alt.hn

3/26/2026 at 9:22:32 PM

The First Video Game Was Just a Box in the Corner of a Bar

 https://lithub.com/the-very-first-video-game-was-just-a-box-in-the-corner-of-a-bar/

by PaulHoule

3/30/2026 at 11:36:13 AM

For some irrational reason this article annoyed me. It came across arrogant with an attempt at being high-brow, and included too much fluff. Describing the founders as "foundering figures" was amusing - I don't know if the image of taking on water and sinking was the author's intent, but I think I've just become guilty of the same thing I've accused the article of.

by shever73

3/30/2026 at 3:26:03 PM

I found myself hoping to find signals that it was written by AI, so that I didn't have to feel embarrassed for an actual author.

That's a first for me.

by jasonkester

3/31/2026 at 6:25:16 AM

It feels like the output you’d get from an LLM if you had asked it to write in a literary style. It’s not well-written, and reads more pretentious than capable.

by futuraperdita

3/30/2026 at 4:39:02 PM

I came here to say exactly the same thing. The writing is so bad I thought it must be an AI, but then I realized that AIs tend to write much better copy than this drivel.

by deepspace

3/30/2026 at 1:04:59 PM

It's not irrational to be irritated by bad writing.

by uptownJimmy

3/30/2026 at 4:50:17 PM

it's also wrong. Computer Space and Galaxy Games predated pong. And several non-coin-op games like Nimrod, Tennis for Two and Spacewar! predate pong by decades. A quick trip to the Wikipedia could have revealed this error.

I really want this to be an AI generated article because it means AI has come a long way in emulating human fallibility.

by OhMeadhbh

3/31/2026 at 11:43:22 AM

As some have noticed, US writing about games is very console-centric

by p_l

3/30/2026 at 1:19:54 PM

> It came across arrogant with an attempt at being high-brow, and included too much fluff.

Seems consistent with the name of the website: "Literary Hub"

by roelschroeven

3/30/2026 at 4:53:40 PM

I think that an actionable critique might be that there’s an overuse of “big word” adverbs and adjectives.

by clickety_clack

3/30/2026 at 1:22:31 PM

I would have appreciated some pictures.

by gwbas1c

3/30/2026 at 4:11:36 PM

maybe trying to be too clever here but i think he was implying they were in over their heads and just really lucky

by myko

3/30/2026 at 12:48:27 PM

"weird pbotons"

by timcobb

3/30/2026 at 9:56:50 AM

> "A revolution was televised in 1972"

Well Tennis for Two was created in 1958 so "the first video game" seems like a stretch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two

by voidUpdate

3/30/2026 at 2:18:56 PM

I get it, anyone claiming "first video game" is going to start a bar brawl.

But pedantry aside, the also rans, even if they were previously rans, are not interesting. They did not spawn million-dollar companies, change the course of entertainment around the world.

Having huffed though, were I the author I would have anticipated these responses and probably gone with "first wildly successful commercial video game".

by JKCalhoun

3/30/2026 at 3:04:00 PM

You mean like the Magnavox Odyssey, which Bushnell always freely admitted to ripping off?

by empressplay

3/31/2026 at 1:29:46 AM

There was also the IBM Simon, the first smartphone, before the iPhone came about. History tends to remember the product that made the category matter, not the one that technically got there first.

by jnaina

3/31/2026 at 1:19:02 AM

I never saw the Odyssey—unless it was that one night when I saw something in the window of a closed shop that was the first pong-like video game I had ever seen.

You're probably right, the Odyssey is probably as good a contender as Pong. But somehow everyone knows "Pong" (and of course Atari).

by JKCalhoun

3/30/2026 at 11:51:40 AM

Christopher Strachey wrote a version of draughts/checkers for the Manchester Mark 1 that was fully functional in 1952. This is IMO the first video game. Earlier candidates use single-purpose display hardware, which disqualifies them from being "video".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Strachey

by mrob

3/30/2026 at 12:05:31 PM

If the wikipedia image is accurate, its technically not "displaying" the board, its just in ram. The RAM just happens to be visible. But you get into a lot of technicalities when talking about the "first video game", so its up to interpretation. There was the "Cathode-ray tube amusement device" in 1947 that, by some interpretations could also be the "first video game" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube_amusement_dev...

