Video games, all started with a simple game of passing the ball back and forth on an old machine. In the modern day, we have virtual reality to experience, impressive technology coming out every day, and a whole different amount of things that we can experience. This all because someone decided that they wanted to give people joy and make video games. The middle of gaming was what set everything off, and honestly, I'm happy to explain the history of gaming.

The history of gaming began with pong, the same year pong was release so was the Magnavox Odyssey which was the first ever home console invented which you could play at your home. That there are around 1,181,019 games that exist that we know of giving people a massive variety of different games to play and experience. 1970s was the era of mainframe computer games and from 1978-1982 was the so called "Golden Age" of arcade video games. In 1958 tennis for two was made which played on a large analog computer with a connected oscilloscope screen. In 1962 the first combat game was made called "Space Wars".

In 1967 the first home console called the "Brown Box" was made as a prototype to let people play multiplayer. It was sold under the name "Odyssey" and It came with 28 different games. In 1977 a new console game out from Atari called the Atari 2600 and the games would be bought separately in cartridges and they were al multi-colored starting the second generation of consoles. In the late 1970s and early 1980s they had multiple milestones which consist of space invades release, the launch of Activision which was a company which didn’t make consoles but developed third party games, Pac-man release, Donkey Kong and its release of Mario, and Microsoft's first flight simulator.

In 1983 the video game crash occurred due to number of factors like oversaturated game console market, competition from computer gaming, surplus of low quality over hyped games ruining someone's excitement, such as E.T which is said to be the worst game ever created which was supposed to be based on the E.T movie due to it being trash over 728,000 copies of it were buried. The crash led to the bankruptcy of several computer and game console companies.

Video games made a recovery in 1985 with the release of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) which had 8-bit graphics, colors, sound and gameplay from previous consoles and release iconic games like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid. Bits are how fast the CPU can transmit data in a clock cycle which make the graphics better.

In 1989 Nintendo made the covers by releasing the 8-bit Game boy device which was a handheld console only for Nintendo to pursue this handheld console and produce the Nintendo DS in 2004, the Nintendo 3DS in 2011, and finally the Nintendo switch and Nintendo switch lite which was crazy when it released in 2017 and the lite in 2019.

First console war occurred in 1989 when Sega release its 16-bit Genesis console as a successor to its 1986 Sega Master System, which failed to compete against NES at first but later on due to its technological superiority to the NES and the release of Sonic The Hedgehog, the Genesis made a significant fight for the title against its older rival.

The real start of the console war was when Nintendo released its 16-bit super NES console. In the mid 1990s there were games that portrayed violence made for now both consoles a company was invented called the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) to give ratings for games to determine if they were safe to play for certain ages based on different things like violence, profanity, explicit content, etc.

In 1993 The Super Mario Bros live action movie was released causing other movies based on video games were being released more often moving gaming to the big screen. Due to the Sega Genesis large library of games and lower prices they leaped in front of the competition of the SNES in America but failed to beat them in Japan due to the Nintendo being invented in Japan. A few years later the technology improved setting the fifth generation of video games but now in 3D.

In 1995, Sega released their Saturn system which was the first 32-bit console and also played with disc’s instead of cartages and was made to beat Sony's PlayStation and the next year Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 which was a 64-bit console but instead of disc’s still used cartages. Even though Nintendo and Sega were both trying to battle Sony’s PlayStation they could not compete against its third-party support which let other company's make games for it.

Sony was so successful in the video game market that when they release the PlayStation 2 in 2000 which used DVD’s for games it became the best-selling console of all time. The PS2 went against the Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube, and Xbox by Microsoft. The Dreamcast which is considered to be heavily ahead of there its time is also said to be one of the best gaming consoles to ever be made.

Modern age which is around 2005 where the Xbox 360 is released, PlayStation 3 (which was the only console that could play blu-rays at the time), and the Nintendo Wii which all kicked off the HD gaming scene. Due to all these amazing consoles being released Sony had a hard time against these other consoles. The Xbox 360 which had the same graphic capabilities that the PS3 was also praised for having an online gaming ecosystem and a Kinect which has motion capture system mostly the reasons as to why they won the war between the PS3 according to a lot of critics. However, Nintendo passed the competition on sales due to their motion-sensitive remotes making gaming active and helping appeal to a lot more people including the elderly.

Towards 2010 mobile games spread and Angry Birds was reported to have made 200 million dollars. Now currently in the 8th generation of console gaming with the Wii U which was released in 2012 which was also considered a massive failure and was discontinued, that same year the PS4 and Xbox one was released which were crazy and considered amazing until 2016 when Sony released the PS4 pro which was a console capable of displaying 4K video.

In early 2017 the Nintendo Switch was released which the first console that could be played handheld and on a TV. Later on, Xbox followed what PS4 did with the pro for ability to transmit 4K video by releasing the Xbox One X. Sony had head on to also make a VR device to let players experience Virtual Reality using their console.

in 2020 where there is the way between the PS5 and Xbox Series X which were just released and the PS5 is currently crushing the market due to massive demand. But even with all these consoles they still have one massive competitor and that is PC gaming. The history of console gaming is not that complicated and honestly starting with pong and now giving the ability to create alternate realities where they feel comfortable in.

Hopefully with new inventions and better tech being available new and better things will come out and who knows, maybe we will have some sort of way of literally being in the game ourselves in the future with all the new cool tech coming out.