In 1962, inside a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, video games were not a business. Programmer Steve Russell and his collaborators spent about 200 hours creating Spacewar! on a DEC PDP-1 computer. The game was a two-player dogfight between ships named the Needle and the Wedge, both caught in the gravitational pull of a central star. Players had to manage limited fuel and ammunition, and could even use the star’s gravity for a tactical slingshot maneuver. To make it playable, team member Bob Saunders built dedicated hand-held control boxes, among the first ever created for a computer game. Russell then released the code for free, allowing it to spread through research labs and become a quiet, foundational piece of early computer culture, long before anyone tried to sell one.
The History of Video Games
From a university lab in 1962 to a market crash in 1983, this is the story of how video games began, and how Nintendo revived them.
The First Dogfight
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the first widely played video game?
Spacewar! was completed in 1962 by Steve Russell and his team at MIT. It featured two ships in a dogfight around a star and its code was shared freely, allowing it to spread to other research labs.
What caused the video game crash of 1983?
The crash was caused by market saturation with too many low-quality, unlicensed games, which destroyed consumer trust. Atari's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game is often cited as a key example of this failure.
How did Nintendo revive the US video game market?
In 1985, Nintendo marketed its console as an 'Entertainment System' to wary retailers, bundling it with a toy robot called R.O.B. They also introduced a 'Seal of Quality' to reassure consumers about game performance and content.
Learn more
To continue the story, download the Chunks Microlearning app
Or get it straight away:
Download on iOS
Download on Android