In 1977 the Atari 2600 launched and along with it much of what we know today as the videogame industry. How did we get where we are today? We have surveyed our history and chosen one moment from each year that defines who and what we are today.
1977: This is your hardware, now and forever
The wildly popular Atari 2600 gave us today’s modern console: a general purpose CPU, dedicated graphics and sound hardware, a standard audio/video output, generic controller I/O ports, an interface for swappable media, all powered by a wall outlet. For comparison, the battery-powered Magnavox Odyssey had neither sound nor color graphics and the Fairchild Channel F had an internal speaker and hardwired controllers.
Thirty years ago Atari cultivated the image of a console sitting prominently in front of a television, surrounded by stacks of games and spare controllers and happy people holding controllers. Nintendo uses nearly identical images with fewer wires to sell its Wii.
1978: Japan short on coins, Space Invaders to blame
Shortly after Atari put its first Pong machine into Andy Capp’s Tavern, the owner called to report the machine was broken. When Al Alcorn, creator of the Pong machine, arrived to examine and remove the machine he discovered the problem: overflowing coin container.
While Pong went on to be quite popular, its original money problems faintly foreshadowed the far more extensive difficulties that Tomohiro Nishikado’s Space Invaders caused in 1978. Players put coins into Taito’s machines so rapidly that Japan quadrupled production of yen coins to deal with the shortage. More importantly for the industry as a whole, its popularity across the world brought video games out of smoky bars and arcades and into more familiar establishments like department stores and restaurants.