These days, people refer to this era of gaming as many things based upon the idea of the "generation" structure. It has been called everything from the Casual Generation (based upon the glut of casual games such as Cooking Mama) to the Short Generation (apparently, any game with more than ten hours worth of story is now considered "long"). It sounds silly, but its not without merit.
I now present to you the rundown of the seven true generations of gaming, in seven parts. Where to start? Well, the beginning of course.
The First Generation
A surprising number of people think that videogames didn't really hit the commercial circuit until the release of the classic arcade cabinet of Pong in 1972 - a release that, surprisingly enough considering the general expansion of the videogame industry in the east, actually occurred in the USA a full year ahead of Japan. More people still consider the NES, released in 1983, the true birth of videogame popularity.
But when you inform people that not only was videogaming born in the early 1950's, but when Pong was sweeping the arcades there was already a home-based multi-cartridge console for consumers, most of them draw a blank face. That is until you mention the Odyssey.
In 1951, a man by the name of Ralph Baer came up with an idea for interactive television. His first creation was eventually finished in 1966, and was named Chase. It was a very simple thing, where two players could control a dot each on the screen. The gameplay was simply to chase the other player around the screen. This was very early remember, so there were no lives, no set of rules besides what the players had decided. It was literally imagination with a television set.
Over the next few years, they (Baer and a few more people who joined on the way) developed this prototype into what became known as the "Brown Box" - a colour producing home console with two controllers and a light gun. That's right, a light gun. A lot of people attribute this invention to Nintendo with the NES blasters, but in 1967 they have a fully working light gun that controls the movement of objects on the screen. Not only that, by 1968 they had a created a ping pong game for their machine, a full four years before Pong hit it big. Great fun!
Using this prototype, Baer approaches various companies and eventually in 1969, Magnavox bought into it. Traditional marketing style meant some changes had to be made in order to cut costs. One of them would become the mainstay of home consoles, and another would set development back years.
The innovation began before there was much to innovate - Magnavox decided that in order to provide potential future sale opportunities, the games for the new machine - now named the Odyssey (and eventually released in 1972), should come on interchangeable cartridges rather than being built into a closed box. Imagine if this had not happened. We may not have seen this little brain child until the NES release in 1983, a full 10 years later.
Of course with the good came the bad, and the bad set development back a few years without even knowing it at the time. In order to cut costs - bare in mind that this was bleeding-edge home technology at release - Magnavox pulled colour support from the Odyssey, instead relying on the cheaper method of supplying plastic overlays for your TV screen. Unfortunately, and I may be wrong here as this particular bit is interjection on my part, it probably prevented other companies following suit for a good while.
Hell, why spend lots of money on colour production when the competition manages fine without it? Note: Remember this was at the genesis point, before the videogame industry ever existed let alone reached today's size. There was no need to spend lots of money on this new "toy", as long as it sold enough to make a profit during the cable TV shortfall of the 60's and 70's. The issue is, when competition gets lazy, technology doesn't advance. By killing colour support at this early stage, we had slowed development for this period and in retrospect we could be on the eighth rather than the seventh generation of gaming by now if they had not.
Of course, they did not know this.
The Odyssey spawned a fair few clones, including the very first Atari release of, you guessed it, Pong arcade and Pong for home TVs. The lawsuit was settled out of court, with Atari becoming a licensee to Magnavox for $700,000 - or roughly half of the company's total worth. Atari soon became one of the greater companies in the early generations, but that is for later.
The Odyssey also spawned two sequel releases - the Odyssey 200, which was essentially a closed box housing nothing but an updated, recoded version of Pong, and the Odyssey², which I will discuss when talking about the Second Generation of videogames.
Summary
The First Generation consisted pretty much entirely of the development, release and cloning of the Magnavox Odyssey and its various ripoffs. Ironically, one of said ripoffs was the start of what was to become one of the most successful companies of the next two generations.
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