In the late 70's, everyone marvelled at a revolutionary new computer game that allowed a square ball to bounce between two rectangular blocks, in the style of table tennis. Simply called Pong, it had the equivalent impact of a new Zelda game released today.
Pong was the first computer game that took the world by storm. Some thought it nothing more than a fad that would be forgotten the following year - after all, computers were the size of fridges weren't they? Who would want one of those in their house? Well, the gaming arena is now a $10 billion a year industry full of every kind of game you could wish for: games for little girls, games for 30-something men, gambling games, memory games for old people, violent games, funny games, memory games for old people, games about games. The list goes on. Every year the market gets bigger with more consoles, more powerful PCs and broader interactive possibilities via the internet.
In the 70's, the closest thing we had to the consoles of today was a pinball machine in the local arcade. These were coin operated and based on a mechanical system rather than anything electronic. Slowly, games like Pong (created by Atari in 1972) replaced old-fashioned pinball machines, but it would be another five years before such games would be available to play at home. Then, Atari sold nearly twenty thousand copies of Pong and it was the most popular game of its type. That is until Taito created Space Invaders in 1978 and sparked other companies to enter the fray. The same year Atari hit back with Asteroids and as the 70's became the 80's, colour games like Pac-Man became the next big thing, replacing the already stagnant black and white outer space Defender format.
Almost thirty years after its debut, Pac-Man remains one of the all-time favourites amongst gamers. It's still regularly played as a flash-game online, downloaded on mobile phones and the old arcade machines are prized collector's items (although The Guiness World Records maintain that Space Invaders is the highest ranking arcade game). Pac-Man was one of the main selling points for Atari when they released the first commercially viable gaming console in 1977: The Atari 2600.
Such was Atari's confidence of the 2600, that the rights to E.T. The Movie were snapped up and a game was rushed out to cash in on the film's success. But E.T. Ended up flopping so badly that hundreds of thousands of unsold units were buried in a landfill in New Mexico and it's widely considered one of the main reasons for the video game crash of 1983.
Two years later, Nintendo put gaming back in the green with the American release of the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES for short. A wealth of games were available and these helped push Nintendo to the front of the console war, up until the Sega Mega Drive (aka the Genesis) arrived in 1990 and temporarily stole their thunder, thanks in part to a certain blue hedgehog in '91. But for five solid years, games like Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Wild Gunman, Mega Man and, perhaps most iconically, Super Mario Bros were the must-haves of the 80's.
It's worth noting that, apart from the light-gun controlled Wild Gunman, which dated rather quickly, all of these NES games remain strong selling names in the gaming world today. Donkey Kong Jet Race, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy being just a few of their most recent outings, showing that if a game is strong enough, its name will stay in the public consciousness for decades or more. Of course, this will be in part thanks to the nostalgic gamers who have followed the titles since their origin, but as the newer editions remain strong, they will naturally attract younger gamers that won't be largely familiar with their history.
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