EXPLANATION
The first commercially available video game,
Pong (Atari 1973), was
introduced 11 years after Spacewar!
Pong is a simple concept that has turned
out to be surprisingly durable even though the graphics are simply white rectangles
on a black background. In the beginning, Pong was placed at entertainment venues,
markets, and fun fairs, next to mechanical pastimes and as a supplement to these.
This is the same kind of place where the game
Space Invaders (Taito 1977)
was also introduced. Space Invaders defines most of the basic parameters of
what I call the classical action game: A player controls an object/an actor
against some enemies; a score is kept; the game is real-time and requires fast
reflexes; the player has a fixed amount of lives (typically three); the game
is based on successive levels of increasing difficulty; the game (or just the
title) places the player’s action as part of a minimal narrative.
