For those of us of a certain age, we can recall when we first played video games – or more specifically we can remember when video games first appeared on the horizon. If you’re on the wrong side of forty, you may well have played the original Atari version of Pong on a black and white television at home.
As the 1980s inevitably revealed themselves, the first arcade machines appeared at shopping malls, train stations and all those other places where kids gathered. Asteroids, Space Panic and Space Invaders were the order of the day and in the U.K. at least, 10 pence would get you a lengthy go (if you were any good).
Arcade games dominated the landscape until technology allowed home consoles to offer the same quality of graphics and gameplay. The appearance of personal computers with the ability to play sophisticated games also brought gaming to a wider home audience towards the end of the 1980s. Several brands of console became available with varying success during this period, perhaps the most notable being the Atari Jaguar – boxed, unused models still sell for a premium.
Sega and Nintendo consoles ruled the early 1990s until the mould breaking Sony Playstation took the world by storm in 1994. Where Sega and Nintendo were geared towards kids, Sony saw a market for older players and leapt into it, selling more than 100 million units in 10 years.
Sega fell by the wayside despite several console relaunches and the Playstation 2 and Microsoft’s Xbox filled the gap. Huge advances in technology saw some astonishing releases on these consoles – God of War on the PS2 and Halo on the Xbox to name a couple – and even further strides were made with the release of the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 2 in 2006.
So that’s where we are now and in this site we will take a look at some of the historical aspects of video gaming as well as checking out new technology and the latest games releases.