Videogames before Pong

[JPjuice23]

So I'm going to start a video series on videogames before pong, and about really old computers in general. I guess the goal is to just show some innovations that really aren't discussed. There's games like Tennis for Two and NIM which I will talk about in the series, but I'm hoping for more games that people don't know about, like the Tic Tac Toe game and the maze game that you could play using a pen on a tx-0 computer (Which I will have to do more research on.) I'm looking for as much accurate information as possible on old computers and old videogames. This is my list thus far of games.

 

Cathode Ray Amusement Device(1947)

Checkers (Draughts) (Feb 1951)

Bouncing Ball and the Whirlwind Computer (April 1951) (Not a videogame really.)

NIM (May 1951)

Chess (November 1951)

OXO (1952)

Theseus Maze (1952) (Not a videogame really.)

Tennis for Two (1958)

TX-0 Computer Games - Tic-Tac-Toe, HAX, Mouse in the Maze

Space War (1961)

Baseball Simulation Games (John Burgeson 1961)

Space Travel (1969)

Galaxy Game (Space War) (September 1971)

Computer Space (November 1971)

Magnavox Odyssey (August 1972)

 

Pong (November 1972)

 

Any websites, books, or maybe using your own knowledge that could help me grow this list, and teach me more about the history of computers would be awesome. Thanks.

Edited December 21, 2012 by JPjuice23

[jhd]

It's been many, many years since I read it, but take a look at Hackers by Steven Levy (1984, rev. ed., 2010). It talks about the really early computer culture at places like MIT, of which developing computer games was a significant part. I seem to recall that Space War is discussed in some detail.

 

If you have access to a decent library, I would also suggest looking at the early years of IEEE Spectrum (1964-) and similar publications.

 

The developments from the 1950s may have gotten some coverage in the academic literature (e.g. physics journals), but I have no idea what specific titles would have been published at that time. I assume that these were more experiments/demonstrations than an attempt at a commercial product (so no patents were filed).

[high voltage]

The Nimatron (1940)

http://www.goodeveca.net/nimrod/nimatron.html

[ComputerSpaceFan]

I've dabbled a bit on my website about pre-Pong games. Anything on it look useful? If so help yourself.

 

http://www.computerspacefan.com/

[Tanrunomad]

Many games existed before Pong, but none of them were commercially sold until years later. The first commercially sold computer game was Microchess in 1975 for the Kim-1, but you should read the book 101 BASIC games which includes many games created for mainframe computers in the 60s and early 70s and then ported to different BASIC variations.