You could probably call the 80s the 'Middle Ages' of videogames, where they stopped being arcade-exclusive, and started appearing in peoples' homes all across the world. Some dedicated games companies were surviving financially, allowing developers to concentrate a bit harder on evolving their work graphically as more original ideas appeared. I'm not fond of Electronic Arts though, on the other hand, who is? They were around at that time, and they survived, as we're all very much aware.
Everybody knows Pong. People always think of Pong when the topic of 'early video/computer games' comes up. Pong occurred in 1972, when the young Atari company chanted magical incantations for several days in order to bring forth the source code from a parallel dimension. A lot of people found it fun and addictive, letting it become the first game to be successful - it was only really released on coin-op machines, but people would travel from miles around through mountains and deserts to play on them. And then six years later, Space Invaders happened.
Everybody knows Space Invaders. One day in 1978, over Japan, aliens attacked. Young hero Toshihiro Nishikado had been recieving strange dreams around that time, he knew he was the one destinied to defeat the whole lot. Leading a band of kids, he oversaw them as they combined a hubcap, spark plugs and a battery of a random car to construct a high-powered laser. Using this, they destroyed waves of the aliens until they gave up and went home. This is not a joke. He was so impressed by this event, he decided to imortalize it forever in the form of a video game. His company, Taito, released it in the same year. The world rejoyced and nerded-out over it, and rightly so because it was the second of the three first revolutionary games that would effect how video games would develop for a long time to come.
The third was PacMan, the game that's fun the first time. I don't want to be bitter about PacMan or anything, but it's no secret that I'm hideously bad at it. Maybe lots of others were too, because people kept coming back again and again to play, getting to insane, insane levels and probably going insane themselves due to that WAKOWAKO sound effect. It began in Japan, 1979, where people were still very thankful to Mr. Nishikado for saving earth. Deep within the halls of the Namco company, an employee named Toru Iwatani might have been eating pizza, hence the idea for Pac-Man's design. I'm not sure; I was elsewhere. In any case, since it was a new style of game that didn't involve blowing up aliens or whacking pixels at each other, it was a huge hit with everyone, even the more pacifist-inclined. (So says Wikipedia, but hold on, running from/eating killer ghosts isn't violent? Well it's not quite Soldier of Fortune II I suppose.)
The Commadore 64. Everyone has one whether they know it or not.
And then as soon as the world hit 1980, video games went bonkers and tons of stuff was released. Games were appearing here, there and everywhere. Two years in (That's 1982), the Commadore 64 was released from its heavy armour prison and took the world by storm due to its good price and great sound and graphics. It used a BASIC programming environment, but many new games and original ideas hit the Commodore 64 first. At the same time over in Europe, we got the ZX Spectrum which was the C64's rival, and many heated battles and one liners occured. It was all healthy though, because the home computer era had begun!
Between 1980 and 1985, things really did take off, and I'll write about 1985 onwards next time, because in 1985 the Amiga came out and I do very much like the Amiga...
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