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Hi, I'm Medium Invader

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from the classic video game Space Invaders,

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and I want to tell you a little bit

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about where video games came from.

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A video game is an electronic game

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that has an interface designed for human interaction

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on a video device.

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Simple.

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Video games are used by scientists,

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the military,

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and people like you,

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and their evolution has spread across arcades,

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consoles,

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computers,

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smart phones,

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and all kinds of other electronics.

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These days video games are everywhere,

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but they were actually made in science labs.

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In fact, the earliest U.S. video game patent on record

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was in 1948,

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and at the time it was referred to

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as a cathode-ray tube amusement device.

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That's a mouthful!

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Some of the earliest video games include

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the Nimrod computer,

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OXO,

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Tennis for Two,

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and my personal favorite, Spacewar!

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But none of these early video games

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were ever sold to the public

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because they were either too huge

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or too expensive

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to get out of the lab.

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This all changed when a man named Ralph Baer

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looked at his television screen and wondered

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how else it might be used.

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In 1972, Baer's idea to get video games

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out of the science lab and into the living room

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led to the release of a game console

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called Odyssey.

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Odyssey allowed you to play a game on your TV.

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At about the same time,

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two other people, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney,

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were working on something similar

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in a little company called Atari.

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You might have heard of it,

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and even if you haven't,

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I'm sure that your Dad has.

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Atari's first major game release was in 1972,

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an arcade game called Pong.

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It was an immediate hit,

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and it's credited

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as the first commercially successful video game.

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Atari then released a home version of Pong in 1974.

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By 1978, competition between Atari

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and another game company called Midway

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was heating up.

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Midway had licensed an arcade game

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for the Japanese company, Taito,

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that put them on the map.

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The game:

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Space Invaders.

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It featured iconic actors, like me,

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and it went on to become

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the second highest selling arcade game of all time.

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Space Invaders also helped kick off

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what is known as the Golden Age of Arcade Games.

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In response, Atari followed

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with the release of the arcade game Asteroids,

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which ranked sixth on the list

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of highest selling arcade games.

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It was a good game,

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but it's no Space Invaders.

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By 1980, color came to arcade games,

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and this was also the year

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that another video gaming milestone was born.

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Pac-Man, created by the Japanese company Namco,

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was brought to the U.S. by Midway.

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Important to the spread

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of video games into popular culture,

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Pac-Man was a character that could be licensed.

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It wasn't long before it had a song on the charts,

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a Saturday morning television show,

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and all sorts of other products.

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In just a year, Pac-Man arcade games

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made over one billion dollars in quarters.

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Then, in 1981, a company called Nintendo

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started making waves in the U.S. video game market

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with their release of Donkey Kong.

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It was the earliest video game

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to have a story line.

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The story went a bit like this:

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Donkey Kong is the pet

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of a carpenter named Jumpman.

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Jumpman mistreats his pet ape,

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so the ape steals his girlfriend,

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leaving the game player to assume the role

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of Jumpman and rescue the girl.

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Jumpman was eventually renamed to Mario.

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Other iconic arcade games from the early 80s include

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Frogger,

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Dragon's Lair,

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and Mario Brothers.

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Perhaps the last iconic game considered

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to be part of the Golden Age of Arcade Games

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is Double Dragon.

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It was the first really successful example

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of the beat-them-up genre.

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It was released in 1987,

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and, like Donkey Kong,

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it featured a damsel in distress storyline,

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a storyline common in many video games.

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By the mid-90s, the Golden Age of Arcade Games

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was coming to an end,

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and the home game console

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was gaining in popularity.

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While arcade games continued

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to decline in sales over the years,

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the popularity of video games was merely beginning,

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and we'll talk about that

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and a lot more

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in part two of a brief history of video games.