitting at home, chatting with other gamers and shouting out instructions as to how to complete games. The days of playing with friends in one room, gathered around a single screen might be a thing of the past, but gaming seems to be expanding at an incredible rate.
0
