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A Video Game Older than Tennis for Two

Posted: February 3rd, 2017, 10:12 am
by pacman000
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/V ... mentDevice

It was a simple target shooting game. The targets were on a paper overlay, & players had to hit all of them before a timer ran out.

Re: A Video Game Older than Tennis for Two

Posted: February 3rd, 2017, 1:07 pm
by scotland
That is pretty much bedrock in the history of our hobby. Its definitely a game, and using a CRT is video. Not sure if analog circuitry is enough. There are things like Nimatron from the 1939 Worlds Fair, but the video were light bulbs I think. You could argue thats just very low pixel count video. Not sure what the computer or analog circuitry was in Nimatron either.

Re: A Video Game Older than Tennis for Two

Posted: February 5th, 2017, 1:41 am
by FusekiGames
scotland wrote:That is pretty much bedrock in the history of our hobby. Its definitely a game, and using a CRT is video. Not sure if analog circuitry is enough. There are things like Nimatron from the 1939 Worlds Fair, but the video were light bulbs I think. You could argue thats just very low pixel count video. Not sure what the computer or analog circuitry was in Nimatron either.


Here's the patent for the Goldstein device: http://www.jmargolin.com/patents/2455992.pdf

Anyone interested in old arcade games should check out the rest of Jed's site. He designed the hardware for a lot of the golden age Atari classics.

Re: A Video Game Older than Tennis for Two

Posted: February 5th, 2017, 2:30 pm
by Robotrek
If an LED football game from 1979 is considered a video game, I'd argue Nimatron is a video game.

But of course, either way, it's amazing to think that this hobby of ours has existed for 70-80 years (depending on what you consider a video game) and that it's been mainstream for 40 years or so. I'm only 4 years older than the 2600. Watching the technology progress is fascinating. Just 10 years ago we all thought Halo 3 was the hottest new thing on the planet. Now most of us have probably forgotten about about it. We look at it now, and our minds are no longer blown. I remember seeing Need for Speed on the 3DO back in 1994. I thought THAT was as good as it gets, and now we have things like Project Cars, which look MILES better than that. It's been an amazing journey, seeing gaming from Galaxian, all the way to No Man's Sky, and I can't WAIT to see what we have 10 years from now. Though, I would argue we are starting to reach diminishing returns. Games now look great, but not TOO much better than what we had 10 years ago. Still, graphics aren't everything. I can't wait to see what happens with procedural generation and such. We could have games that make themselves!