The year 1972 was truly a breakthrough year in the world of technology. There were many inventions that impacted society as we know it today. The microprocessor and the compact disc were just two of those creations. Oh, and by the way, a little thing call

Magnavox Odyssey 1.

For the next 2 years the home videogame industry lay dormant until Atari released the first in a huge wave of Pong games. Everybody and their grandmother released one of these little single game T.V. tennis units, saturating the market and leaving the con

Fairchild Channel F.

Well you could call 1977 a breakout year for the home videogame industry. This was a year to rejoice and give praise because there were more new systems released (three in all) than in any one year since. First came an ill- faded attempt by RCA to get int

First off I want to give thanks to my Dad for that awesome day in K-mart when he bought me my first videogame system, the Atari 2600. We played Combat until our thumbs screamed in pain from those squared, one- button joysticks. I would even wake up early

Atari 2600.

In 1979 Mattel thought that they could grab a chunk of the up and coming videogame industry with the Intellivision. I walked to K-mart many times just to drool over this system. It had better graphics and gameplay than any system before it, and with a foc

In 1983, seemingly out of nowhere, came an instant juggernaut and an Atari killer to the forefront. Its name was the Colecovision. This was supposed to be the system to end all systems with its almost perfect arcade translation of Donkey Kong and Zaxxon.

Colecovision.

There was a loss of quality control in the videogame industry and third party company's started saturating the market with some of the crappiest games known to man. Everybody who was anybody made a game. Kool-Aid had a game. Chuckwagon dog food had a game

The History of Videogames Part 2

As we recall from last week, Atari, Coleco, and Intellivision had almost come to an instant death because of the videogame "Crash" in 1984. This made the future of home videogame consoles very bleak and it would almost take a miracle to get the industry r

Nintendo

In 1986 Sega started noticing the success of Nintendo and decided to bring out their own console called the Master System. It was actually a little more powerful than the N.E.S., but could only take about 10 percent of the market away from them. This was

Genesis

In 1989, I had to make one of the hardest decisions of my life, TurboGrafx 16 or Sega Genesis? I spent hours in Toys R Us walking back and forth between the two systems they had on display. I finally decided on the Genesis and the main reason was because

Neo Geo

How many times have you seen little old ladies or these crop circle farmer's say that they have been visited by aliens from the planet Exlaxia or some other far off galaxy. Well one time they were right. Back in 1990, we were visited by far superior life

3DO

Since we are on the subject of $700.00 systems, let's talk about the 3DO. It was the first 32-bit system and the first to truly use 3-D rendered graphics. 3DO was not a complete failure but they could have done better if it weren't for their high initial

One fine day back in 1995, I walked into Electronic Boutique, and to my surprise there sat the Sega Saturn four months early. The clerk looked as shocked as I did, so I just shrugged my shoulders and reluctantly purchased one. There was no hype, no hoopla

The Nintendo 64 hit the market a year later, just in time for the Christmas rush and showed off its power right away with the release of Mario 64 and Wave Race. But Nintendo has not had as much success as they would like. With a cartridge based system, th

The Sega Dreamcast brings us to present day videogaming, and in less than two weeks we will see the launch of the Playstation 2. Next year will also bring the release of the X-box and GameCube. There's no doubt that these systems are going to produce amaz

Bonus:

Check out these shots: the living room of a hardcore gamer