Since this has actually been around for several years, it seems, I bet most of you here have already seen it. However, _I_ just discovered it recently and wanted to share it here, in case anybody else here hadn't seen it yet either. It's long, but is an in-depth, well-written and _really_ interesting (early) history of videogames, from the VERY beginning.

(And I don't mean Pong...)

The Dot-Eaters' Society History of Video Games

I found out stuff I never knew before, such as that the guy who started Atari is from right here in Utah (?!) and that the first console videogame system was from _1966_!!
It even has a section on computer games, as well (including text adventures, whoo!) and has screenshots of almost every game it talks about, including really obscure/old ones.

It'll take you a long time, but it IS worth the read. Go. Enjoy.

...and bookmark it for later so you can finish it without wearing yourself out. :P

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Actually they do at one point! I am not sure if they have a whole detailed section on it. But at the top of one of the "chapters", the intro thingie, they say something about how "Although hits like (something else I forget) and Tron were still doing well in the arcades..."
I know I saw it in there somewhere. At any rate, when the writer thought of successful arcade games, that was one of the first ones to come to mind--_that's_ kind of a compliment, at least.

Oh, yeah, the Berzerk quotes...now I finally get a reference from the Simpsons! I knew of Berzerk, but only from the Atari version, which didn't talk. You remember the episode where (I _think_ this is the right one) Homer decided to go back to college, and at one point he ends up actually having to enlist the help of some (gulp!) "nerds"?

Well, when he first goes over to their table, two of them yell out in a robotic voice, quotes like:
"INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!"
"DESTROY THE HUMANOID!"
I assumed they were quoting some old B-movie but no...!



I do remember being freaked out by a creepy computer voice in an arcade...but...oddly enough, it wasn't a videogame. It was a pinball machine! There was a pinball game called "The Black Hole" (if any relation to the Disney movie, I don't know) and when I walked past it, sometimes I would hear this deep creepy voice say: "DO YOU DARE TO ENTER THE BLACK HOLE?"
First time, I literally went "GAH!" and jumped backwards. Luckily nobody saw me (although as a "little girl" I was allowed to get scared by things...I used to totally perplex and amuse my fellow arcade goers. "Aww, look, the little girl is playing Millipede!" and so forth.) But then when I realised what it was, I thought it was cool. The machine...it was _talking_ to me!

That was already my favourite pinball game, because I was into freaky weird deep space stuff (I was an odd kid) and liked black holes in general, but after that, I would always make sure to play it at least once per arcade trip. Heh.

Anyway. Glad you're finding this interesting. I know I sure did! To know how far things really go back, and where names come from, and who really invented what when, and what was the first of this and that, and how did the public react (people lining up around the block to play the first videogame in _1958_, already...wow)--all of that is just really neat to learn.

...Notorious