History of the Evolution of Technology Used in Games

Games started out small the computers used to make them were massive and were initially used by the military to break codes and predict where a projectile such as a missile would land but slowly computer scientists realised that you could use the computers to simulate simple games for Scientific Research this meant only very smart people could make them and even then, it was very hard to distribute them to other people plus not many people had a computer as they are very expensive and very bulky, but the games that were made like W.Higinbotham’s Tennis for two in 1958 which was 1 pixel bouncing from one side to the other was very advanced for the time.

4 years later 1962’s Space Wars impressed any person that played it with its widespread popularity growing the idea of Gaming becoming mainstream and inspiring more people to make games. In the 1970’s the 1st Generation consoles started to appear like the Magnavox Odyssey which allowed developers to started releasing games like 1972’s Pong which attracted the mainstream audience with its ping pong style gameplay, next comes games like 1974’s Maze war which was the first FPS (First Person Shooter) of its time.

This is the time of the 2nd generation consoles with the release of Atari 2600 on September 11, 1977 third party developers could now make games this meant a lot of games were made, but not all were good but the ones that were successful were games like Space invaders (1978) and Asteroids (1979) with its vector graphics and basic animations. (1798 to 1982) This was the Golden Age of Video game as they are filling up arcades and malls around the world with their coin operated design and brightly coloured exterior, kids would meet up with their friends and play games like Pac-man (1980) with its colourful design and addictive leader board bragging rights you know you was the cool kid if you had the Highest score, then came Nintendo’s Donkey Kong (1981) that had you jumping over barrels saving your girlfriend while the Atari had games like (1982’s Dig dug and Q*bert. By this point there were so many games flooding the market that no one knew what to play and games like E.T (1982) just flopped there was too many different platforms for people to choose that the video game crash of 1983 happened which damaged the reputation of video games for a little while but with the release of Dragon’s lair in the same year with its beautiful hand-drawn art and its cinematic style gamers were delighted with an Adventure they wouldn’t forget, also Tetris was released which proved that simple games were just as good as advanced ones.

Now with the reputation of video games has been restored by the 3rd Generation consoles (8-Bit Era) like the Nintendo Entertain System (NES) came into market with quality control with its D-pad controllers and on screen 25-32 colours with a palette of 256 and tile-based smooth multi-directional hardware scrolling which allowed for the release of the revolutionary Super Mario Bros in 1985 which was the most sold game at the time and has 40 Million sales to this day and wouldn’t be beat for a many years to come, then in 1986 Nintendo released another ground-breaking game with The Legend of Zelda which was an RPG, Adventure, puzzle game. The next year mega man was out with its hardcore difficulty which frustrated many players but the ones who persisted were rewarded with the satisfaction of completing the game in the same year Square Enix released Final Fantasy which had a compelling storyline and a series that is still growing to this day.

Now in the late 1980s, the 4th Generation consoles (16-Bit Era) were hitting the market like Sega Genesis (also known as the Mega Drive) in 1988 which had a powerful 16-Bit processor which is where the term “blast processing” comes from, complex parallax scrolling, multi-layer tile map backgrounds and flat-shaded 3D polygons graphics. SEGA’s marketing tactic was to say they were “cooler” than their competition which was Nintendo’s NES at the time, to the point where the said “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” which was actually true like for Mortal Kombat (1992) which Nintendo censored the gore while on the Genesis you could type the code A,B,A,C,A,B,B on the start screen to see the uncensored gore. In 1989 Shadow of the Beast was released which had a beautiful art style and used the new smooth parallax scrolling feature, then in 1991 SEGA released Sonic The Hedgehog which became a massive sensation with its fast pace, colourful and instantly recognisable mascot Sonic and it was around this time that the arcade video games were declining due to the evermore increasing power of home consoles plus video games were becoming easier to make allowing them to be sold cheaper.

