Video Games Turn 40

Care to feel old? Take a read through this great article from 1up.

I’ve been working in the game industry for nearly 20 years now, and I’m always startled when I realize how much older the industry is than that. Especially since when I started, video games were still very niche – either you were learning to type with Zork, or you were 8 and playing Nintendo. It’s going to be interesting to look back twenty years from now when today’s “video game generation” becomes tomorrow’s politicians and business leaders.

The 19-inch screen flashed in waves of blue and black as two normally reserved professionals threw themselves into a competition destined for the history books. Mashing furiously at hand-wired buttons, each battled to be the first winner of a unique contest never before played by man: the contest of the videogame, seen for the first time on home televisions. In 1967, a bold engineer with a vision led a small team to create the world’s first electronic games to use an ordinary television set as a medium. Wary of naysayers from within, the video mavericks sequestered themselves behind closed doors, and for good reason: They worked under the payroll of Sanders Associates, a giant Cold War defense contractor. As hippies on the streets of San Francisco stuck flowers in the barrels of guns, three men in snowy New Hampshire crafted the future of electronic entertainment deep in the heart of a commercial war machine. In May of 1967, the world’s first videogames — as we know them today — made their quiet, humble entrance into the world.

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