When did computer games appear? History of the emergence, formation, development of computer video games (26 photos) In what year did the first game appear?

The first computer game was created in 1952 by A. S. Douglas. Douglas created his first game at the University of Cambridge (one of the most prestigious universities in England). The world's first computer game was programmed on an EDSAC computer, the image on which was formed using cathode rays. Another computer scientist, William Hijinbasam, created his first video game around 1958. His video game was called Tennis for Two. In 1962, Steve Russell invented SpaceWar! It is worth saying that this game, SpaceWar!, was the first computer game that was intended specifically for playing on a computer, that is, for computer use. Steve Russell used a mainframe computer to design his game. But, just five years later, in 1967, Ralph Baer first wrote a video game that could be played on a TV. The game that Ralph Baer managed to write was called “Pursuit”.

The fact is that at that historical period, Ralph Baer worked in an organization dealing with military electronics. In 1971, Bushnell, along with Ted Dabney, created their first game - a maze, a gallery. This game was called "Space". “Space” was based on, that is, when it was created, Steve Russell’s earlier game Spacewar! was taken as a basis. Just a year later, in 1972, the Pong needle was created. Pong was created by Nolan Bushnell and Al Corn. In 1975, Atari released Pong as a home video game.

It is worth saying that Larry Kerekman was one of the first to create video games. In 1972, the first commercial video game console was released. Thanks to this remote control, you could play video games at home, meaning there was no need to go anywhere. Also, it is worth saying that such a commercial remote control for a video game was quite an expensive pleasure, which, however, is not surprising. Any thing that appears for the first time is always very expensive, because in this case such a thing practically claims to be exclusive.

Today, any child cannot imagine his childhood and youth without computer games. Today, a computer and everything that is necessary for a full-fledged and exciting game is quite accessible to anyone, even a not very well-to-do family. However, it is worth reminding our little computer geeks that it is not worth playing computer games for a long time, as this can damage your eyesight. Some games can cause cybernetic gambling addiction - this is what psychologists call addiction to computer games. It is much more fun to play outdoor games with your friends, run in the yard, or play any kind of sport.

Online games are a very common way to spend free time. Their popularity has increased sharply with the advent of high-speed Internet and modern graphics technologies, which make it possible to achieve mind-blowing beauty (albeit very rarely used, due to the outdated and limited resources of most users).

The first online shooter

The first online shooter was developed by John Dahleske in 1973 year under the first e-learning system “PLATO”, and received a rather meaningful name - "Empire". There were four races in total, and the main task facing each player was to conquer a galaxy consisting of 25 planets. And, of course, this was only possible by defeating all of your rivals.

It was a simple-looking, but quite complex shooter-style strategy with support for up to eight participants maximum. When I talk about complexity, I don’t mean the sophisticated capabilities of the game, but the complexity of the controls: all commands were entered by the players using the keyboard (and this despite the fact that this is a shooter!), the direction of the shot was set in degrees, and if you think that everything happened slowly - you are deeply mistaken: in battles, an experienced player performed 20 clicks per second, and only because the PLATO system could not process more.

However, Empire was not a full-fledged online game, in the modern sense of the word, because in those not so distant, but infinitely distant times from us, there was no Internet yet.

First online game

Since at that time the Internet was a large local network, existing mainly only at strategically important sites and in the institutes that were developing the network for these very sites, it is not surprising that we owe the first online games to American students.

IN 1975 year, Will Crowther creates the first text game, built according to the rules of the very first and popular Dungeons & Dragons universe (which is still alive in modern projects, the latest of which is).

Inspired by this, MIT students 1977 create their own version of this game, and give it the name “Zork”, which was changed to “Dungeon” when transferred to FORTRAN.

IN 1979 European students Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw create a multiplayer version of this game and give it the name Multi-User Dungeon, creating the world's first online game in the multiplayer world (MUD) genre. This genre can rightfully be considered the progenitor of MMORPG, since it is an MMORPG, but only in text form. When transferred to FORTRAN it was called “Dungeon”.

IN 1980 Dungeons of Kesmai was developed by two classmates, John Taylor and Kelton Flynn. It was a similar game, but with a bigger future. Up to six people could play it at the same time.

