History of Video Games

[sodface]

Did anyone catch the history of video games documentary that was on PBS a week or so ago? My brother taped it for me. I just watched it last night and I must say I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was like an hour and half long and started way back at pong and worked up to the present. Incidentally, I also just got a different video capture card and have been playing with it the last couple of days, if anyone is interested I can capture and upload the show somewhere. I don't know if this is legal or not so I probably shouldn't make the offer, but it was on public TV and PBS, which gets grants from us tax payers right?

[Gaspar]

That would be an interesting view! Please do if possible :cool:

[joeMan]

Sodface, I would like that. I am a Video Game whore. Ya, sometimes I pass out after getting the smack down from my local Fry's Software department Mgr... She's so rough on release days! Like you don't even want me to tell you about the day Doom3 hit...

Anyway, I remember playing a game called "Voyage of the Valkyrie" on my friends Apple II back in the day. Man, that was pretty cool. Before that it was "Fracas" on his Apple. And before that, we used to either type in games line for line into his TRS-80, or we could load them from a cassette tape (man that was a leap forward in technology!) And of course we played Atari 2600, and/or Breakout/Pong etc.

I remember the day my mom took me to BEST to get my Atari 2600. It wasn't BEST BUY, just BEST back then. I also got Missle Command with it. I had worked all summer long to save money for it...aahhh those were the days...

The next cool thing after that was When I begged my dad to DEATH until he finally gave in to buy me a ColecoVision. Wow, I loved it. Two words - Donkey Kong. Need I say more?

And remember those little hand held digital football games, where you'd move the red LED blip down the field toward the end zone? And what about Space Invaders wrist watches? and on, and on... .. . . . . . . . .

[sodface]

When I was a kid, my friend accross the road's mom (single mom) got a new boyfriend that was kind of well off, he drove a trans am and everything! :p Anyway, he furnished the basement of their house and put in an actual, full size, missile command arcade machine. To be able to play a stand-up arcade game without putting quarters in was almost too much for me to handle at that age!


And remember those little hand held digital football games

I especially remember one called "electronic quarterback" by coleco I think, man did I play the dog crap out of that thing.. wore the arrows off the buttons. I used to play that one under the covers at night so my mom wouldn't hear me :p Towards the end of its life it tended to freak out a little and the leds on the field would light at random :lol:

I captured the whole show last night. I messed around a lot trying to get some decent video with decent compression. I split the files at the 50MB mark and there is still 30 of them - each one is about 3 1/2 minutes. This was mpeg1, should I try again and go DivX?

[RotorHead]

At the end of a lot of those PBS shows, they have an address you can write to for a copy of the broadcast, just a thought. :)

[Hawk]

I guess I missed it also. :(

[sodface]

Here's a link to the show on PBS, its got a spot you can enter your zip to check the program schedule...

http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/about/index.html

[joeMan]

Wow sodface, a full size Missle Command machine...outstanding! :bow:

Funny about the friend across the street's mom's boyfriend connection because my friend across the street's mom's boyfriend had some kind of r&d connection at Atari and he used to give Thomas (my friend) these chips (they weren't even encased in the cartridges) that you could plug in to your Atari 2600 and you could actually play the games that were on them - like Pitfall by Activision and stuff. One that wasn't out yet that we got before release was Zaxxon...I was so blown away - Zaxxon before release (Although I must say it was a horrible rendition of the game - but hey, it was free - and we had it before anyone else!).

I checked that listing for PBS and the Video Game Revolution is not playing in my area in the next two weeks, but I will check back...