The Rise And Fall Of The Old Gaming Systems

There have been home video games for around 45-50 years. I remember plugging a video game machine into our TV via the aerial socket; the screen went blank; you turned the machine on and the screen would go black and white. In tennis mode, you had to move a paddle up and down your side of the screen to hit the ball back

In a later version, you could play an opponent other than the machine and there were other games too, such: as shooting 'deer' in the shape of small oblongs with a gun; 'Space Invaders' and 'Break Out'. Cafes were full of the bigger video games in the early Seventies and you literally had to queue to be able to put your 10p into the machine.

We are currently on the Seventh Generation of games consoles. The first of this new generation was Microsoft's Xbox 360 and that was closely followed by Sony's Play Station 3 (or PS3) and Nintendo's Wii, all of which have proved to be highly successful. Gamers have their favourite consoles and type of game.

It is amazing though how fast a favourite video game console can become replaced by a better model and left to collect dust at the back on a cupboard. Three-Dimensional (3D) games are already in the shops such as the latest version of Mortal Kombat, also called Mortal Kombat 9. Mortal Kombat first came out in 1992 - 20 years ago!

The first home computers for which games were written were Clive Sinclair's ZX80 and ZX81. They had very small memories and poor graphics, but they were very well-liked. However, they were soon outdated by the Sinclair Spectrum and the Commodore 64. These were real computers but with idiosyncratic operating systems.

As the price of chips fell, powerful, dedicated gaming machines were brought out like the Atari 2600 and later the Atari 5200. These were dedicated gaming devices although there was also the Atari 256 and Atari 512 and later the Atari 1024 which were computers that would play games.

These Atari gaming machines had the reputation for being difficult to program games for because of their limited technology. However, they were well-liked amongst gamers in the late Seventies and early Eighties until they=y were superseded by the Atari 7800 Prosystem in June 1986. The Atari 7200 Prosystem was intended to win back market share from the set-ups of Colecovision and Intellivision

The Atari 7800 was an unusual hybrid, because it could become upgraded to a real home computer by adding chips and memory. Atari went bankrupt shortly after this and gamers were disappointed by the shortage of games obtainable for their machine. The Atari 7800 was soon withdrawn as a hopeless case.

There have been tens of other gaming machines, but none of them lasted long. It appears that in the Eighties and Nineties, gamers preferred to have a computer that also could play games instead of paying lots of money for a games machine.

However, the pendulum appears to have swung to the other extreme now because all the best 7th Generation video consoles will go on line and read and send email.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently concerned with Mortal Kombat Trophies. If you have an interest in hair loss, please visit our web site now at Mortal Kombat 4.