IN 1985 , when the first PC had already appeared and the TCP\IP protocol had been developed, John and Kelton decided to go further and, having founded their own company, released an expanded commercial version called “Dungeons of Kesmai, Island of Kesmai”, thereby giving birth to a new era of global industry and earning claim the title of creators of the world's first commercial online game.

But technology did not stand still, as did the competitors of the newly formed company, and in the same year Island of Kesmai received a serious competitor from Lucasfilm Games - an online game "Habitat" with full graphics and a convenient graphical interface.

IN 1988 In 2010, Club Caribe was created - the world's first game with a subscription fee, which was $12 per hour (and you complain that you have to pay), and at the same time it was not much different from Habitat.

In the same year, a protocol for modern Internet chats was developed, which later, of course, significantly influenced the online gaming industry.

In the 1990s with the advent of the modern Internet- WWW – online games have also begun to develop rapidly. Now that the browser and GUI have appeared operating systems, everyone was able to use the Internet - thousands of people joined gamer communities, and dozens of new game projects entering the market every month began to fight for them... and this process continues to this day.

IN 1991 appears the first graphical online role-playing game– “Neverwinter Nights.” The game screen is divided into two parts: text and graphic.

IN 1998 The first online game with 3-D graphics called “Everquest” appeared. After which the real boom of 3-D MMORPG began.

Much water has passed under the bridge since then, and all this time technologies have been improved, which ultimately led to a split in the gaming industry into two segments: classic client-based and new browser-based, while these are no longer the same online games that once made the word “browser-based” has become a dirty word. See for yourself by trying out free games online on the flash games website irogid.com, where you can easily find something that suits you.

Computer games originated in the distant past; their history goes back more than 50 years. The first games appeared not as entertainment, but more for scientific purposes, because the first computers were huge, expensive, and mainly appeared in educational and scientific institutions. Computer games went to the masses with the advent of consoles and the first PCs, when they became more accessible to most people. Only after the popularization of computer games did they become commercial. And now companies make fortunes from developing games.

Let us trace the history of the development of computer games in more detail and note significant games that to some extent influenced the development of the gaming industry. The world first saw the first semblance of a computer game in 1942. This event happened thanks to two people, Thomas Goldsmith the Younger and Eastle Ray Menn, who created a rocket simulator. Since that time, the era of computers and video games began.

The main stage of development of the first computer games occurred in the 50s - 60s. last century. These games were not developed for entertainment, but as a scientific research. The game OXO (analogous to Tic Tac Toe) was the honor of A. S. Douglas's doctoral dissertation. But despite this, the games have become very popular among students and visitors educational institutions. For example, such a game is Tennis for Two (analogous to Ping Pong for 2 players), created in 1958 by William Higinbotham. Games of those times were developed specifically for each computer and were little like modern ones, because text terminals and vector graphic displays were used as screens.

The next period is 1961 - 1970. notable for the fact that the SpaceWar game was created for PDP-1 computers and the first prototype of a computer mouse. It was created by Douglas Engelbart and called it this: a system for indicating X-Y positions on a monitor. This made a big step in the development of computers, and as a result, the evolution of computer games followed.

1971 – 1980 – in this decade, humanity has made a huge step in the development of computers and, on top of everything else, people have realized that game development is a huge source of income. At this time, personal computers and game consoles appeared, a prototype of a local network and the Internet appeared. Players can now play in groups by joining groups using the network. Main events:

1971 - the first commercial game Galaxy (modified by SpaceWar) appears, as well as Computer Space (another modification of SpaceWar) - the first computer game released to the general public in 1,500 arcade machines.
1972 - Atari is founded, releasing the world's first arcade game Pong, which enjoyed great success. In the same year, the world saw the first game console - Odyssey from Magnavox.
1973 - The world's first first-person shooter Mazewar appears, with the ability to play over the network.
1975 - The adventure genre is born thanks to the game Colossal Cave Adventure.
1976 - The game Death Race based on the film Death Race 2000 causes outrage among people due to its cruelty, so it is banned in many places.
1977 - With the advent of the Apple II, the first graphic games are released.
1979 - The first multiplayer game of the MUD (Multi User Dungeon) type is created, where players walked around, explored the world and communicated through the first analogues of chat. Such games are becoming very popular.
1980 - the game Pac-Man appears, which later entered the Guinness Book of Records as the most popular game in the world. The RPG genre Rogue is created, which gives birth to a new type of games: rogue-like games. Roguelikes (from Rogue) are text-based games where the world, character, artifacts, and enemies are represented by symbols.

