TIMELINE: 15 highlights in nearly 80 years of video game history

Edward Condon invented the Nim, or Nimatron, and displayed it at the World’s Fair in New York as the world’s first known game machine. Condon, having worked for Westinghouse Electric at that time, used scaling circuits normally found in Geiger counters to display numbers and challenged tourists to a game of button pressing.

Magnavox introduced the Odyssey, the first home game console. Based on the “Brown Box” prototype, the Odyssey was invented by Ralph Baer, who also headed this console’s development. The Odyssey could only display black and white images, so color overlays made for TV screens were included, as well as accessories from dice to poker chips. The console included 13 games, such as a casino roulette wheel, a haunted house and even a ping-pong screen (which inspired Atari’s “Pong”). Nearly 350,000 units sold, but the Odyssey was unsuccessful and became obscured by Atari’s success with “Pong.”

With Pong’s success, Atari sold the first 8-bit console, the Atari VCS, a.k.a. Atari 2600. This home video game system initially sold well, with faithful recreations of arcade classics like “Asteroids” and “Berzerk,” as well as original games including “Adventure” and “Yars’ Revenge.” Eventually, third-party companies such as Activision, Imagic, U.S. Games (Quaker Oats), M Network (Mattel), Parker Brothers and countless others would develop their own games for the Atari 2600.

Japanese developer Taito Corporation released their hit arcade game “Space Invaders” to the world. “Space Invaders,” a shooting game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, was so successful that it created an urban legend about causing a yen shortage in Japan.

Japanese company Namco introduces “Pac-Man,” a maze arcade game designed by Tohru Iwatani. Iwatani fashioned the iconic character after a pizza missing a slice, and he also had food in mind when he devised the game’s concept. Iwatani once said the name “Pac-Man” came from the Japanese slang word paku-paku, which refers to opening and closing one’s mouth while eating.

Japanese game company Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America, reviving the video game industry after the crash that took place between 1982 and 1985. Two years after its release in Japan as the Family Computer (or Famicom), the NES was sold as a family-friendly home entertainment system. Nintendo took precautions to avoid repeating the mistakes Atari made, such as licensing and quality control, as well as putting a constraint on how many games could be sold by each company per year. The NES initially came with a robot called R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) and an infrared light gun called the Zapper. The most popular games included “Super Mario Bros.,” “The Legend of Zelda,” “Duck Hunt,” “Ghosts ‘n Goblins, “CastleVania,” “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!” and “Tetris.”

Japanese company Sega Enterprises (now Sega Corporation) released the Sega Genesis in North America to compete with Nintendo’s NES and NEC’s TurboGrafx-16. The Sega Genesis (Mega Drive elsewhere) was the world’s first successful 16-bit video game system with its share of hits like “Altered Beast,” “Phantasy Star II” and “Golden Axe,” though it did not find its niche until two years later with “Sonic the Hedgehog.”

Nintendo released the Game Boy, a revolution in the rise of handheld gaming. Although electronic light games, LCD games (like the Game and Watch series) and Milton Bradley’s Microvision came first, the Game Boy opened even more possibilities for handheld games with interchangeable cartridges, dot-matrix graphics and even stereo sound with headphones.

Midway Manufacturing released the first realistic and controversial fighting game called “Mortal Kombat.” In response to the intense violence displayed in games such as this and its exposure to young children, the ESRB (Electronic Software Ratings Board) was established to monitor objectionable content and determine if games were suitable for children or not.

Japanese electronic giant Sony Corporation released the first PlayStation model in North America. The PlayStation was intended to be a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System to compete with Sega’s Sega CD add-on for the Genesis. Sony would have had rights to license third-party games and collect all the royalties for games, so Nintendo negotiated with Philips behind Sony’s backs. Thus, terminating their partnership and causing Sony to release the PlayStation as their own 32-bit gaming console.

Origin Systems’ “Ultima Online” popularized the MMORPG genre, although the 1995 MMORPG “Meridian 59” came first. MMORPG is an acronym coined by game designer Raph Koster, standing for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. This opened the possibility for later MMORPGs, such as “Final Fantasy XI,” “RuneScape,” “The Elder Scrolls Online” and “World of Warcraft."

Sony Corporation introduced the PlayStation 2, the world’s first DVD-ROM based system that could not only play games on CD and DVD formats and music CDs, but also DVD movies. Within the next five years and nine months, the PlayStation 2 sold 100 million units worldwide.

Nintendo released the Nintendo Wii, the first game console that used remote controls equipped with motion sensors. Wii units sold to gamers and non-gamers and would play games like “Wii Sports” and “Wii Fit,” exercising in the process with remote controllers and other accessories, including the Wii Balance Board, a platform that acted as a scale and was used for physical activities like yoga.

Video game and retro game enthusiasts traveled in groups to Almagordo, New Mexico to dig up old video games that were trashed and buried beneath the ground. Thirty-one years earlier, Atari shipped out 20 trucks full of unsold game cartridges and peripherals to this site, crushed them and buried them deep underground. Now, much of the landfill was dug up for the world to see, finding many copies of games such as the infamous “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” which many blame for the video game crash of the mid-1980s.

Republican senator Josh Hawley proposed the Protecting Children from Abusive Games Bill, designed to ban loot boxes and microtransactions from games played by children, accusing games’ developers of “knowingly allow[ing] minor players to engage” in pay-to-play activities, including gambling. However, the Entertainment Software Association contend that loot boxes “do not constitute gambling” and insist that parents should decide what games their children can and cannot play.