The first video game ever invented was “Tennis for Two” in 1958. The game is also known as “Pong” and was and still is a very popular game. Fast forward 56 years and the improvements in video gaming are unimaginable. Now someone can walk into a room and question whether you are playing a game or watching TV. From the very beginning to the present day, each generation of gaming consoles has taken a leap in advancements over the last generation.
The Magnavox Odyssey was released in 1972 as the first home video game unit. Shortly after, in 1977, the Atari 2600 was released. Video games slowly became unpopular, and due to a flood of home consoles and low quality games, the video game market crashed.
In 1985 the Nintendo Entertainment System would be released and would ultimately make video gaming relevant again. The Nintendo Entertainment System did what no other console did before. They limited third party developers to only three games a year. This would guarantee that bad games would come out less often and more time would be taken to make good games.
The next generation of consoles would come around in 1989 with the release of the Sega Genesis. Sega would attack Nintendo through slogans and TV advertisements. Sega also had a two year head start on Nintendo before they released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Sega knew what they were up against and their approach to marketing was that the Sega was for teenagers because the color scheme was all black, games were more violent, and they had sports games. Throughout the generation, Sega held a good lead on Nintendo but made some mistakes that led to a decline in popularity. Up to this point controllers were pretty simple with only three to four face buttons and games were on cartridges. Some popular games from this time period would include famous characters like “Sonic” and “Mario.” “Sonic” was exclusive to Sega and was their mascot, while Nintendo had many great games exclusive to Nintendo and the most notable of these games was “Mario.”
The fifth generation of home consoles would move from 2D side scrollers to 3D adventures. Graphics also improved tremendously. Shapes and objects were much easier to make out than they were just one generation ago. The first console to come out during this generation was the Sega Saturn in 1995. The Saturn was a bust because it was very buggy and wasn’t built for 3D gaming. The same year Sony released their first console, which was named the Playstation. The Playstation gained fans quickly, and was a success right away. Once again, Nintendo fell behind and released their fifth generation console, the Nintendo 64, in 1997. People looked down on Nintendo due to the crazy controller and cartridge based games which were now a thing of the past. With all that said, the next generation would gain a lot of hype because of how unreal the advancement was from fourth generation to fifth generation.
The sixth generation came around and Sega once again kicked off the next generation of gaming in 1999 when they released Dreamcast, which was an instant hit. Games looked so real and people just had to have this technology. Polygons looked more authentic and games were much smoother. Sega also had a modem for their console, which would allow players to play online against someone around the world. This did not work as well as online gaming today, but it was so new and exciting that even if the gameplay was bad, people would still be blown away to be playing someone who wasnot in the same room as they were. Sony would release Playstation 2 in 2000 and would go on to become arguably the best video game console of all time. It seemed as if everyone had a Playstation 2 set up at home. The Playstation 2 had a huge selling point with buyers because it could not only play video games, but it could also play DVD’s. DVD’s were slowly becoming the new way to watch movies, but a DVD player alone was expensive. Sony priced the Playstation 2 at such a steal because it could do multiple things, unlike the Dreamcast.
The seventh generation had the best graphical improvement and also popularized online gaming. Games began to look extremely realistic and character movement was much more fluent than ever before. Games started to emphasize the online gaming experience with the new generation taking everything to a new level. During this generation, games would get much more serious and people would actually make a living playing games rather than having it as a hobby. On the downside of this generation of games, kids became less social. Instead of two kids getting together for a play date they would plan to play video games online with their friends rather than getting together and doing something outside.
Today, games have taken another step towards improvement by including facial and voice recognition to sign into your account or turn on the console. People can also play games without having a controller. Now systems are all in HD and can stream multiple things to a TV such as YouTube, Netflix, and even a web browser. Consoles can do so much more than they were able to, but maybe they do too much. The X-Box One was release as the ultimate multimedia machine and has strayed away from focusing on games. The X-Box One really promotes using an X-Box as a cable box. As great as that is, they are not promoting the X-Box for what it is built for, and that is video games. This new generation has so much power that it is considered to be more along the lines of a computer.
With each generation up to this point there were different games that excelled with graphical improvements while others suffered. “Sonic” was probably the game that suffered the most from these improvements because it was a 2D side scroller and wasn’t really built for 3D gaming. Sport games were games that benefited most from each generation’s improvements. As you can tell, a basketball player in “NBA 2k14” looks much more realistic than a player from “NBA 2k5”. That’s how much improvement has happened in ten years. Games have become much more violent too. One of the most popular game franchises out now is “Call of Duty”. Most people have heard of this game, but it is a war game where you are out to kill everyone on the opposing team. “Call of Duty” has become an acceptable game for kids to play but it was only 20 years ago Sega added blood and gore into their games and parents saw it as unacceptable. With today’s graphics you can literally watch blood spill out of a zombie or see a rotten corpse in a horror game. Things like this are not looked down upon like they once were.
Video games are changing all the time, but they are always showing what it would be like to live in another world and that’s what video games do. Video games let you experience anything from an undercover cop, to a pirate, to a street racer and so on. Video games allow people to live a fantasy that they might have always dreamt of, but would never be possible.