I think it is at least safe to say that PONG isn't the first

by voidUpdate

3/30/2026 at 12:50:29 PM

That's a pretty weird distinction to make.

I remember back in the 80s writing a CGA text-mode game (they were quite in vogue at the time), and (as I assume most programmers did) I used the video memory directly as the source of truth about the current state of the level.

OP's distinction about video being a raster-based signal that you feed into a regular TV-like device, rather than being vector based or hard wired lights seems sensible. As to how that video signal is generated is kind of irrelevant.

by ralferoo

3/30/2026 at 1:13:25 PM

The manchester mark 1 had a teleprinter as its output, and used a Williams tube as ram (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube). If the image on wikipedia is accurate, the checkers game only "displayed" itself incidentally, on the Williams tube, rather than actually outputting to the teleprinter. In your game, it would be like writing the current level to internal ram, rather than to the actual video memory. The Williams tube isn't really a TV-like device. It stores data on a CRT, but that CRT isn't visible to the user in general operation, as the read plate covers the "screen". Again, "first video game" is up to a lot of interpretation.

Also, saying that vector based video makes it not a video game is a little strange, given how common vector graphics were in arcades (eg Asteroids, Tempest, Missile Command) and the Vectrex

by voidUpdate

3/30/2026 at 1:36:06 PM

Not necessary, you can just take an additional CRT and wire it in parallel to one of the Williams tube CRTs to see what's on the screen.

That's how the Manchester Baby did it (visible in the center of the image here): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Manchest...

by alnwlsn

3/30/2026 at 2:28:51 PM

I'm not necessarily making the point that vector graphics based games aren't video games, just arguing against the parent comment against the claim that it wasn't a video game because it was stored in RAM.

I agree with the assertion that this was a video game because it was using a raster-based CRT for the display, even though the primary purpose of that display was for data storage not display.

by ralferoo

3/30/2026 at 12:41:27 PM

I don't think it's necessary for video RAM to be separate from code RAM. The BBC Micro game "Revs" runs code from the video RAM and sets the palette to make it look like blue sky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revs_(video_game)

CRT Amusement Device is IMO disqualified for not using any form of computer.

by mrob

3/30/2026 at 1:14:26 PM

The CRT Amusement Device uses a video display and has game-like elements, you could argue that makes it a "video game" (as opposed to a "computer game")

by voidUpdate

3/30/2026 at 3:01:01 PM

Computers games can have no video at all why the 'display' it's being sent over a serial output to either a display or a printed paper.

Nethack/Slashem, text adventures, Sokoban, Trek... can be printed one sheet at a time and be totally playable. With Slashem it might be a big waste of paper, but with text adventures you can just reuse the output (obviously) and reduce tons of further typing because you already have the whole scrollback printed back in your hands.

by anthk

3/30/2026 at 1:02:17 PM

There was also SpaceWar! from MIT, which Nolan Bushnell turned into a standalone cabinet game. Though I think you could make a case for Pong being the first coin-op video game, a commercial game rather than something that primarily existed in academic labs.

by Finnucane

3/30/2026 at 3:06:55 PM

Which would be fine. But the article is written as if Pong was the first video game period, which it clearly wasn't.

by empressplay

3/30/2026 at 2:18:38 PM

So difficult to read ..

by perfobotto

3/30/2026 at 3:02:58 PM

> Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included on the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console; in response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.

Yeah, not first video game.

by empressplay

3/30/2026 at 1:36:29 PM

Brings up a ‘Do you want to download “sync” on “lithub.com” and “dsp-service.admatic.de”?’ dialog on my iPad.

Hard pass.

by egiboy

3/30/2026 at 2:36:43 PM

[flagged]

by riverforest