Video Games Present And Past
By Kostas Pagiamtzis
Breaking-in Mario Brothers on the Gameboy Advance recently, it dit dawned on me that it was the same game I used to need a TV and a full gaming console to play. But now the game has been shrunk down to fit in the palm of my hand.
This mini version was made possible because today the number of transistors that can be manufactured on a single chip has doubled about every 18 months since the days when you required the boob tube to save the princess. This doubling phenomenon, known as "Moore's Law," was discovered in the late 1960's. Transistors are the building blocks of computers just like gears and pistons are the building blocks of engines. The process is simple: the smaller that transistors can be made, the more of them you can pack into a chip, giving more computing power to a video game designer.
Amazingly, the exponential growth of integrated circuit technology has paralleled the boom in the video game industry. Starting with the basic game Pong, the rapid developments in game design have caused dramatic economic growth for what's now a multibillion-dollar industry. And it all started with the U.S. military.
| VIDEO GAME HISTORY: THE FIRST TEN YEARS, here are some of the more important developments in the early evolution of video games: |
| 1971 m Nutting releases first arcade video game |
| 1972 m Magnavox begins manufacturing the Odyssey and unveils first home video game; Bushnell starts Atari and develops Pong |
| 1976 m Fairchild introduces first cartridge-based home system; the first violent video game is released, Death Race 2000, which is removed after a nation-wide public outcry |
| 1977 m Atari releases its own home-gaming console just in time for Christmas at a price of US$249.95 |
| 1978 m Midway introduces the "High Score" to arcades with Space Invaders; Space Invaders causes coin shortages in Japan and mass truancy in the U.S. |
| 1979 m Atari introduces Asteroids to arcades, which gives players the opportunity to input three initials along with their high score, Asteroids goes on to become Atari's all-time best-seller; Milton Bradley introduces Microvision, the first hand-held cartridge system |
| 1980 m Atari releases home-version cartridge of Space Invaders, sales boom; Atari creates Battlezone, the first 3-D, first-person game; the U.S. Army commissions an enhanced version of Battlezone for its own training purposes; Namco introduces Pac-Man, the most successful arcade game of all time; originally titled Puck-Man, executives change name after realising that vandals might scratch out part of the letter "P"; Sega and Nintendo join the industry |
In the mid-'60's, the Pentagon ordered the development of a computer system to help train military personnel in strategy and to improve their reflexes. The plan was to build a television-based 'simulation system.' Eventually, the military program led to a business venture and the Magnavox Odyssey was released as the first commercially available game console. Atari would follow with their own game console and the game Pong.
Video games have certainly become much more complex since Pong, a game in which opponents each control their own paddle and bounce a ball back and forth, trying to make the other person miss. In the days of Pong, integrating hundreds of transistors onto a single chip was a feat. In today's world of high-precision photolithography (using laser light to burn circuit patterns onto a chip), individual chips have several million transistors. In 1977, the video game industry would begin booming with the advent of the Atari 2600, which generated over $5 billion dollars in console and game sales. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) would pick up where the 2600 left off. Although the NES wasn't the most technologically advanced system, Nintendo's marketing and timing helped the company capture 90 percent of the market by 1986.
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Nintendo's focus on profits rather than technology subsequently resulted in a market share loss to Sega's Genesis, a system based on 16-bit technology as compared to Nintendo's 8-bit NES. The Sega Genesis dominated by the end of 1989. Nintendo responded with the Super NES in 1991. Since then, many new video game consoles have been released, including the 32-bit Sega Saturn and Dreamcast, and the Nintendo 64. Most noteworthy, however, was the release of the 32-bit Sony PlayStation in '95. Sony legitimized the market in the eyes of large corporate investors with the release of the PlayStation. It has since released its 64-bit PlayStation 2.
As the number of transistors available in game consoles has increased, so has the computing power. In turn, clever game designers have utilized this power and created ultra-realistic and phenomenal fantasy games. The development in games continues with one of the largest companies in the world -- software-maker Microsoft -- joining the fray by announcing the release of the Microsoft X-Box in early November. The X-Box promises to continue the evolution of video game machines with Intel involved in the design process. Nintendo, not to be outdone by Microsoft, has also announced the release of their new 64-bit console, the GameCube, in early November.
Theorists assumed that Moore's Law would become obsolete more than a few times over the years, and yet it remains as relevant today as ever. Higher precision photolithography continues to allow for greater computing power and is expected to keep up as such until at least 2010. This means more power in the hands of game designers and more realistic and fantastic video games in your home.
