by Mark K Hall

Created on: April 01, 2009

Even though the first game consoles came out in the 1950's the games were made from lines called vectors. the first video games didn't come out until 1972 when Magnavox released its console named Odyssey. The console wasn't very popular and when Pong came out it really brought attention to the emerging video game industry. Magnavox stopped producing the Odyssey and released the Magnavox 100 which only played Pong and hockey. Later they releases a 4 player version with a third game called Smash.

In 1976 the Fairchild Video Entertainment System came out. The Fairchild cartridges were the first ones that contained a programmable microprocessor so its cartridges only needed a single ROM chip to store game information. In 1977 RCA and Fairchild cancelled their consoles in response to older consoles being sold cheaper than production cost in order to clear out stock. People just didn't seem to be buying consoles. However, Magnavox and Atari stayed on producing games.

In 1983 there was a bigger dip in the video game industry. As home computers were beginning to be released video games were being slowly ignored. Most video game producers were filing for bankruptcy and all North America video game consoles were discontinued by 1984 except for Intellivision who kept making games until the early 1990's.

In 1983 the Famicom (Family Computer) was released in Japan. This supported better resolution and better pictures making for a better and longer game. It was released in North America in 1985 under a different name; Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was released with the Super Mario Bros. and a light gun sold separately. The Super Mario Bros. popularity helped to revive the video game industry and companies started releasing their own consoles again.

The Fourth Generation of video game consoles included, the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). These were 16-bit consoles as opposed to the NES which was only 8-bit. Later on Sega released an add-on for the Genesis called the Sega 32X which expanded the storage capacity for games.

The Fifth generation started with Atari jaguar and 3DO. It was not until the Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation and Nintendo 64-bit were released that the fifth generation consoles became popular.The Atari Jaguar was released to compete with the Genesis and SNES. It was more powerful but failed due to a couple of reasons. It was hard to program and when the Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 were released that killed the Jaguar.

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