Video Games

Arcade, console, PC, handheld, mobile — all one medium, from OXO on the EDSAC to the handheld revival.

27 posts· 1952 – 2022

• The Steam Deck, or how Valve put thirty years of PC gaming in a jacket pocket 2022
• Fortnite Battle Royale, or the game designed in the back of an Uber 2017
• Twitch and the invention of watching other people play video games 2011
• Minecraft: the blank canvas posted before sunrise 2009
• Angry Birds, or the game that proved anyone could be a gamer 2008
• The Nintendo Wii, or the console designed for people who don't play consoles 2006
• World of Warcraft and the accidental epidemic 2004
• The original Xbox, or how Microsoft lost four billion dollars and still won 2001
• The Sims, or the game an EA executive kept trying to kill 2000
• Half-Life, or how Valve put the story inside the corridors 1998
• GoldenEye 007: the movie tie-in that built the console shooter 1997
• The PlayStation: how humiliation in Chicago gave Sony its most profitable product 1994
• DOOM: the midnight upload that crashed a university server and founded a genre 1993
• Myst and the CD-ROM that changed who played games 1993
• Game Boy: the gray brick that bet on batteries and won 1989
• Sega Genesis and the console wars: how a hedgehog took half the market from Nintendo 1988
• The Nintendo Entertainment System, or the console Nintendo refused to call a console 1985
• The video game crash of 1983 1983
• Donkey Kong: the game that made Nintendo 1981
• Pac-Man, or the game designed for people who didn't play games 1980
• Space Invaders: the glitch Nishikado kept 1978
• The Atari 2600, or the machine Bushnell sold Atari to build 1977
• Pong, or the game Alcorn built to learn his job 1972
• Computer Space, the world's first coin-operated video game 1971
• Spacewar!, or the game no one thought to sell 1962
• Tennis for Two, or the physicist who didn't notice what he'd done 1958
• OXO, or the video game that Cambridge kept to itself 1952