World’s oldest video games
1. Magnavox Odyssey Games – First home video game console ever released was the Magnavox Odyssey. Ralph H. Baer developed the idea for a video game console. Together with Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch he spent several years developing a prototype. They demonstrated their prototype to several manufacturers before Magnavox agreed to produce the console in 1971.
In the Fall of 1972, the Odyssey debuted. The U.S. version came with twelve games. Extra games were sold separately later in the mentioned year and in 1973. The games included with the Odyssey were – Ski, Table Tennis, Analogic, Simon Says, Football, Haunted House, Hockey, Football, Cat and Mouse, Submarine, States and Roulette. Magnavox sold the first video game light gun as a peripheral controller in addition to the separate game cards.
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2. Pong – Pong‘s success made the video game industry a viable business. Allan Alcorn created Pong as a training exercise that was assigned to him by Nolan Bushnell, newly renamed video game company’s Atari co-founder (Syzygy Engineering was its previous name). Atari co-founder Ted Dabney and Bushnell liked Allan Alcorn’s work and made a decision to manufacture the game.
The game turned out to be an immediate hit and it is considered the first commercially successful video game. Pong’s success stimulated several companies to begin producing games similar to Pong. Atari released a home version of the game during the 1975 Christmas season and also released numerous sequels to Pong. The game has been a part of popular culture since its release.
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3. Tank – This game was the only original title released by Kee Games, which was a subsidiary of Atari. As a fake competitor, Kee Games was selling exact copies of Atari titles to distributors. Tank was designed by Steve Bristow and developed by Lyle Rains and was completely original. Mentioned game was created because Bristow wanted Kee Games to move away from producing only copies of Atari’s games but to develop original titles.
Atari announced a unification with Kee, one month after Tank was released, which came at ideal time for Atari as the company was facing financial problems. Tank’s commercial success helped Atari, selling over 10,000 units. This success led four Tank sequels over the following few years.
4. Galaxy game – Galaxy game is the lesser-known of arcade games ever released. The game was developed by Hugh Tuck and Bill Pitts, at Stanford University’s student union building, around the same time as Syzygy Engineering (that later became Atari) released its Spacewar – based arcade game, Computer space.
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Tuck and Pitts spent 65,000 USD to build two prototype consoles for Galaxy game and installed both of them in the student union. The console was popular among the university’s students, it charged players 10 cents each game or 25 cents for three. Regrettably, Tuck and Pitts were unable to turn Galaxy game into a commercial success because they did not focus on the business side of their idea and instead, chose to focus on the game’s engineering. The second console is still functioning and is currently a playable exhibit at the Computer History Museum.