Task 1 - Game Platform Development Timeline

History of Arcade Consoles:

1909 - Skee Ball, invented by J.D. Estes in Philadelphia.
1914 - The first Skee-Ball Alleys sold to outdoor amusement industry, and measured at 36 feet long.
1928 - The size of the alley was reduced to 14 feet to allow for more diverse crowd of players.
1931 - First coin operated machine was called baffle ball, created in Chicago. Coin-op machines were considered gambling, and banned or heavily regulated by most states.
1933 - When pinball machines were first invented, they were controversially referred to as Games of Chance, and therefore considered gambling.
1947 - Pinball machines began to be designed with flippers to hit the ball so that it could be seen as more of a game of skill than chance.
1971 - Galaxy Game, first ever coin operated video game installed at Stanford University in September
1972 - Pong is released, developed by Atari ad selling more than 35,000 units.
1975 - Gun Fight was released, first game to use a microprocessor.
1978 - Taito Corp released Space Invaders, one of the most popular games of all time.
1979 - Atari released asteroids, selling over 70,000 cabinets,Atari's highest selling games.
1980 - Pac-Man released, the most successful video game of all, selling 350,000 arcade cabinets, and racking up over $2billion in revenue,
1981 - Donkey Kong released, second game ever to feature multiple levels.
1983 - Due to similar games being made, moral fights against video games nearly killed the industry, It flopped from $12 billion in 1982 to $100 million in 1985.
1989 - Sega Genesis released 16-bit console in North America, followed by Nintendo's 16-bit Super NES in 1991.
1991 - Capcom releases Street Fighter II. Fighting games such as Mortal Kombat and Virtual Fighter became huge successes.
1999 - Konami released Dance Dance Revolution, saw a 260% increase in net income.
2000 - Sega fight simulation game Strike Fighter was released.
2005 - Nintendo used build-in cameras to snap a photo to be used in the game for Mario Kart Arcade GP.
2007 - Deal or No Deal was released using actual clips from the game show.
2009 - Activision and Konami created Guitar Hero Arcade after its surge in popularity in home consoles.
2010 - Dead Heat Street Racing introduced sharing scores through social media and taking pictures of the racer to show on the screen.
2012 - Big Buck Hunter HD came out featuring the ability to compete for a cash prize for an additional fee as well as sharing scores.
2013 - 4D gaming came in with Dark Escape 4D. The horror shooter game combines surround sound,3D glasses, vibrations, heart rate monitors and blasts of air.

History of Gaming Consoles:

Brown Box (1967)

The Brown Box was the first gaming consoles ever created. There were only six games for the console, ping-pong, tennis, handball, volleyball, chase games and a light-gun game.

Magnavox Odyssey (1972)

The Magnavox Odyssey was created when the Brown Box's technology was licensed by Magnavox. The Magnavox Odyssey is the first commercial home video game console. It was first demonstrated in April 1972 and released in August of that year. 

Atari Sears Tele-Games Pong System (1975)

Pong is simulated table tennis game that featured 2 players. It is one of the many Atari gaming consoles.

Coleco Telstar (1976)


The Telstar is a series of video game consoles produced by Coleco from 1976 to 1978. It had 3 difficulty level and games could be played in colour. Over 1 million of these consoles were sold in its lifetime. 

Atari 2600 (1977)

The Atari 2600 used a Joystick, paddles, driving controller, trak-ball keypad, and a joyboard. It had 128 bytes RAM and 4KB ROM. 30 Million Atari 2600's were sold during its lifespan. Its highest selling game was PacMan, which sold over 7 million units as of 2006. 

Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)


The SNES is a 16-bit home video game console. It sold over 49 million units worldwide, and its top selling game, Super Mario World sold over 20 million copies.

Nintendo 64 (1996)


The Nintendo 64 is Nintendo's third video game console. It has a 64-bit central processing unit. It has a 64 MB Game Pak for storage and 256 Kbit controller Pak for game saves. It sold over 32.9 million units worldwide.

PlayStation 2 (2000)


The PlayStation 2 is the second console in the PlayStation series. It went on to be the highest selling console of all time, selling over 155 million units as of 2012. More than 3,874 games were developed for the console and over 1.5 billion games were sold. The PlayStation 2 used a memory card for storage, which had around 8MB of storage in total, and used Dualshock controllers. 

Nintendo Gamecube (2001)


The Nintendo Gamecube is a sixth generation home video game console which sold over 21 million units. It had a 16MB Removable Memory Card to store game saves. Its highest selling game is Super Smash Bros, Melee with over 7 million games sold. 

History of PC:

The Colossus was the first ever computer to be made. It was made in 1943. However, only 11 units were ever shipped. The computer used 7.5 kW of Power and had no memory/RAM. 

PC's continued to evolve, in the 1990's this is what they started to look like. This PC only had 100MB of internal Hard Drive and up to 4MB of RAM. 

Nowadays, PC's are extremely powerful. This computer has 1TB of storage capacity, a 27" screen and 8GB of System Memory. It has Intel® Core™ i5 Processor 5200U. 

History of Mobile Phones:

1997 – Nokia 6110

In 1997, the Nokia 6110 was released. It had 3 games, which are extremely popular games; memory, snake and Logic. It only had 3 apps, a calculator, clock and calendar and contained 4 colours. 

2002 – Samsung SGH-T100

In 2002, the Samsung SGH-T100 "Flip Phone" was released. It was similar to the Nokia 6110, so had very limited amount of storage, apps, games and graphics. It has a screen Resolution of 128 x 160 pixels, 12 lines. It only had 3 games available for it at the time. 

2010 - iPhone 4

Modern phones are really powerful. They have the power to run high graphic and performance games, download hundreds of apps and games, and send messages and phone calls. The iPhone 4 has 16GB of Memory (there are 8GB and 32GB models too), 960x640 resolution and a 5 mega-pixel camera with LED Flash. 

History of Mobile Games

Snake is one of the oldest and most popular mobile games of all time. It was one of the very first mobile games developed for phones and is still played to this day.

Angry birds was released in 2009 for mobile phones. It then turned into one of the most downloaded game franchise of all mobile gaming. It too is still played to this day and is loved by both children and adults.

Clash of clans is another example of a popular mobile game. The game was released on the 2nd August 2012, and due to its huge popularity, the game is still being supported 3 years later. Clash of Clans is one of the highest grossing games on the Google App Store.

History of Television: 

Black and White televisions

Televisions in the 20th century used to be mostly made up of black and white televisions. These usually had a small screen, a few buttons on the television and an on and off switch/handle. Some even came with antennas on top which was used to receive broadcasts and television shows. 

Coloured Television:

In the 1950's, coloured televisions were invented so the audience could watch television with colour instead of the plain old black and white screens. However, the only coloured that were available to see during its early invention were red, blue and green. Coloured televisions looked very similar to black and white televisions, except they displayed colour. 

Modern Television:

Modern televisions are extremely powerful and most TV's are in HD. Televisions are so advanced, that even curved televisions are starting to come out. Televisions come in lots of different sizes and most home televisions tend to be extremely big and have really high quality.