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[AHOY] The First Video Game (Documentary)
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
Dang, I was just coming to post this. Thankfully I searched first.
I sometimes put on Ahoy's Wolf3D, Doom, and Quake videos as background noise.
I sometimes put on Ahoy's Wolf3D, Doom, and Quake videos as background noise.
Aw fuck yea, Ahoy makes some of the best gaming stuff on Youtube. Gonna dig into this one later tonight.
OP
OP
His production in general puts to shame many TV produced documentaries XD
Yes Ahoy finally back awesome! :D
This and New Noah video this week is great! :D
That was very good. I'd heard about the rest of those things, but I'm not sure if I knew about that checkers game... pretty interesting information there! It was really interesting and well presented. To twist his results a little though, here he says:
- The computer game was invented in the UK in ~1951--1953.
- The console video game was invented in 1968 (sold 1972) in the US by Ralph Baer.
- The arcade video game was invented in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell, who also seems to have coined the term "video game" shortly afterwards.
... I know that today computer games are considered to be video games, but I still think of that as being a somewhat recent thing -- all through the '90s I definitely remember thinking of the term "video games" as meaning console games, while "computer games" meant, well, games on computers. It's kind of stuck for me, so I still find the idea of calling pc games "video games" a bit odd... though I know from the standpoint of how he defines things in this video that's irrelevant, obviously they fit all of the qualifications of a video game. Those early '50s UK mainframe games are the oldest video games we know of by how we use the term now.
On a probably more relevant note, I'm of two minds about excluding games which just light up parts of the screen, like the Game & Watch, from the list of types of games (computer, console, handheld, mobile, arcade...). On the one hand, yeah, they do not have a regular video display, and are not true video games... but on the other hand, they play like video games and kind of look like them too. The displays are limited and do not work in the say way, sure, but how is, say, the R-Zone not a (super basic) console? So I'm not sure on this one. His definition is reasonable but you could go either way. This question has no effect on the outcome of the video though, the oldest games are definitely not of this style.
On another note, though, did he forget about the Microvision when listing the first handheld, or was he not counting it? I think it's more of an actual screen display than the Game & Watch, it's very very low resolution but looks like a screen display... I think it should count as the first handheld, long before the GB.
- The computer game was invented in the UK in ~1951--1953.
- The console video game was invented in 1968 (sold 1972) in the US by Ralph Baer.
- The arcade video game was invented in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell, who also seems to have coined the term "video game" shortly afterwards.
... I know that today computer games are considered to be video games, but I still think of that as being a somewhat recent thing -- all through the '90s I definitely remember thinking of the term "video games" as meaning console games, while "computer games" meant, well, games on computers. It's kind of stuck for me, so I still find the idea of calling pc games "video games" a bit odd... though I know from the standpoint of how he defines things in this video that's irrelevant, obviously they fit all of the qualifications of a video game. Those early '50s UK mainframe games are the oldest video games we know of by how we use the term now.
On a probably more relevant note, I'm of two minds about excluding games which just light up parts of the screen, like the Game & Watch, from the list of types of games (computer, console, handheld, mobile, arcade...). On the one hand, yeah, they do not have a regular video display, and are not true video games... but on the other hand, they play like video games and kind of look like them too. The displays are limited and do not work in the say way, sure, but how is, say, the R-Zone not a (super basic) console? So I'm not sure on this one. His definition is reasonable but you could go either way. This question has no effect on the outcome of the video though, the oldest games are definitely not of this style.
On another note, though, did he forget about the Microvision when listing the first handheld, or was he not counting it? I think it's more of an actual screen display than the Game & Watch, it's very very low resolution but looks like a screen display... I think it should count as the first handheld, long before the GB.
A fantastic doc, as always. It is always great when Ahoy has new videos. I still disagree with the strict definition of "video game" that excludes the Game & Watch series of machines (and similar set LCD games). I get that they're technically not video signals, but that still feels wrong to me.
