Before GameTrailers made its debut in 2002, it was fairly difficult for publishers to make trailers for upcoming games available over the Internet. Large file sizes and slow download speeds made the entire thing rather impractical (not that we didn’t try).
We’ll be talking about how publishers made game trailers available in the days before widespread broadband adoption in this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, as well as uncovering a pair of firsts.
While the the game’s creators didn’t know it at the time, Spacewar! wouldn’t just help the future endeavors of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but also launch an entire industry.
In the 1950s and 60s, the Space Race and the Cold War gave students and researchers at top universities a reason to fight for processing time on the small number of room-sized mainframes in operation at the time. But thanks to the inclusion of a keyboard and a monitor (a luxury for a mainframe at the time), a small group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered that these machines were perfect for games.
After a lot of trial-and-error, these pioneers wound up with Spacewar!, a ship-battling simulation that combined their fascination with space travel with the computational power available in the mainframe. Completed in 1962, word quickly spread amongst the other students at the university, and Spacewar! became a bonafide blockbuster.
While the the game’s creators didn’t know it at the time, Spacewar! wouldn’t just help the future endeavors of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but also launch an entire industry.
Yesterday, the Strong Museum and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games announced this year’s inductees to the World Video Game Hall of Fame.
Yesterday, the Strong Museum and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games announced this year’s inductees to the World Video Game Hall of Fame. The Class of 2018 includes Final Fantasy VII, Square Enix’s beloved RPG; Tomb Raider, Eidos Interactive’s 1996 introduction to Lara Croft; John Madden Football, EA Sports’s first football simulation; and Spacewar!, an early game created by the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT in 1962.
Curators at the International Center for the History of Electronic Games and the Strong Museum have announced the finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018.
Curators at the International Center for the History of Electronic Games and the Strong Museum have announced the finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018. Eight games will get their first chance to be inducted into gaming’s inner circle this year, including Asteroids, Call of Duty, Dance Dance Revolution, Half-Life, King’s Quest, Metroid, Ms. Pac-Man, and Spacewar!
Two other games, Final Fantasy VII and Tomb Raider, were previously in the finalist pool for the Class of 2017. They’ll get another chance this year alongside John Madden Football and Minecraft, which were previously on the ballot in 2016.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame will announce the inductees for the Class of 2018 on Thursday, May 3, at 10:30 AM. But this year, fans will get a vote in the first-ever Player’s Choice ballot. According to the rules, “the three games that receive the most public votes will form one “Player’s Choice” ballot, which will join the 27 other ballots submitted by members of the International Selection Advisory Committee, a supporting group composed of journalists, scholars, and other individuals familiar with the history of video games and their role in society.” Fans can make their voice heard through the Player’s Choice ballot once a day until April 4th. So vote early and vote often!
If for some reason you’re unfamiliar with this year’s finalists, the World Video Game Hall of Fame put together a helpful cheat sheet…
