Early video games (Late 1940s-Late 1970s)

[FedoraFan112390]

Am curious on the thoughts of some of our patrons on early video/computer games. The earliest game was developed in 1948; the first games distributed in the academic community were released in the late 1950s and throughout the early 1960s; the first Arcade games came out in the mid 1960s, and by the 1970s, video games were a cottage industry. I am curious if any of our patrons played any of these early games, either in an arcade or on a primitive home console prior to let's say 1981? If so, what did you think of them?

More importantly, what did your parents in the Greatest and Silent Generations think of the idea of video games at that time?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I saw a Pong machine in a drug store in 1972 or 1973 and thought it was the strangest thing I'd ever seen in my life. People were lined up to play the thing.

My grandparents, who lived into the early '80s, wouldn't have known what a video game was if one had fallen thru their kitchen ceiling. My mother knows of them only because she still has a box of my brother's "Atari Tapes" in the back of a closet.

One of the interesting things about 1940s and 1950s television sets is that the picture tube was very susceptible to magnetic fields. It was considered the thing to do by many kids to take a bar magnet and hold it against the safety glass in front of the screen, thus causing the picture to swirl and distort in interesting ways, much like stretching a picture on a piece of Silly Putty. It was also the thing to do for your mother to whack you upside the head if you were caught doing this.

 

[Fading Fast]

I took a computer science course in high school in the mid '70s and, if we did well during the week, the teacher let us play Space Invaders for twenty of so minutes on Friday - it was the first video game I remember.

Then, like Lizzie, I remember Pong (later '70s) - some kid's family had it and the thing that stands out most in my mind was it included these transparent screens that looked like different sports fields (I remember a hockey and a tennis one) that you'd put over the TV set. Even as a kid, I remember feeling it felt very manipulative as you knew the underlying game and skill was the same.

Then, in college, I remember the arcades were no longer about pinball but all these video games like Space Invaders, Defenders, etc. There was a subset of kids who were really, really into those games and it seemed they had a subculture of their own.

 

[Stearmen]

I remember Pong! Even then I thought it was the most boring game ever. The only time I was ever in a video arcade during the 70s, I played a submarine game, where you looked through a periscope and fired at ships. I was pretty good, but only played the one game. Don't remember ever seeing any type of video game before the 70s, did play some pinball though! I do remember a friend playing computer space game in the 80s with another person half way around the world. He would make his move, then return to the garage, where we were rebuilding his 75 Norton Command, then after a while he would go back in and make another move. He told me the games could go on for days like that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some might consider "Winky Dink" a video game.