In the period from 1981 to 1990, consoles experienced a crisis, because... personal computers are becoming available due to low prices. Text and character graphics games are gradually dying. They are being replaced by games with more complex graphics as the first graphics cards appear, thereby relieving the processor of graphics processing. For the first time, games appear in series that later become famous, for example, Metroid, Adventure Island, Space Quest, etc... Significant dates:

1983 - the beginning of the era of 8-bit consoles. Some experts also consider this year to be the beginning of the modern era of electronic entertainment. Such well-known consoles as Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System, PC Engine, Atari 7800 appeared. A large number of two-dimensional games with a side view appeared. For the first time, the Final Fantasy game appeared, the sequel of which is still played today.
1984 - the first space simulator with trading elements appears - the game Elite. The game King's Quest is also being released - the world's first animated quest.
1985 - the famous game Tetris, created by Alexey Pajitnov, is released. The Commodore company creates the Amiga personal computer. This year the world meets the Mario brothers (Super Mario Bros).
1986 - The release of Dragon Quest gave birth to the JRPG genre. The company Ubisoft Entertainment (its original name was Ubi Soft) was founded.
1987 - the appearance of such cult arcade fighting games as Street Fighter and Double Dragon. The Amiga 500 personal computer appears. Graphics with 256 colors appear on the PC, thanks to the development of the VGA standard.
1988 - Game Developers Conference - the world's first conference for game developers, held in San Jose.
1989 - Intel 486 processors appeared, thanks to which the transition of personal computers to a graphical interface was completed. Such well-known games are released as SimCity, Prince of Persia, Solitaire Solitaire, which began to be present in all versions of Windows, starting with the third. Nintendo's first handheld console with Game Boy cartridges appears.

1991 – 2003 – this decade saw a revolution in computer games, thanks to the development computer technology. Now it is possible to create worlds with three-dimensional graphics using complex multimedia tools. ID Software released the legendary game Doom, which remains popular even now. This game became unique, it was not like all previous games: new system first-person player control, three-dimensional world, network play (every man for himself in a team). Later, the equally famous game Quake was developed on the Doom engine. At this time, gaming clans began to be created for the first time, and such a concept as e-sports arose. At this time, the game Half Life appeared - the first multiplayer game that allowed the creation of mods - modifications. Players could now themselves change the surrounding game world and the hero himself. The gaming industry is beginning to generate huge income, which has begun to be compared with the income of the film industry. Main dates:

1991 – famous games are released: Lemmings and Sonic the Hedgehog. The blue hedgehog later becomes the symbol of Sega.
1992 - Bloody Fighter appears for the first time Mortal Kombat, which spawned a whole series of not only games, but films and cartoons. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss appears - the world's first 3D role play first person. Alone in the Dark marked the beginning of the survival horror game genre. Dune II became the template for real-time strategy games.
1993 - Id Software releases the cult game Doom - the world's first 3D shooter. The concept of turn-based combat in the game X-COM: UFO Defense, which was released this year, is not outdated to this day. Atari Corp. Released the first 64-bit Jaguar console.
1995 – the release of the first parts of the famous games Need for Speed and Heroes of Might and Magic. BioWare founded. The first exhibition of the computer and video game industry - Ei Media and Business Summit - took place.
1996 - 3dfx Interactive releases the world's first graphics adapter (Voodoo I) with support for 3D acceleration, which revolutionized the gaming industry. In the same year, the Quake game was released with a completely three-dimensional world. The release of the first parts of the popular games Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Diablo. The world's first MMORPG appears - Meridian 59.
1998 – exit famous game Half-life, on whose engine many more games were developed. The Unreal game marked the development of the popular Unreal Engine. The game StarCraft from Blizzard is released, championships for which are still held. Aliens Online was the origin of the MMOFPS genre. The cult game Vangers from the Russian company K-D LAB is released, attracting the attention of the West.
1999 - Intel releases the Pentium III processor with the ability to handle 3D graphics and streaming media. Unreal Tournament is coming out - a new hit in the gaming market and one of the first e-sports shooters.
2000 - elements of artificial intelligence appear in game engines.
2003 - the first World Cup in electronic sports took place with the participation of about 150 thousand players from all over the world.

