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The First Video Game Was Just a Box in the Corner of a Bar

36 points by PaulHoule 4 days ago | 30 comments

shever73 9 hours ago

For some irrational reason this article annoyed me. It came across arrogant with an attempt at being high-brow, and included too much fluff. Describing the founders as "foundering figures" was amusing - I don't know if the image of taking on water and sinking was the author's intent, but I think I've just become guilty of the same thing I've accused the article of.

jasonkester 6 hours ago

I found myself hoping to find signals that it was written by AI, so that I didn't have to feel embarrassed for an actual author.

That's a first for me.

deepspace 4 hours ago

I came here to say exactly the same thing. The writing is so bad I thought it must be an AI, but then I realized that AIs tend to write much better copy than this drivel.

uptownJimmy 8 hours ago

It's not irrational to be irritated by bad writing.

roelschroeven 8 hours ago

> It came across arrogant with an attempt at being high-brow, and included too much fluff.

Seems consistent with the name of the website: "Literary Hub"

OhMeadhbh 4 hours ago

it's also wrong. Computer Space and Galaxy Games predated pong. And several non-coin-op games like Nimrod, Tennis for Two and Spacewar! predate pong by decades. A quick trip to the Wikipedia could have revealed this error.

I really want this to be an AI generated article because it means AI has come a long way in emulating human fallibility.

clickety_clack 4 hours ago

I think that an actionable critique might be that there’s an overuse of “big word” adverbs and adjectives.

gwbas1c 8 hours ago

I would have appreciated some pictures.

myko 5 hours ago

maybe trying to be too clever here but i think he was implying they were in over their heads and just really lucky

timcobb 8 hours ago

"weird pbotons"

voidUpdate 11 hours ago

> "A revolution was televised in 1972"

Well Tennis for Two was created in 1958 so "the first video game" seems like a stretch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two

JKCalhoun 7 hours ago

I get it, anyone claiming "first video game" is going to start a bar brawl.

But pedantry aside, the also rans, even if they were previously rans, are not interesting. They did not spawn million-dollar companies, change the course of entertainment around the world.

Having huffed though, were I the author I would have anticipated these responses and probably gone with "first wildly successful commercial video game".

empressplay 6 hours ago

You mean like the Magnavox Odyssey, which Bushnell always freely admitted to ripping off?

mrob 9 hours ago

Christopher Strachey wrote a version of draughts/checkers for the Manchester Mark 1 that was fully functional in 1952. This is IMO the first video game. Earlier candidates use single-purpose display hardware, which disqualifies them from being "video".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Strachey

voidUpdate 9 hours ago

If the wikipedia image is accurate, its technically not "displaying" the board, its just in ram. The RAM just happens to be visible. But you get into a lot of technicalities when talking about the "first video game", so its up to interpretation. There was the "Cathode-ray tube amusement device" in 1947 that, by some interpretations could also be the "first video game" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube_amusement_dev...

I think it is at least safe to say that PONG isn't the first

ralferoo 8 hours ago

That's a pretty weird distinction to make.

I remember back in the 80s writing a CGA text-mode game (they were quite in vogue at the time), and (as I assume most programmers did) I used the video memory directly as the source of truth about the current state of the level.

OP's distinction about video being a raster-based signal that you feed into a regular TV-like device, rather than being vector based or hard wired lights seems sensible. As to how that video signal is generated is kind of irrelevant.

voidUpdate 8 hours ago

The manchester mark 1 had a teleprinter as its output, and used a Williams tube as ram (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube). If the image on wikipedia is accurate, the checkers game only "displayed" itself incidentally, on the Williams tube, rather than actually outputting to the teleprinter. In your game, it would be like writing the current level to internal ram, rather than to the actual video memory. The Williams tube isn't really a TV-like device. It stores data on a CRT, but that CRT isn't visible to the user in general operation, as the read plate covers the "screen". Again, "first video game" is up to a lot of interpretation.

Also, saying that vector based video makes it not a video game is a little strange, given how common vector graphics were in arcades (eg Asteroids, Tempest, Missile Command) and the Vectrex

alnwlsn 7 hours ago

Not necessary, you can just take an additional CRT and wire it in parallel to one of the Williams tube CRTs to see what's on the screen.

That's how the Manchester Baby did it (visible in the center of the image here): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Manchest...

ralferoo 7 hours ago

I'm not necessarily making the point that vector graphics based games aren't video games, just arguing against the parent comment against the claim that it wasn't a video game because it was stored in RAM.

I agree with the assertion that this was a video game because it was using a raster-based CRT for the display, even though the primary purpose of that display was for data storage not display.

toast0 5 hours ago

I don't know why being vector based would disqualify this from being a video game?

https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/star-wars

It's from 1983, which disqualifies it from being early, of course.

mrob 8 hours ago

I don't think it's necessary for video RAM to be separate from code RAM. The BBC Micro game "Revs" runs code from the video RAM and sets the palette to make it look like blue sky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revs_(video_game)

CRT Amusement Device is IMO disqualified for not using any form of computer.

voidUpdate 8 hours ago

The CRT Amusement Device uses a video display and has game-like elements, you could argue that makes it a "video game" (as opposed to a "computer game")

anthk 6 hours ago

Computers games can have no video at all why the 'display' it's being sent over a serial output to either a display or a printed paper.

Nethack/Slashem, text adventures, Sokoban, Trek... can be printed one sheet at a time and be totally playable. With Slashem it might be a big waste of paper, but with text adventures you can just reuse the output (obviously) and reduce tons of further typing because you already have the whole scrollback printed back in your hands.

Finnucane 8 hours ago

There was also SpaceWar! from MIT, which Nolan Bushnell turned into a standalone cabinet game. Though I think you could make a case for Pong being the first coin-op video game, a commercial game rather than something that primarily existed in academic labs.

empressplay 6 hours ago

Which would be fine. But the article is written as if Pong was the first video game period, which it clearly wasn't.

teddyh 7 hours ago

Ahoy did a comprehensive video about it: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHQ4WCU1WQc>, and a video is a more appropriate medium for discussing and demonstrating video games.

perfobotto 7 hours ago

So difficult to read ..

anthk 8 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text-based_computer_ga...

Star Trek itself, which I own several ports, it's from 1971.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(1971_video_game)

First computer games predate commercial releases of Pong.

Most of the console isolated journalists have no idea of 60 and 70's computers at all.

empressplay 6 hours ago

> Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included on the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console; in response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.

Yeah, not first video game.

egiboy 7 hours ago

Brings up a ‘Do you want to download “sync” on “lithub.com” and “dsp-service.admatic.de”?’ dialog on my iPad.

Hard pass.

riverforest 6 hours ago

[flagged]