Category: Home Console

Three years after the Magnavox Odyssey invented the game cartridge system, and one year before the Fairchild Video Entertainment System introduced programmable ROM cartridges, there was this rather obscure European game console, technically somewhere in between. While in contrast to the Odyssey, the ES-2201 cartridges contained actual game logic and not just reconfiguration jumpers, it was not yet microprocessor-based. Where Fairchild’s system contained a CPU that executed game code read from the cartridges, the ES-2201 system contained some basic discrete TTL game logic components which were completed by more TTL components contained in the cartridges.

Five game cartridges were available for the system, of which the first came with the system: Tennis, Pelota, Skeet Shooting, Racing, Ghostchaser.

Links

• Old-Computers.com

In her famous notes on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, the earliest (unrealised) concept of a modern computer, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace is the first to imagine, along with many other far-reaching thoughts, these new ideas to not only be applicable in science and industry, but also art and entertainment. She supposes that a programmable machine such as Babbage’s could as well be used to compose complex music or create pictures. Researchers trying to have some fun with their expensive scientific computers will be one of the most important driving forces behind the development of computer and video games.

Links

• Countess Augusta Ada King on Wikipedia
• Notes excerpts
• The History of Computing Project

Category: Home Console

The Fairchild Channel F, previously called the Fairchild VES (Video Entertainment System) was released in 1976 as the world’s first programmable, cartridge-based home console. Therefore it was the first to exploit the concept of selling people a base system that they could later extend by buying new add-on games. It predated the Atari 2600 (or Atari Video Computer System) by about a year.

The system was only moderately successful, with Fairchild selling their rights to Zircon in 1978, who would continue production and support for another couple of years. The Channel F saw 26 add-on cartridges in its lifetime.

Graphics were very simplistic, even more so than those of the Atari 2600. A special feature of the system are its controllers: they are sticks that are held in one hand, while the other hand controls a knob on top. This knob can not only be moved in all directions, but also pushed down, pulled up, and twisted both ways.

TV commercial

Play it

The Fairchild Channel F is fully emulated by MESS.

Information about game cartridge ROM dumps is available (e.g. GoodChaF 3.13, TOSEC 2006-05-05, No-Intro 20060701)

Links

• Wikipedia
• MobyGames
• Allgame
• Channel F Information Pages
• Channel F Cartridge Gallery
• Old-Computers.com (with game screenshots)

Category: Arcade

Based on the 1975 movie Death Race 2000 (although not officially licensed), Exidy’s 1976 arcade game Death Race might be the first case of public outcry over videogame violence. The goal in the game was to run over as many stick figures as possible with a car. The figures then turned into impassable grave crosses, littering the screen and making the game harder with increasing score. The controversial theme sparked wide media criticism about its violence and bad influence on children, in turn increasing sales of the game. Exidy later added instructions which referred to the stick figures as evil gremlins that had to be run over, but it didn’t fool anybody, considering the development title of the game was “Pedestrian”. Exidy stopped production after about 1000 units sold, due to increasing attempts to get the game banned.

Play it

Thanks to RogueSynapse, a free remake for Windows, created with DarkBASIC, is available. The game was designed from memory of the actual arcade version, and does not claim to be thoroughly authentic.

Download the remake

Category: Mainframe

On a DEC PDP-10, Will Crowther completes the first version of his adventure game called Colossal Cave Adventure, or simply Adventure. It would go one to become one of the most important influences on the genres of Interactive Fiction and Adventures. Some say it is the progenitor of all adventure games, text-based or graphical, that would follow. One year later, Don Woods will extend the content of the game with Crowther’s permission.

Play it

Play an Inform adaption of Woods’ extended 1977 version directly in your browser.

Links

• Wikipedia
• GameSpy
• Rick Adams’ Colossal Cave Adventure page

Category: Arcade

Atari’s Night Driver arcade game is the first racing game to feature a 1st-person perspective. Players drive a car along a road, and have to get as far as possible before time runs out. Leaving the road costs time. To hide the fact that current microprocessors are yet far too slow to cope with a detailed 3D view, the game is said to take place at night, with the road only visible through reflective pylons at its side.