Since the onset of 2004, the world has overcome another step in the development of computer and video games. This time can be considered the beginning of the emergence of modern games. Thanks to the widespread use of the Internet, a huge number of MMORPGs and MMOFPS are appearing. This year marks the release of Far Cry, the first game to support 64-bit systems. The most popular (even today) portable console, Nintendo DS, goes on sale.

In subsequent years until today, there has been a huge number of releases of computer and video games of various genres and for all platforms. The development of computer technology also does not stand still.

What trend in the development of games can be predicted for the future, knowing how things are with the gaming and computer industries? Reduction or complete disappearance of games on PC platforms due to piracy. All more games video games are being released, and in America, on June 17, 2010, a service such as OnLive was launched. With its advent, users will no longer need to have powerful personal computers at home. It is only necessary to have high-speed Internet, because... it will transmit processed graphics from a remote server to which the user will connect to play. What I also want to say is that developers and publishers have begun to forget and want to extract as much money from players’ wallets as possible by making paid additions to games. Price reductions for the provision of gaming services are not expected in the near future.

This is how computer and video games developed rapidly, and the trend of their evolution does not stop. Perhaps in the near future we will be able to completely immerse ourselves in a game world that will be more than realistic.

Since the time ancient Rome the people demanded “bread and circuses.” Entertainment and relaxation have always been one of the main components of any civilization. The very first game in the world, created for fans of virtual space, marked the beginning of a new era in the entertainment industry.

Today there are a great variety of computer games. New games come out almost every day. People who are fond of virtual games today do not experience the slightest difficulty in choosing a suitable toy that can brighten up their leisure time. Computer games today will satisfy even the most demanding connoisseur. But the market for such entertainment has not always been so abundant. After all, earlier computers did not have much power; there were no games for them at all.

The beginning of the era of virtual entertainment

This happened in the immemorial year of 1962. The game was called Spacewar. She could work on a computer with 9 kilobytes of RAM. Today's gamers will only smile when they see such funny numbers. By the way, modern computers can accelerate to 2 billion. And gadgets on the Android platform can handle the newest toys without any problems; there are even games with augmented reality.

The very first game in the world left an indelible and vivid imprint on the entire history of computer games. By the way, similar games have been created before; the creators of Spacewar were not pioneers in that sense. Back in 1952, A. Douglas came up with a game that was essentially an analogy of ordinary tic-tac-toe. In 1958, U. Hijinbasam created a game under the romantic name “Tennis for Two.” It was all just ping pong. But Spacewar had a slightly different purpose, because it had to be played on a computer, which fundamentally distinguished it from its predecessors.

Creating a cosmic masterpiece

The first computer game was a battle between two ships in space. She is the embodiment of the vastness of the universe, cold, merciless and bottomless, like an abyss. The game was created by a group of programmers working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It took them two months to work on the game. The leaders of the group were S. Russell and M. Gretz.

Fate brought them together in a tourist club at the university. Both were attracted to science fiction, and on this basis they became serious friends. At first they made a simple program, which after a month turned into a game with two missiles shooting at each other. The goal of the game was simple - you had to throw your opponent off balance before he beats you.

Players have equal chances of winning. Each of them has a supply of energy, embodied in two types: passive and active. Passive energy is needed to support the force field protection function. Without active energy it will not be possible to accomplish such necessary active actions, like jumping, traveling through space, fighting and camouflage.

Each player himself determines the style and rhythm of the game. He can only rely on himself, he is responsible for his actions and mistakes. Victory will be achieved by the one who shows great prudence and composure. Moments of calm are sweet for the player, because in such rare moments active energy is revived. But at the same time they are dangerous for him.

A fragment of the starry sky was displayed on the display; two players, using the keyboard, had to shoot at the enemy and maneuver in zero gravity. Fuel supplies and combat equipment were limited. In order to avoid being shot, you had to turn around a star located in the center of the map or decide to make a super jump. The last method to bypass enemy missiles was the hyperspace function, but this method was very dangerous and unpredictable, as the ship could explode when used.

The peculiarity of the game was that the first version of the starry sky background was imperfect. Samson did not like this at all, and he decided to write a program based on real diagrams of stellar space. After the successful implementation of this innovation, at least 50 percent of the stars became visible. The game has become a real inspiration for many game creators. Some are simply copies of the game, while others differ from it in such characteristics as the intensity of acceleration, different levels of gravity, and the presence of shields.

