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CSCE 4013 Game Programming Spring 2014. Prof. John Gauch jgauch@uark.edu. Video games have a long and colorful history We will review some of these milestones and discuss how hardware, software, and game design have evolved over the last 40 years. Historical Perspective.
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CSCE 4013Game ProgrammingSpring 2014 Prof. John Gauch jgauch@uark.edu
Video games have a long and colorful history We will review some of these milestones and discuss how hardware, software, and game design have evolved over the last 40 years Historical Perspective
First public access to video games were in arcades in amusement parks and malls Most of the early arcade game makers are long gone but several remain big players today Activision, Atari, Bally/Midway, Cinematronics, Commodore, Magnavox, Namco/Bandai, Nintendo, Nutting Associates, Sega, Sony Video Arcades
Periscope (Sega) • Sega’s released its first arcade game in 1966 • Games cost 25c because it was so expensive to ship from Japan to US
First video arcade game developed by Nolan Bushnell at Nutting Associates in 1971 Essentially started the video arcade industry Based on Spacewar! game running on MIT’s mainframe Goal of the game was to shoot down flying saucers Computer Space (Nutting)
First Atari game in 1972 Goal of game is to play table tennis (ping pong) Was first successful coin operated arcade game Subject of huge patent lawsuit with Magnavox (settled for $700,000) Pong (Atari)
Early video arcade games had custom made controllers that could only play one game Graphics memory was very expensive, so most games had small screens (320 x 240 pixels) and 1-4 bits of memory per pixel 2D graphics were used for most games. Racing games were first use 3D perspectives Video Arcades
The U.S. arcade business reached its peak in 1981, as revenues reached $5 billion and Americans spent more than 75,000 hours playing video games The following year, the business experienced a decline from which it never fully recovered Vintage video arcades are now popular with history buffs and collectors with lots of money Video Arcades