See it in action

Night Driver as played on an emulator:

Play it

Night Driver is fully emulated by MAME.

Category: Home Console (dedicated)

Atari follows up their Sears production with Pong games under their own label: Atari Pong and the extended Atari Super Pong.

Magnavox extends their product range, too: the Odyssey 300 has 3 levels of difficulty and automatic serving and English for 2 players, the Odyssey 400 adds digital scoring, the Odyssey 500 is in colour, has a fourth game called Soccer, and represents players as real figures for the first time.

Mattel releases the electronic handheld games Auto Race, Missile Attack, and Ski Slalom. Today, they are very hard to find and sought after by collectors.

Related videos

Atari Super Pong commercial:

Atari Super Pong gameplay:

Category: Home Computer

If you had to pinpoint the year when home computing really started, it would probably be 1975. This was the year in which MITS released the Altair 8800 computer kit (also available in assembled form.) As one of the earliest affordable personal computers, nerds were eager to get their hands on one. However, without heavy modifications and expensive extensions, the computer was not really usable. Code had to be entered byte for byte by flipping switches, output was returned on a number of LEDs. Soon, many hobbyist computer clubs were formed, and people tried to figure out stuff they could do with their Altairs.

Another remarkable thing happens this year: two guys approach MITS and ask if they would be interested in a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800. They are – the only problem is that the interpreter does not exist yet. Within a couple of weeks, Altair BASIC comes into existence. The names of the two programmers are Paul Allen and William Henry Gates III, called Bill Gates. Based on their Altair BASIC product, they would form a company called “Micro-Soft” later that year. Micro-Soft would build up a reputation as a provider of programming language environments over the next couple of years. Skip forward to 1981, when IBM tried to enter the personal computing market with a new product, to read what happened then…

Category: Mainframe

Notable computer game developments of 1975 include:

• Dungeon by Don Daglow, one of the earliest real C-RPGs (Computer Role Playing Game.) It is notable for its top-down graphics display which featured line-of-sight, meaning that the screen would only display the parts of the dungeon that you have already explored. This was made possible by the advent of CRT displays, allowing for a quick refresh of the display while previously players would usually have to wait for a print-out.
• Moria, a multiplayer computer role-playing game with 1st-person wireframe graphics, running on the PLATO system.
• Panther by John Edo Haefeli (19 years old at the time,) an early first-person multiplayer shooter. Players controlled tanks through a wireframe 3D environment and tried to hunt down other players. This is often seen as having been the inspiration for Battlezone, the 1980 arcade smash hit by Atari (who had an account on PLATO).

Category: Arcade

Since the release of Computer Space in 1971, a couple of hundred arcade videogames have been manufactured by various companies, all of them simply based on transistor-transistor logic (TTL). One of those games was Western Gun, a two-player wild west shooting duel produced by Taito in Japan. Midway licensed this title for release in America, and Nutting Associates handled the conversion. The resulting game, Gun Fight, would enter videogame history as the first videogame to be based on a microprocessor (the Intel 8080 at a clock speed of about 2 MHz).

The new possibilities that microprocessors offered, along with their rapidly declining prices, would mean that TTL-based videogames would soon disappear.

Emulation

That a game is microprocessor-based means that it can in theory be emulated on your computer. And in practice, there’s MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. This is a huge project dedicated to accurate emulation of currently over 7900 arcade games (as of April 2009, including clones), all within one multi-platform program. MAME is open-source, and pre-compiled versions are available for many systems, most importantly Windows, Linux, and MacOS X. In other words, with the age of microprocessor arcade games begins the age of games that probably can be emulated on your system.

An important note: In order to emulate games, you will need their original (ROM) images. These can be ripped from the original game if you own it. The images are also available from various sources on the Internet, but it is up to you to check whether your local laws allow you to download them, or whether the specific source has the rights to distribute the images.

Visit the official MAME website for further information.

If you are using Windows, I suggest you go for the MAME Plus! build, which includes many additional features, and a great user interface (mamepgui.exe).