THE 12 BIGGEST BREAKTHROUGHS IN GAMING TECHNOLOGY STORY LIBRARY by Jamie Kallio
1 Game Consoles Bring Video Games Home Before there was home gaming people played video games at arcades In 1972 a company called Magnavox released the first home game console This was a small computer system that connected to a television The console was called the Magnavox Odyssey Games were made up of just dots and lines One of the most popular arcade games was Atari’s Pong In 1975 Atari sold a home version of the game Pong was similar to tennis Players used paddles to hit a ball over a net The game had two dimensional 2D graphics In 1977 Atari released a console that played other games Space Invaders and Missile Command became popular In 1985 a Japanese company released a new home gaming console The console’s name was A Magnavox Odyssey 44
THE BROWN BOX The Magnavox Odyssey had a life before 1972 Engineer Ralph Baer had created the console in 1967 It was originally called the Brown Box The Brown Box had simple games In one game two squares chased each other across the screen Baer later allowed Magnavox to release the console the Nintendo Entertainment System It became the best-selling console in history Nintendo released many popular games These included Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda Nintendo followed its home game console with other devices One of them called the Game Boy was handheld Other companies released consoles too These companies included Sega Genesis PlayStation and Xbox New technology gave each console better sound and graphics 150,000 Number of Atari consoles sold during the 1975 holiday season Magnavox Odyssey was the first home game console Atari’s Pong was a popular game in the 1970s The first Nintendo console came out in 1985 The PlayStation and Xbox consoles came out after Nintendo 55
