Episode list

We're going to start with the first re-programmable computers in the 1940's. Now, these computers were serious tools. They were for codebreaking and calculating artillery tables during World War II - but like most tools we human use, we eventually looked for ways to make them playthings. And over the next three decades the advances of computer technology and the tentative curiosity of many engineers and programmers would inspire a new culture and eventually the first true coin-operated video game in 1971.

Today, Andre is going to talk about the rise of Atari and with it the rise of the video game industry. So if you remember from last episode, we mentioned that the first arcade machine, Galaxy Game, happened to have a coin slot, but this was just the beginning. Nolan Bushnell, often considered the Father of the Video Game Industry, saw the opportunity for the commercialization of video games. Bushnell founded Atari and oversaw the development of its first game - Pong. And then, through some questionably ethical business strategies, Bushnell was able to get his machines into arcades all across the United States. But if this is all Atari had done, we probably wouldn't be dedicating an entire episode to it. Atari also played a major role in getting video games into the home with the Atari 2600 console. Video games were becoming a part of peoples' everyday lives and they were becoming a part of popular culture. But Atari wasn't the only video game company in the 1970s, it wasn't even the first. So we're going talk about some of the other companies that took part in the war for a place in our living rooms next week.

So the 1980s was the golden age of arcade games. Games like Donkey Kong, Pac- Man, Space Invaders, and Centipede had become a cultural phenomenon. These games had expanded the gamer demographic and even encouraged the rise of competitive gaming. There were also many innovations in the home console and computer market with deeper and longer games like Pitfall and Castle Wolfenstein. Suddenly, you could play a game for much longer than your single quarter could get you on an arcade machine. So the video game industry was booming, but it had also become a sort of Wild West and everyone from Purina to Quaker wanted to get into the action. With these new creators came a glut of choices, and to remain competitive Atari began rushing games to market resulting in some truly terrible games. Gamers started to lose confidence in the industry and then in 1983 the gaming industry in the United States crashed.

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