Now with the 5th Generation of consoles on the market like the PlayStation which used Optical Discs which could hold up to 650MB (needed memory cards to save game saves), plus it had 3D capabilities like Lighting, Gourd shading, Anti-aliasing, text filtering and used Analog sticks which allowed players to move the character and the camera at the same time for more control over the game (the Analog sticks weren’t added until 1997), while the Nintendo 64 still used cartridges they did have the a Analog stick and both consoles had improved graphics & processing power at (32-Bit and 64-Bit) which could allow for 3D Polygon graphics and Text Mapping. Games such as Wolfenstein 3D (1992) which gave the player the feel of 3D games but wasn’t true 3D but merely an illusion called “Raycasting” but still very impressive for the time, another game that used a similar trick was 1992’s Doom which took the same concept but made a much better gameplay experience with high & low grounds, stairs, better graphics and overall a lot more in-game depth this was because they used “Binary Space Partitioning” which is basically slicing each room into blocks slice them and repeat until the processor could handle it easily then each block would be a node in a Data Tree and then the processor would check each node to see if it needs to be rendered if not then don’t render if yes then render, even for now-a-days this technique is very advanced and this was 25 years ago the Genius responsible is John D. Carmack and he has won 2 Emmy Awards for his work in other projects, another game released in 1993 was Myst which used the new storage boost of CD-ROMs to allow for a picture game that rendered 3D background but wasn’t 3D as it was a still image. It is now 1994 and Tekken is released and this time they use polygons to get the appearance of 3D due to the levels being so small they could render the fighters in 3D but technically it was a 2D side view of 3D characters, Next was 1995 Wipe out which had Cutting edge graphics and sound with a refined design but once again uses fake 3D techniques to make it look 3D but was linear meaning you could only go forwards. The technology and consoles just didn’t have enough power to render full 3D world/levels, but then comes Quake in 1996 which is the First Real 3D Game which allowed you to look in all angles and allowed you to go below or above rooms which you couldn’t do in Doom. Quake was a very important milestone for gaming history as it showed everyone that 3D games were possible and in the same year another real 3D game was released and that was Super Mario 64 which allowed you to explore in a whole new way and really set the ground works for what true 3D games could do, more games released in 1996 were Pokemon Red/Blue which was my first ever video game I remember playing it non-stop and trying to collect every Pokemon too bad I lost the game before got every Pokemon which shows just how big the game was… I Found it 6 years later under my nan’s cabinet. In 1997, more innovative 3D games were being released such as Golden Eye 007 which had missions that the person needed to complete such as save the hostage or assassinate someone while most games just let the player go on a killing spread this game gave you specific instructions that gave for a unique experience, this was also the year of the First Grand Theft Auto (GTA) which let you roam the street as a bad guy doing whatever you wanted.
The release of the Dreamcast in Japan on the November 27, 1998 began the 6th generation consoles (128-Bit Era) along with the PlayStation2 in 2000, Microsoft joined the gaming industry with their Xbox in 2001 and the Nintendo’s GameCube in 2002 also joined the party. All the consoles had the ability to connect to the internet but was very limited and only allowed online multiplayer they didn’t allowed web browsing, all of the 6th gen consoles could handle 3D Graphics and had better processors which allowed for advanced games and when you see a side by side of a PlayStation1 game and a PlayStation2 game you can really see the difference in quality and detail look how basic the background is Tekken PS1 compared to TTT PS2 the performance is so much better on the PS2 because it can handle the processing.

2000 is the year that Diablo 2 was released which was a MMORPG that took grinding for gear to a whole new level, another game released in 2000 was Deus Ex which was heavily story based and had multiple endings and storylines that players to choose which made it feel like the player influenced the story this was one of the first games to do this which gave for a unique experience and engaging story. In 2001 Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Liberty City was out and this really aimed high with its high quality graphics and open world do whatever you want style you could literally go to the gun shop shoot the owner steal his guns then defend against wave of police enforcements like tanks and helicopters I remember stealing a tank with nothing but a pistol and shooting down a helicopter with the tank which was very fun also GTA was well known for its Cheat codes like Flying Cars, Explosives Touch and No Clothes on Civilians which no other game really did which also made it a lot of fun. Then in 2004 World of Warcraft (WoW) become an online sensation with its virtual universe that even allowed you to make real money by selling in-game gold to other players and you could get a job in-game like a merchant to sell all your loot of dungeon raiding, some people couldn’t stop playing as they were so immersed into the game.

Next is the 7th Generation Consoles which were the Xbox 360 (360) in 2005 and the PlayStation3 (PS3) & Wii in 2006. At this point the 360 and PS3 had 256GB Hard Drive storage (Some Models had 4GB for the 360) and both could play games at 1080p at 30FPS which is High Definition while the Wii run at 720p but the PS3 could run Blu-Rays Disc which means a lot more storage for games on disc and you can watch Blu-Ray movies while the 360 and Wii could only run Normal CDs and 360 and PS3 had much better internet capabilities as such online texting, calling to friends and web browsing although you had to pay a monthly fee for Xbox Live and PlayStation Network which is what allowed online capabilities with it you could easily play online with friends while talking to them and use/download online services such as Netflix, Facebook, YouTube, Skype Ect… Making it much faster, while Wii also had internet capabilities it let you browse the web and use internet services but was very fiddly or you could play online with friends but you couldn’t voice call or text useless you used online services with means you couldn’t play and talk to friends but it was free you just needed an internet connected. All Consoles had Motion control with the Wii being the first then the 360 with the Kinect and then PS3 with the PlayStation Move, and all had backward capabilities such as PS3 first edition being able to run PS1 & PS2 games but the second editions PS3’s didn’t have such a wide choose of compatible games as the console needed to simulate a CPU to run then Sony just didn’t think it was worth it. The 360 could run some Ordinary Xbox games if you had the right drivers installed and the Wii could Run GameCube Games if you had an Emulator on it which Nintendo didn’t like at the start but gave up stopping people and released a Traditional Style Controller that didn’t have motion control and that looked more like a PlayStation controller than a Wii controller just so that people who wanted to use the Wii as a CubeCube could use a better suited controller.