the first video game that was designed to entertain the general public was released in 1958.
the first video game that was designed to entertain the general public was released in 1958.
when was the first video game released that was designed to entertain the general public?
1958
after being dismantled, "tennis for two" was largely forgotten. it remained virtually unknown until the late 1970s and early 1980s when higinbotham was called on to testify in court cases for defendants sued by magnavox over the video game patents of ralph h. baer. having discovered the game, the lawyers for the defense unsuccessfully attempted to have the game declared prior art to invalidate baer's patents on television video games, resulting in attention being given to the nearly 20-year-old game as possibly the first video game. it received further attention as the subject of articles in "creative computing" and "video replay" in 1982 and 1983 highlighting its possible status as the first video game; the editor of "creative computing", david h. ahl, had played "tennis for two" at brookhaven in 1958, and dubbed higinbotham the "grandfather of video games". higinbotham himself felt that the game was an obvious extension of the donner model 30's bouncing ball program and therefore not worthy of patenting or a large part of his legacy; he preferred to be remembered for his post-world war ii nuclear non-proliferation work.
tennis for two
chiptune music began to appear with the video game music produced during the golden age of video arcade games. an early example was the opening tune in tomohiro nishikado's arcade game "gun fight" (1975). the first video game to use a continuous background soundtrack was tomohiro nishikado's 1978 release "space invaders", which had four simple chromatic descending bass notes repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and interacted with the player, increasing pace as the enemies descended on the player. the first video game to feature continuous melodic background music was "rally-x", an arcade game released by namco in 1980, featuring a simple tune that repeats continuously during gameplay. it was also one of the earliest games to use a digital-to-analog converter to produce sampled sounds. that same year, the first video game to feature speech synthesis was also released, sunsoft's shoot 'em up arcade game "stratovox".
chiptune