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History of video games
Early history Early history of video games Early mainframe games
Consoles History of video game consoles Console war 1st generation (1972–1983) 2nd generation (1976–1992) Video game crash of 1983 3rd generation (1983–2003) 4th generation (1987–2003) 5th generation (1993–2005) 6th generation (1998–2013) 7th generation (2005–2017) 8th generation (2012–present) 9th generation (2020–present) Impact of COVID-19 (2023-24 layoffs)
Arcade video games History of arcade video games Golden age of arcade video games Timeline of arcade video game history
Personal computer History of personal computer games
Mobile games History of mobile games
Virtual reality History of virtual reality games
Cloud gaming History of cloud gaming
Other platforms Browser game Emulation
Genres List of genres History of East Asian role-playing video games History of Western role-playing video games History of online games History of real-time strategy games History of tactical role-playing games History of single-player video games History of multiplayer video games History of massively multiplayer online games
Lists List of video games in development
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This article deals with the history of video game consoles prior to the video game crash of 1983.

Main article: History of computer and video games

Three people are usually cited as the sole inventors of video games. One of them is television engineer Ralph Baer, who conceived the idea of an interactive television while employed by Loral Electronics in 1951 in Bronx, New York. No game was produced because his employer rejected the design, but he continued this early work 15 years later. In 1966, Ralph Baer (then at Sanders Associates) created a simple video game called Chase that could be displayed on a standard television set. Baer continued development, and in 1968 he had a prototype that could play several different games, including versions of table tennis and target shooting. Under Baer, Bill Harrison developed the light gun and, with Bill Rusch, created video games in 1967.

The first home video games (1972-1977)

1972 saw the release of the first video game console for the home market, the Magnavox Odyssey. Built using mainly analog electronics, it was based on Ralph Baer's early work and licensed from his employer. The console was connected to a home television set. It was not a large success, although other companies with similar products (including Atari) had to pay a licensing fee for some time. It wasn't until Atari's home version of Pong (at first under the Sears Tele-Games label) in Christmas of 1975 that home video games really took off. The success of Pong sparked hundreds of clone games, including the Coleco Telstar, which went on to be a success in its own right, with over a dozen models.

Early 8-bit home consoles (1977-1983)

In the earliest consoles, the computer code for one or more games was hardcoded into microchips using discrete logic, and no additional games could ever be added. By the mid-1970's video games were found on cartridges. Programs were burned onto ROM chips that were mounted inside plastic cartridge casings that could be plugged into slots on the console. When the cartridges were plugged in, the general-purpose microprocessors in the consoles read the cartridge memory and ran whatever program was stored there. Rather than being confined to a small selection of games included in the box, consumers could now amass libraries of game cartridges.

The Fairchild VES was the world's first cartridge-based video game console. It was released by Fairchild Semiconductor in August 1976. When Atari released their VCS the next year, Fairchild quickly re-named it to the Fairchild Channel F.

In 1977, Atari released its cartridge-based console called the Video Computer System (VCS), later called Atari 2600. Nine games were designed and released for the holiday season. It would quickly become by far the most popular of all the early consoles.

In 1978 Magnavox released its cartridge-based console, the Odyssey 2, in the United States and Canada. Philips Electronics released this same game console as the Philips G7000 in many European countries. Although it never became as popular as Atari, it managed to sell several million units through 1983.

In 1979, Activision was created by disgruntled former Atari programmers. It was the first third-party developer of video games. Many new developers would follow their lead in succeeding years.

The next major entry was Intellivision, introduced by Mattel in 1980. Though chronologically part of what is called the "8-bit era", the Intellivision had a unique processor with instructions that were 10 bits wide (allowing more instruction variety and potential speed), and registers 16 bits wide. The system, which featured graphics superior to the older Atari 2600, rocketed to popularity.

Unique among home systems of the time was the Vectrex, the only one to feature vector graphics.

1982 saw the introduction of the Colecovision, an even more powerful machine. Its sales also took off, but the presence of three major consoles in the marketplace and a glut of poor quality games began to overcrowd retail shelves and erode consumers' interest in video games. Within a year this overcrowded market would crash.

The popularity of early consoles was strongly influenced by their ports of arcade games. The 2600 was the first with Space Invaders, and the Colecovision had Donkey Kong.

Early cartridges were 2KB ROMs for Atari 2600 and 4K for Intellivision. This upper limit grew steadily from 1978 to 1983, up to 16KB for Atari 2600 and Intellivision, 32KB for Colecovision. Bank switching, a technique that allowed two different parts of the program to use the same memory addresses was required for the larger cartridges to work.

In the game consoles, high RAM prices at the time limited the RAM (memory) capacity of the systems to a tiny amount, often less than a Kilobyte. Although the cartridge size limit grew steadily, the RAM limit was part of the console itself and all games had to work within its constraints.

By 1982 a glut of games from new third-party developers less well-prepared than Activision began to appear, and began to overflow the shelf capacity of toy stores.

In part because of these oversupplies, the video game industry crashed, starting from Christmas of 1982 and stretching through all of 1983. See the main article: Video game crash of 1983.

Early handheld games

The first portable, handheld electronic game was Tic Tac Toe, made in 1972 by a company called Waco. The display consisted of a grid of nine buttons, that could turn red or green when pushed. The first handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges was the Microvision designed by Smith Engineering, and distributed and sold by Milton-Bradley in 1979. Crippled by a small, fragile LCD display and a very narrow selection of games, it was discontinued two years later. Although neither would prove popular, they paved the way for more advanced single-game handhelds, often simply called "LED games" or "LCD games" depending on their display system.

In 1976 Engineers at Rockwell International Microelectronics Division collaborated with designers at Mattel to create the first LED handheld game, Mattel Auto-Race. A handheld calculator chip was redesigned and programmed by Mark Lesser at Rockwell based on a design by George Klose and Richard Cheng of Mattel. The program was 512 bytes long. Subsequently, the same team produced Mattel Football I, which sold well over one million units and ushered in a short golden age of LED handheld games, especially sports games. At first composed of simple arrangements of LEDs, later games incorporated vacuum fluorescent displays allowing for detailed graphics in bright colors. The heyday of LED and VFD would last until the early 80s, when LCD technology became cheap and durable enough to be a viable alternative.

The first home video game systems

Early cartridge-based 8-bit systems

Handheld Consoles

• History of computer and video games