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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 inter
by JKCalhoun 7mo ago
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".
- empressplay 7mo agoYou mean like the Magnavox Odyssey, which Bushnell always freely admitted to ripping off?
- JKCalhoun 7mo agoI 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).
- jnaina 7mo agoThere 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.