HOW SOON IS NOW?
A gamers guide to modern videotronics
A Feature News Article By: BIRD
Photo’s and layout By: Padgette
Part One: In the beginning there was the command line
"And to think our fathers used to build hot rods…."
Since the advent of the video game the video game industry has changed quiet alot since it's humble beginnings in the arcade. Industry pole position itself is a constant battle as one leader in the video gaming industry is quickly sidelined and made obsolete only for another to quickly rise to the top to take its place. For the consumer, the world of video games has been a slow build.
From parlour games to pinball, from pinball to Pong, from Pong to Space Invaders, it's the X generation that has seen the birth of video games grow into a massive world wide culture.
"Easy NORMAL Hard"
While Pinball was visibly the first of popular games played by consumers, its place in society was seen mainly in snooker halls and bowling alleys across the world. However, it was the video game which took gaming as a genre into its own arena and thus created a meeting place for gamers of all ages called the Arcade. I first walked into an Arcade at age seven with my father and after spending a few dozen 20cent pieces, while being introduced to games like Galaga, Super Sprint and Space Invaders, right away I was hooked. In successive years I would experience dozens of arcade hits and misses, during the 1980's more games for Arcades were being produced than at any other time since.
When the first entertainment system consoles hit Australian homes in the late 70's early 80's they were still very much in their infancy. Black & While units appeared in the late 70's with games like Shooting and Tennis, later came home entertainment units by Colleco, Vintrex, Intelevision and Atari. They were the gaming systems of their day, and there were countless others many which have disappeared into history, but it was Atari that clearly stood out from the competition.
Atari's capital investment had been in arcade tallboy and table top games, which undoubtedly ruled arcade parlours world wide as the video game industry heavy weight.
Naturally when the home entertainment consoles first appeared it was Atari who threw their hat into the ring and inevitably led the way yet again.
Introduced with appealing futuristic advertising and a list of titles that were beyond compare, the Atari 1800 with their patented joystick control dominated the world of home entertainment game consoles throughout the early to late 1980's. The Atari gave life to many software companies, some of which are still around today, see: Activision.
Favourite Atari titles included, Metroid, Asteroids, Missile Command, Frogger, River Raid, Moon Patrol, Joust, Pacman, Pole Position and Pitfall just to name a few. With the success of the 1800, Atari backed up their success with a later release model of their game system called the Atari 2600, where the full potential of the 8 bit cartridge fed system was used to it's full potential.
Meanwhile, a little known Japanese playing card manufacturer "Nintendo" had began releasing hand held game units during the video game gold rush of the early 1980's. By the end of the 80's Nintendo would have cornered more than two thirds of the video game industry market with their Nintendo Entertainment System, aka NES. The NES was a 16bit cartridge fed system. Like Nintendo's predecessor’s Atari, Nintendo dominated the gaming industry for the better part of the next decade.
NES
"RUN"*"LOAD"
In the quest for the delivery of video games and video game systems, the personal computer would have it's part to play in the overall development of the video games industry.
Personal computing made it's mark in the early 80's with consumer models such as the Vic 20 and the Commodore 64 first emerging to offer families an experience that was not sold wholly for games, rather for education than purely entertainment. Inevitably video games hitched a ride for the better part of the personal computer craze, it was the Commodore 64 with it's tape drive system that was by far the largest of personal computers sold. Hundreds of titles were developed across different media as they became available, from cassette to five and quarter inch disks to the 3:14 inch disks that are still used today. Soon personal computer manufacturers adopted video games as a part of their advertising structure when releasing new systems, Commodore itself spawned many variants, the Commodore 128k to the Amiga 500. Even leading computer companies like IBM, Wang, Apple and Amstrad would offer games as apart of their personal computer packages.
