Going a bit retro

The last couple of weeks have been a bit retro.

I have started programming again for the Android platform. 

Already produced 1 new app called Ask the Universe. Think of it a bit like the old 8Ball toy. 

I have also revamped an old game I wrote about 4 years ago called Spectre Splat, but thats still having a few tweaks done to it.

And I have written a new game based on an old 1970's game called guess. This is still a work in progress and still has a few bugs in it.

Since retro is the flavour of the week I though I would write about some retro computer games.

The first ever video game was developed in October 1958, by physicist William Higinbotham. It was a basic version of a tennis game, called Tennis for Two. The screen was a standard oscilloscope display. 

 Tennis for Two

To the left can be seen a photo from the Brookhaven National Laboratory(BNL) of Tennis for Two being displayed on a Dumont Lab Oscilloscope.

The game proved to be very popular at BNL's annual public exhibition. Once the exhibition was finished the game was dismantled a virtually forgotten about. That is until the 1970 when Higinbotham testified in court about the game. The court case was between Magnavox and Ralph Baer over patents to do with video games.



Since then BNL has recreated the game several times. It is considered one of the first ever video games for entertainment. There where others before this but they where considered for academic research rather than entertainment. There was a noughts and crosses (Tic Tac Toe) computer game developed in 1952 and this is considered the first ever graphical game.  So why isn't it considered the first ever video game. Well it depends on who you talk to. Many believe it not to be the first ever video game, because of its lack of moving or real time updating graphics.