Followers of the first developers

In 1971, a similar game was created called Computer Space, but it did not gain much popularity. Spacewar, after ten years, has earned the title of the first commercial game. All in the same 1971, a machine with a different version of Spacewar - Galaxy Game - was installed in the building of the Stanford Student Union. This game enjoyed undoubted success for six years. The creator of the machine, B. Pitts, managed to quickly return the 60 thousand dollars he invested in the project.

The creators of Spacewar did not receive much financial benefit from their brainchild. They achieved only small fees by advising the courts in the 1970s in cases involving the gaming industry. And, of course, they improved their skills as programmers. Everyone who in one way or another took part in the creation of Spacewar is still associated with computers, and their name will remain for centuries. The very first game in the world opened the way for many talented programmers and developers who continue the work begun by the Americans and delight modern gamers with new products and surprises from the computer gaming industry.

When thinking about how the gaming industry began, many people immediately think of Pong. Although the acclaimed arcade machine took the industry to a whole new level, its creation was preceded by more than twenty years of experimentation. And the earliest of them is considered to be the project of the American inventor Thomas Goldsmith, developed almost seventy years ago.

1948 - Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device

In 1948, physicists Thomas Goldsmith and Astle Ray Mann were granted the world's first patent for the invention of electronic interactive game. The patent describes a game in which the player sits or stands in front of a CRT monitor mounted in a cabinet.

Goldsmith and Mann, who worked with radar during World War II, decided to make something like a rocket simulator. Using special knobs, the player had to adjust the trajectory of the projectiles in order to hit the targets.

Scientists did not have any hopes for the resulting game. This was just a small demonstration of the capabilities of DuMont Laboratories, of which Goldsmith was listed as a director. The patent was never used, and the matter did not go beyond a manually created copy.

1948 - Turbochamp

The legendary English mathematician Alan Turing developed a chess program with his colleague David Champernow in 1948. Having finished it in 1950 and calling it Turbochamp, Turing tried to implement the project on Ferranti Mark 1, but the attempts were in vain - the computer did not have enough power. Then Alan decided to play an experimental game against his friend, scientist Alik Glenny, in which he, acting according to the created algorithm, acted as his program. Each move took Turing half an hour, and after 29 moves he lost to Glenny. However, the experiment showed that Turbochamp is capable of playing like a human. Later, in a similar experiment, Alan managed to win against Chempernovna’s wife. And the first full-fledged chess game would be written by Alex Bernstein in 1957 and run on an IBM 704 computer.

In 2012, the famous chess player Garry Kasparov played a game against Turbochamp and defeated it in 16 moves.

You can watch that same game against Glenny.

1950 - Bertie the Brain

The first game with any visual component was Bertie the Brain. Joseph Cates developed a game of Tic Tac Toe for the Canadian National Exhibition. To do this, he needed a four-meter-tall computer that invited exhibition visitors to compete in a classic game with artificial intelligence.

Cates built Bertie the Brain in part to promote his invention, his version of the vacuum tube, which he called the Additron tube.

Bertie the Brain turned out to be quite difficult, and Cates had to manually adjust the difficulty for each visitor. The player pressed one of nine buttons, and the result was displayed on the screen hanging in front of the players in the form of an “X” or “O”.

Immediately after the exhibition, they forgot about the game. Due to fast technical progress the same thing happened with the lamps he invented.

Cates once said: “If the solid-state revolution had come ten years later, my invention would have made me a billionaire.”

1951 - Nimrod

It all started when the British electrical equipment company Ferranti promised the Deputy Prime Minister of England, Herbert Morrison, to contribute to the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition. John Bennett, an Australian employee of the company, was contracted to do this job. John had an idea to build a full-fledged computer for playing Nim. Bennett wanted to demonstrate the computing power of a computer, and the mathematical "Nim" was an excellent example.

The booklet accompanying the computer read: “It may seem that we are wasting time by creating a machine for games, but this is not true. Game theory is extremely complex, and a machine that can play a complex game can be programmed to solve useful problems.”

However, with the exception of a few, the public was not interested in Nimrod's mathematical abilities, but in the gaming factor.

After demonstrating the Nimrod at a couple more exhibitions, Ferranti forgot about the computer and moved on to other projects.

