Tennis for Two – First Video Game Created for Fun

"Tennis for Two," was created in 1958 by William Higginbotham.  When discussing the first video game in history, it is difficult to come to a conclusion as to which game was actually first.  This is due the technical aspect of early video games, and also the purpose of their creation.  Some people believe that "Tennis for Two" was the first video game in history and William Higginbotham is the inventor of video games.

"Tennis for Two," is also known as Tennis Programming.  It was played on the analog computer with separate controllers and oscilloscope in the role of a screen.  This game was played by two people.

The oscilloscope screen used a cathode-ray tube, and showed the tennis court from the two-dimensional side view.  Net and ground were represented as the bright vertical and horizontal lines.  The ball was represented by a moving dot.  Players used controllers to operate the invisible rackets.  Controllers had a button for “hitting” the ball, and a rotating dial for setting the angle of the ball(s) trajectory.

Unlike A. S. Douglas, who created "OXO" ("Noughts And Crosses") for scientific purposes in 1952, for his PhD dissertation about human-computer interaction, William Higginbotham created "Tennis for Two," as an entertainment based project.  This is why, despite the release dates, some people believe that "Tennis for Two" deserves the title for the first video game created, rather than "Noughts And Crosses."

Present Situation of Video Arcade Games: Part 2

On the other hand, there are also some arcades games that do not need to fight for survival. This is because some genres of video games are still very popular in arcades. Among these are dancing and rhythm types of games. Some famous video arcade games of this genre would include "Dance, Dance Revolution," and part of the "Bemani," series.

When the modern video arcade games cannot find a place under the sun, the early video games find new life.

Thanks to the simple, and purely exciting game play of many of the early video games, many of these games have found a lot of new fans amongst the modern generation. The modern generation however, play these arcade games on mobile phones, or with the help of special emulators such as MAME.

In addition, nowadays some of the classic video arcade games are reappearing in commercial settings. Such as the way the "Ms. Pac-Man 20 Year Reunion." was released, as well as "Galaga Class of 1981," (two-in-one game.) Other classic arcades are integrated directly into controller hardware (joysticks) with replaceable flash drives storing game ROMs.

Classic Video Arcade Games Are Still in Demand

Nowadays, we can notice a good many people who collect the classic video arcade games. Classic arcades were the games of their childhood – they were created in the late 1970s – 1980s. Of course, people will not collect these games if they don’t have warm, nostalgic feelings toward the games.  It is easy to understand how even now there is still a desire to play these old but wonderful games

During the 70's & 80's,  a lot of wonderful video arcade games started to be created, and arcades became very popular.  Because of the huge popularity of some of the games, Pac-Man, for example, even entered the popular culture. For decades there wasn’t anything else that could be matched to the early video games, or enjoyed in quite the same way.

Due to the fact that today, only few of these games have any commercial value, the cost of their acquisition can range from 200 to 750 dollars.  However, when we talk about arcade games that have been fully restored, there value can be significantly higher than this.