FRESH

Hacker News

The First Video Game Was Just a Box in the Corner of a Bar

38 points by PaulHoule

by shever73

8 subcomments

For some irrational reason this article annoyed me. It came across arrogant with an attempt at being high-brow, and included too much fluff. Describing the founders as "foundering figures" was amusing - I don't know if the image of taking on water and sinking was the author's intent, but I think I've just become guilty of the same thing I've accused the article of.

by voidUpdate

3 subcomments

> "A revolution was televised in 1972"
Well Tennis for Two was created in 1958 so "the first video game" seems like a stretch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two

by teddyh

0 subcomment

Ahoy did a comprehensive video about it: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHQ4WCU1WQc>, and a video is a more appropriate medium for discussing and demonstrating video games.

by perfobotto

0 subcomment

by empressplay

0 subcomment

> Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included on the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console; in response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.
Yeah, not first video game.

by egiboy

0 subcomment

Brings up a ‘Do you want to download “sync” on “lithub.com” and “dsp-service.admatic.de”?’ dialog on my iPad.
Hard pass.

by anthk

0 subcomment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text-based_computer_ga...
Star Trek itself, which I own several ports, it's from 1971.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(1971_video_game)
First computer games predate commercial releases of Pong.
Most of the console isolated journalists have no idea of 60 and 70's computers at all.

0 subcomment

by riverforest

0 subcomment