Birth of the Industry

The story

In 1971 Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney put Computer Space into bars: the first coin-operated video game sold commercially. It was too complicated for most people who had come in for a drink.

In 1972 the Magnavox Odyssey, built from Ralph Baer’s “Brown Box” prototype, became the first home video game console. The same year Atari’s table tennis game, designed by Allan Alcorn, became a huge arcade hit, and soon dozens of dedicated home consoles played their own copies of it.

In 1974 Tank, from Kee Games, put two players in a walled maze full of mines. Games like it were still built from logic chips wired together, with no program at all, until 1975, when Gun Fight became one of the first arcade games run by a microprocessor.

In 1976 the Fairchild Channel F introduced swappable ROM cartridges: one console, and a new game whenever you bought one. The same year Atari’s Breakout, a wall to knock down brick by brick, was coloured by strips of film stuck over a black-and-white monitor.

The games in the arcade here are our own recreations, under our own names, written from descriptions of the games of the time. No original code or circuit is used.