1952 - Thoughts and Crosses

Noughts and Crosses is considered the first computer game with a graphical interface. In 1952, British scientist Alexander Douglas presented it as an appendix to his PhD thesis on human-computer interaction.

Just at that time, the University of Cambridge completed the creation of an electronic computer EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), the world's first computer built on von Neumann principles (joint storage of commands and data in computer memory). Douglas took advantage of the opportunity and programmed a simple game of Tic Tac Toe.

Noughts and Crosses (a game of Tic Tac Toe) was displayed on a 35x16 pixel display, and the game itself was one of the first uses of artificial intelligence.

Douglas's project was well received, earning him a doctorate and launching a successful scientific career. It is interesting that in his entire life the scientist never wrote another game.

1958 - Tennis for Two

Tennis for Two was the first multiplayer game. Physicist William Higinbotham developed it specifically for the day open doors at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he worked.

In Tennis for Two, two players control a light dot that flies across the oscilloscope screen. By twisting the controller handle you can change the angle of the ball's flight and launch it by pressing the red button.

In addition to being the first sports game, Tennis for Two was the first to use two controllers for two players, taking another step towards interactivity.

Despite its popularity, Higinbotham did not obtain a patent for the game, and the components of Tennis for Two were used for other projects.

In May 2011, the game was recreated specifically for the MEGA (Museum of Electronic Games & Art) project.

1961 - Spacewar!

After MIT acquired a copy of the PDP-1 computer, Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Whithanam were tasked with developing a program for it. As a result, their attempts to utilize the capabilities of a computer in one program turned into Spacewar!

Inspired by Japanese sci-fi films, the game is a duel between two spaceships. Over time, elements such as asteroids and hyperspace were added, allowing players to teleport at random while avoiding enemy torpedoes.

Spacewar! decided to distribute it free of charge, and the game was pre-installed on all subsequent copies of PDP-1 computers. The creators also provided the source code to everyone, completely free of charge.

Although Spacewar! and did not give birth to the gaming industry, it had a significant influence on developers, and, in the end, became the prototype for the world's first arcade machine, Computer Space.

You can evaluate Spacewar! for yourself, for example.

1967 - Inventions of Ralph Baer

American inventor Ralph Baer can be called the real father of the gaming industry. It was he who moved from short-term experiments like those described above to action, proposing the use of televisions for games. It is interesting that Baer came up with this idea back in 1955, and he waited eleven years for the right moment and conditions for its implementation.

As Baer recalled: “At that time, forty million television sets in the United States were literally begging their creators to use them for something other than watching the news.”

In 1966, together with engineer Bob Tremblay, Baer designed a device that allowed players to move a white dot around the screen and change its size. Baer compiled these features into the Chase game and offered it to Sanders. The company provided Baer with $2,500 in funding on the condition that he come up with more interesting things for the gameplay.

With two more engineers on board, Baer developed several prototypes over the course of a year, which were eventually combined into the world's first video game console, The Brown Box.

The console also included a joystick and one of the world's first light guns, a la the NES Zipper. But, despite the interest in the console from such giants as Motorola and General Electronics, companies were in no hurry to take on the risk of releasing such an innovative project. Only four years later, Baer managed to sign a contract with Magnavox and release the “brown box” under the name Odyssey.

Odyssey ran on batteries, did not produce sound, and had graphics that consisted of white dots and lines, requiring a lot of imagination from players. And yet, the console quickly gained enormous popularity - more than 100,000 units were sold in a year.

1971 - Computer Space

After fellow engineers Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney played Spacewar! on the huge PDP-1, they became obsessed with bringing the game to a smaller device. After some experimentation with programmer Larry Bryan, and even the creation of a company for the occasion, Syzygy, Bushnell and Dabney came to the conclusion that instead of making a direct port of the game from the PDP-1, they should re-create Spacewar! with the help of other technologies, which, by the way, were already promoted by Ralph Baer.

Having completed development, Syzygy entered into a contract with Nutting Associates to produce two types of slot machines called Computer Space: for one and two players, respectively. The gameplay of Computer Space was still a little different from Spacewar!. The attraction to the center of the screen has disappeared, and the need to dodge attacks from third-party ships moving back and forth across the screen has been added.

Unfortunately for the developers, the game turned out to be too difficult for ordinary bar visitors, where slot machines were most often found. Bushnell and Dabney began to develop new ideas and soon gave the world the famous Pong on behalf of their new company Atari.