Expert: Brian Jay - 5/28/2008

Question
QUESTION: When is the first video games started?  How many fighting games all out there so far?  Do you know of all the systems that were developed for gamers?

ANSWER: Hi Henry

This is quite the big question now. To be able to answer this question properly, I'l need to know a bit of information.

1. For the first question, are you simply wanting to know about the first games made? Simply dates, or how they were made or what?

2. For the second question you'll have to be a bit more specific. For a particular system? How many major brands? Include sports/wrestling titles?

3. There are heaps of systems. To give an example, look at this page:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/systems.html

every thing listed there is a gaming system. Are you looking at a specific timeframe? You'll have to go deeper into the question for me to be able to help you.

When I get a reply, I'll be able to answer your question more effectively instead of just handing out dates and numbers.

Till I hear from you,

Brian

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: The first question is just when the first games is made, which means when is the first games made.  In other words, what years did gaming begin?

The second question is hand to hand combat games only.

The third question is okay. Thanks for the answer.

Answer
Hi Henry.

I had an answer near prepared, but I've come down with a pretty big cold so I haven't been able to get much done (Just sitting here... blech >.> but enough about me). Better late than never I suppose, so I hope I haven't caused you too much inconvenience.

1: Really it depends on how you define a video game, but the first instance for a machine used occurred around 1947, where a cathode ray tube was used to make a missile simulator game. It required screen overlays according to wikipedia, as no graphics could be drawn.

Some other instances of games occurring before the Odyssey (the first game console) include NIM (Made for the NIMROD computer (1951)), Tennis for Two (A game made for an oscilloscope around 1958) and Spacewar! made around 1961 for a DEC PDP-1 as a MIT project.

2: There are quite a number of recognised games out there. You have probably heard of some of them, like Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and the like. For a more complete list, which does have titles that can be seen on PC and more obscure consloes, take a look at this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fighting_games

Again, I hope that helps you with your answer.

Brian