Video Game Timeline

1958 - creation of "Ping pong" tennis on an oscilloscope screen by William Higinbotham at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

1961 - development of Spacewar on a PDP-1 at MIT for the Science Open House.

1972 - the first commercially available home videogame for TV was launched, called Odyssey - complex, with many electronic components, and very expensive.

1972 - Nolan Bushnell forms Atari to develop games, and produces Pong, a simple tennis game for arcades.

1974 - Atari produce a home version of Pong.

1974 - Nintendo, a Japanese toy manufacturer produce an electronic version of the Japanese game "Go".

1978 - Space Invaders is released by Tatio, and two micro computers are released for commercial sale - the Commodore PET and the Atari.

1980 - Pacman is released in Japan, to be played on a micro home computer.

1983 - Nintendo release their first computer, and Mario is released at the same time.

1985 - Nintendo release the NES

1989 - First hand held machine from Nintendo, called "Game Boy". Tetris is produced for the Game Boy in Russia.

1989 - Sega releases the Sega Genesis

1991 - Sonic is produced by Sega in response to Nintendo's Mario.

1994 - Sony releases the Playstation in Japan

1996 - Nintendo releases the Nintendo 64

1999 - Dreamcast - 128 bit processor - is released in the UK.

2001 - Playstation 2 is released.

2001 - In September, Nintendo releases the Gamecube

2001 - In November, Microsoft enters the console market with the Xbox. Halo is released at launch, boosting sales.

The video game timeline begins to reveal how video gaming has become a part of our culture, and video game history will continue to be created over the next years.