The history of video games: Part 1

Okay, everyone listen closely and shut the fuck up. Professor GG is here to teach you about the history of video games from his own drunken point of view. This will be the first part of a seven part series, so don't think you can blow your boyfriend in the back, comfortable with the knowledge that this isn't important and won't be on the test. It fucking will, so get ready to take notes. I will be educating you on every significant gaming console in the history of the medium in any way that I see fit. I always felt that college courses had too much useful information and relevant training to the real world, so I'm here to add the cheap potshots, dick jokes, and pathetic personal cries for help that the educational system has been lacking. Please note that all seven posts on this subject are excerpts from my new book Tales From the Video Game Generation, which is being published by absolutely no one, because all literary agents and publishers are pretty gay.

Now that all of that's settled, away we go:

Section 1: Really Old-Assed Shit


The Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 was an early console released in 1977 that was responsible for the explosion and subsequent crash of the home video game industry. The crash was in large part caused by no restrictions on third-party developers who were able to develop and release any 2600 game they wanted. The result was a market oversaturated with crappy games as well as pornographic games that hurt the industry's image, such as Custer's Revenge, a game in which you control General George Armstrong Custer and the goal is to rape an Indian woman.

Pictured: Pixelated penis and boob. Not pictured: Dignity

The lack of quality control killed the entire gaming industry. Just remember the next time you get angry that Hollywood refuses to release a controversial film because it will hurt a studio's image: projects about 19th century military men raping Indians is always the inevitable result of a lack of image consciousness. Don't come crying to me when the movie industry is killed because multiplexes are flooded with movies starring Liam Neeson as General George McClellan sexually assaulting Angelina Jolie as Sacajawea and then following that up with anally raping Colin Farrell's Squanto with a blunderbuss. You've been fucking warned.


Mattel Intellivision

Released in 1980, this gaming console actually managed to hold its own against the Atari 2600 and yield over $100 million of profits in 1980 money for Mattel. Some people attribute the success to the hardware that outclassed the Atari 2600 in every conceivable way, and some say it's because the games were actually surprisingly fun, but that's all bullshit. The real reason for the success was the advertising campaign featuring author George Plimpton as "Mr. Intellivision." The most shocking thing about the campaign wasn't Mattel's inexplicable decision to hire a Cambridge educated author to market their hip gaming system, it was the blunt and brutal nature of the ads. The television commercials were so nasty that they basically consisted of George Plimpton addressing the camera and saying, "The Intellivision is a powerful machine while Atari games look like somebody ate dogshit and barfed it onto the screen." He didn't actually curse, but that was close enough to the actual ads to convey the idea.




Nevermind the fact that Mr. Plimpton was absolutely right, it was still shocking. Imagine if you saw a TV commercial today in which Bob Dole walked onto the screen and said, "Hi, I'm Bob Dole. Did you know that cool people like the Xbox 360 while only girls and pansy faggots play the Wii? It's true!" Tell me you wouldn't run out to the store and get an Xbox as soon as possible after picking your jaw up off the floor.


Magnavox Odyssey


This is the first video game console ever made, not Pong. I got into an argument over this in high school with my then best friend. I said Pong wasn't the first video game ever, and he swore it was and called me an idiot for thinking otherwise. In more recent years he became creepily obsessed with his Japanese girlfriend and broke off all contact with his friends. One time a female friend called him to wish him a happy birthday. His girlfriend got extremely jealous, and he called that friend and demanded she apologize to his girlfriend. He also had his girlfriend use his Facebook account to write insane messages on all of our walls that were obviously written by someone who knew as much English as a Cocker Spaniel. He topped it off by leaving me a threatening phone call for criticizing his frighteningly erratic behavior. There you have it. People who don't respect the Odyssey's place in history turn out to be creepy psychos. This section totally wasn't written to cope with personal issues. That would be a silly accusation.


Atari 5200


The Atari 5200 was released in 1982 and intended to serve as a successor to the 2600. It quickly flopped due to a shitty controller, hardware that wasn't backward compatible with 2600 games, and it didn’t help that the company that friggin’ made it didn't really pay any attention to it. It's only real contribution to gaming is the invention of a pause button, which really makes me wish I could have been born thirty years earlier when being a creative pioneering genius just meant realizing that sometimes people want to get up and take a piss while they're playing a fucking video game.

This is a pause button. In 1982 meeting blatanly obvious needs counted as innovation.

While we're on the subject of being lucky enough to be born at a time when stupidly obvious observations were brilliant innovations, did you know that when the game of basketball was invented, they played with an actual basket and somebody would go up in a ladder and pull the ball out every single time a point was scored, and they played for over a fucking decade before somebody tried cutting out the bottom? No shit.

Obadiah: "Perhaps the pacing of the game shall be more swift if we were to cut out the bottom of the baskets, eliminating the need for ladders every minute!"
Orson: "Quiet your buffoonery and foolish new ideals. Next thing you know, you'll be saying Negroes may have a talent for this sport!"

Coming up next: The 8-bit gaming generation