The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group A History of Electronic Games Major Keary |
Did you know that the name, Sony, was taken from the Latin sonus, sound or noise. The company, founded in 1947, was originally named `Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company'; the change to Sony was part of the world-wide marketing of the first pocket transistor radio. That is just one of the interesting snippets to be found in a new book about electronic games.
High Score - the illustrated history of electronic games is a beautifully presented book in the style of a quality glossy magazine. Apart from its interest to games enthusiasts, this is a book that-in spite of the comic-book style cover design-should be suitable for keeping clients entertained in corporate reception areas.
An interesting introduction briefly mentions some of the ancient board games and how they have found their way into modern electronic versions. There are fascinating pictures of pinball machines spanning 1871-1950, and an account of the development of games played on television sets.
The first electronic game is attributed to Willy Higginbotham, who devised an interactive tennis game in 1958 as part of an annual visitor day at a the Brookhaven National Laboratories. However, the book's claim that it was "the earliest known electronic game" is incorrect.
The idea of using computers for interactive games was first put forward in 1950 by Alan Turing in an article, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", published in Mind magazine. It was not until 1963 that a variation on his proposal was programmed and called Eliza, perhaps better known as the first chatterbot.
As early as 1952 the American military establishment was programming simulation games, and some games-based on dictionary-lookup and formular techniques-were being written for early computers. In the same year Claude Shannon was involved in the design of a game, Hex; in 1953 a Checkers program was running on IBM's 701 computer; in 1954 J. D. Williams published The Compleat Strategyst, which described game theory that became the basis for early game programs; in 1954 a blackjack game was running on IBM's 701; in the same year "a crude game of pool-perhaps the first nonmilitary game to use a video display-was programmed at the University of Michigan" [Encyclopedia of Computer Science 3/e]; and in 1956 the first computer chess game was programmed (but Claude Shannon had already published a paper in 1950, Programming a Computer for Playing Chess). The Encyclopedia of Computer Science has an extensive article on the subject.
Modern computer games also owe much to the pioneers of computer graphics, a term coined by William Fetter in 1960 "to describe computer-generated plotter drawings of an airplane cockpit" [Chad Little: Becoming a Computer Artist (1994)].
Given that the book omits most of the pre-1972 history of electronic games, it is a good account of what has happened since then in the fields of games for personal computers, arcade machines, and hand-held devices. The intended audience is gaming aficionados who, if they have been at it since the 70s, will no doubt enjoy the memories of past machines and games. The accounts of who created what, and behind-the-scenes happenings, are fascinating, even for someone who has never played a computer game. Anyone engaged in marketing (especially in a teaching role) should find many of the anecdotes quite informative.
As a catalogue of games the book may have significance as a historical record; as far as I am aware this is the only account of published computer programs, albeit in a very limited field.
In the meantime, a book to be enjoyed. With the silly season looming closer, the price makes it worth considering as a gift for the games enthusiast who has everything.
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Demaria and Wilson: High Score ISBN 0-07-222428-2 Published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 327 pp., RRP $46.95 incl. GST. |
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Reprinted from the September 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
