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Video Game History: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
The First Games
Early video games were lab experiments. In 1962, students at MIT made Spacewar!, and in 1972 Pong became the first big arcade hit.
Key fact
Pong was made by Atari, founded in 1972.
The Arcade Age
In the late 1970s and early 80s, arcades boomed with games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Players fed in coins for a few minutes of play.
Key fact
Pac-Man came out in Japan in 1980.
Home Consoles
Consoles brought games home. The Atari 2600 arrived in 1977, and Nintendo’s NES, launched in North America in 1985, revived the industry after a crash.
Key fact
Super Mario Bros. came out in 1985.
Tetris
Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in 1984 in Moscow. Bundled with Nintendo’s Game Boy in 1989, it became one of the best-selling games ever.
Key fact
Tetris pieces are called tetrominoes: shapes made of four squares.
The 3D Revolution
In the mid-1990s, games moved into 3D. Super Mario 64 and the PlayStation made free-roaming 3D worlds the new normal.
Key fact
Sony’s first PlayStation launched in Japan in 1994.
Best-Sellers
Minecraft, released in 2011, is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 300 million copies sold. Grand Theft Auto V is another giant.
Key fact
Minecraft was first created by Markus “Notch” Persson in Sweden.
Games Everywhere
Smartphones put games in every pocket. Mobile games now make up about half of all games revenue, and billions of people play.
Key fact
There are over 3 billion video game players worldwide.
Fun facts
An even earlier game, Tennis for Two, ran on an oscilloscope screen at a US lab in 1958.
Pac-Man’s creator said the shape came from a pizza with a slice missing.
The first home console, the 1972 Magnavox Odyssey, came with plastic overlays to stick on the TV screen.
For years, Pajitnov earned no royalties from Tetris, because the Soviet state owned it.
The Nintendo 64’s analogue stick was designed alongside Super Mario 64, to let Mario move smoothly in any direction.
Microsoft bought Minecraft in 2014 for 2.5 billion dollars.
Pokémon GO, a 2016 phone game, got millions of people walking outside to catch creatures.
Story: The Game Too Full of Coins
The Game Too Full of Coins
1972, California. Atari puts a test version of its new game, Pong, in Andy Capp’s Tavern, a local bar. Days later, the owner calls: it’s broken.
Engineer Al Alcorn drives over to fix it, and finds the problem: the coin box is so stuffed with quarters that the machine has jammed.
Atari went on to sell thousands of Pong machines, and arcades soon filled with video games.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Spacewar! was made by students at MIT.
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True. In 1962, on a lab computer.
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Question 2 of 10
Pac-Man was made in Japan.
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True. By the company Namco, in 1980.
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Question 3 of 10
Super Mario Bros. came out in the 1980s.
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True. In 1985, on the NES.
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Question 4 of 10
Tetris was created in the Soviet Union.
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True. At a computer centre in Moscow, in 1984.
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Question 5 of 10
The first PlayStation came out in the 1990s.
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True. In Japan in 1994, and in the West in 1995.
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Question 6 of 10
Minecraft was first created by Markus “Notch” Persson.
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True. In Sweden, before Microsoft bought it.
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Question 7 of 10
Mobile games make up about half of the games industry’s revenue.
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True. More than consoles or PCs on their own.
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Question 8 of 10
Video games were invented in the 2000s.
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False. The first ones appeared in the 1950s and 60s.
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Question 9 of 10
Space Invaders came out after 2000.
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False. It came out in 1978.
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Question 10 of 10
Nintendo started out making video games in the 1800s.
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False. Nintendo was founded in 1889, making playing cards.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Video Game History has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- The Strong National Museum of Play — Video game history timeline
- Computer History Museum — Spacewar!
- Nintendo — Company history
- Newzoo — Global Games Market Report
- Microsoft / Mojang — Minecraft sales milestones
- The Strong National Museum of Play — video game history
- Video Game History Foundation (2023), survey of classic game availability
