The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond—The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World Read Free Page A

console market.
Sega ships Sega CD peripheral for Genesis game console.

1993
Panasonic begins marketing the 32-bit 3DO Multiplayer.
Atari launches the 64-bit Jaguar.
Broderbund publishes
Myst
for Macintosh Computers.
Id Software publishes
Doom
for PCs.
Virgin Interactive Entertainment publishes
The 7th Guest
on PC CD-ROM.
Senators Joseph Lieberman (D. of Connecticut) and Herb Kohl (D. of Wisconsin) launch Senate
hearings on video game violence.

1994
The Interactive Digital Software Association is created in response to Senate hearings.
Nintendo releases
Donkey Kong Country
and retakes control of the U.S. console market.
Sega releases 32X, a peripheral that increases the power of the Genesis.
Sega releases Saturn in Japan.
Sony releases PlayStation in Japan.

1995
Sega releases Saturn in the United States.
Sony releases PlayStation in the United States.
Nintendo releases Virtual Boy in the United States.
Nintendo unveils the 64-bit Nintendo 64 game console in Japan.

1996
Nintendo sells its billionth cartridge worldwide.
Jack Tramiel sells Atari Corporation to disk drive manufacturer JTS.
Nintendo releases Nintendo 64 in the United States.
Nintendo discontinues Virtual Boy.
Sony unveils
Crash Bandicoot.

1997
Sega discontinues Saturn.
Bandai releases Tamagotchi.
Tiger releases game.com handheld system.
Gumpei Yokoi, the creator of the Game Boy, dies in car accident.
DreamWorks, Universal, and Sega team up to form a new line of super arcades called GameWorks.
Nintendo releases
Goldeneye 007
for Nintendo 64.
Square Soft publishes
Final Fantasy VII
for PlayStation.

1998
Nintendo releases
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
for Nintendo 64.
Pokemon
, a line of Game Boy role-playing games that have ignited a craze in Japan, comes to American and starts a similar craze.

1999
JTS files for bankruptcy and sells Atari properties to Hasbro Interactive.
SNK Corporation brings the NeoGeo Pocket Color handheld game system to the United States.
Sega releases Dreamcast game console in the United States.

2000
Toshiba and Samsung announce plans to sell Nuon-equipped DVD players.
Sony releases PlayStation 2 in Japan.
Microsoft unveils plans for Xbox video game console at the Game Developers Conference.
Sega launches SegaNet Internet service for Dreamcast.
Sony launches PlayStation 2 in the United States.
SNK discontinues NeoGeo Pocket Color sales in the United States.

2001
Sega discontinues Dreamcast.
Sega chairman Isao Okawa dies.
Nintendo releases Game Boy Advance in Japan (March) and the United States (June).
Nintendo releases GameCube in the United States.
Microsoft releases Xbox worldwide.

The World Before Pong
     
    You can’t say that video games grew out of pinball, but you can assume that video games wouldn’t have happened without it. It’s like bicycles and automobiles. One industry leads to the other and then they exist side by side. But you had to have bicycles to one day have motor cars.
    —Steven Baxter, former producer,
The CNN Computer Connection
     
     

The Beginnings of Pinball
     
    New technologies do not simply spring out of thin air. They need to be associated with familiar industries or ideas. People may have jokingly referred to the first automobiles as “horseless carriages,” but the name also helped define them. The name changed them from nebulous, unexplainable machines to an extension of an already accepted mode of transportation.
    Although video games are a relatively new phenomena, they benefited from a close relationship with the well-established amusement industry. The amusement industry, in turn, has long suffered from a lack of legitimacy. As it turned out, however, legitimacy would never be much of an issue for video games.
    The beginnings of pinball can be traced back to Bagatelle, a form of billiards in which players used a cue to shoot balls up a sloped table. The goal of the game was to get the balls into one of nine cups placed along the face of the table. Abraham Lincoln was said to have