I'm somewhat disappointed in the results if you search for the history of gaming on Nu-web(youtube, google, etc.) It always seems to be missing something So here is my attempt to stitch together something more complete. Firstly, there are a few different categories of video games. Arcades, mainframes, microcomputers, games consoles, hand helds, and online games. Of course, hand helds and games consoles are microcomputers in their own right, but the user isn't confronted with any kind of operating system. I won't be discussing hand helds. My area of interest for gaming history is in the 20th century and novel gameplay elements didn't come out of handhelds until the 21st century. Online games deserve a distinct category because some of the game programming is written in a platform agnostic faction. A flash game, for example, could work under linux, mac, or windows assuming they implemented a flash player. The same flash game can also be run under an ARM or x86 processor. The development of online games is an important part of gaming history, but also a relatively late one. So I won't be discussing this either. The earliest history of video games goes back to the mainframes. In 60s software development teams, there was always "that guy", who would program games on the mainframe after work. While Spacewar! was the most famous game to come out of these early years, there was certainly a lot of other game development that was done by these hobbyist corporate programmers that has been swallowed up by time. 1967 - "Basic programming by Kemeny, John G; Kurtz, Thomas E., joint author" https://archive.org/details/basicprogramming00keme/page/n5/mode/2up You can see the consideration of game development in the simulation and games sections in the above book. The biggest contribution to the history of gaming was in the PLATO system. In particular, there are a few RPGs from it that are cited as among the first. So with mainframes out of the way, we can look at arcades, microcomputers, and games consoles. Let's start by looking at the hardware. For arcades, you had arcade system boards. You'd install games either by swapping out chips or by installing full daughter boards. There are many different kinds of system boards that were used in the history of arcades. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards For games consoles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_video_game_console_generations For microcomputers(personal computers), we can split this into the Japanese computers and the American computers(Though note that the UK had its own computers which got their own games(like Elite)). American: 1977: Apple II(6502), Commodore PET(6502), TRS-80(Z80) 1979: Atari 8-bit(6502B) 1981: IBM PC*(x86) 1980: Commodore Vic-20(6502) 1982: Commodore 64(6510) 1984: Macintosh(68000) 1985: Commodore Amiga(68000) Japanese: 1981: NEC PC88(Z80 compatible) 1982: NEC PC98(8086), Fujitsu FM-7(6809, compatible with 6502?), Sharp X-1(Z80) 1983: MSX*(Z80) MSX is a standard. There were different manufacturers that implemented the standard. British: 1981: BBC Micro(6502) 1982: ZX Spectrum(Z80A) Ultimately, the IBM PC would win out over the rest of them. Tracing VN releases on vndb, we can place the Japanese switchover to IBM PC sometime around 1995/1996 under Windows 95. Aside from the early mainframe video games mentioned above, the earliest video games came from Atari. Aside from the distinction in different hardware types, we can also partition video game history into different eras. The first important moment I'd put at 1981. This is really when personal computer video games started taking off, as best shown by Wizardry and Ultima. The next I'd put at 1986. This is when the Famicom Disk System was released. This allowed for the production of some truly revolutionary titles which raised the bar on what video games could be. The multimedia revolution. The upgrade to CDs allowed for the inclusion of more and larger media assets in the game. This meant better soundtracks, movie cutscenes, and of course 3D worlds. It's tough to precisely place where this era started. The FM-Towns had a CD-ROM drive back in 1989. But probably the best point is late 1994/early 1995 with the release of the Playstation. Between 1986 and 1994, we could put another 1990/1991 with the release of the SNES in the home console world and the final switch over of games to 386/486 DOS-based IBM PCs rather than the multiple computer releases of the prior decade in the home computer world. 1971 - Computer Space "Bushnell and Dabney designed the game in 1970–71 to be a coin-operated version of Spacewar!. After the pair were unable to find a way to economically run the game on a minicomputer such as the Data General Nova, they hit upon the idea of instead replacing the central computer with custom-designed hardware created to run just that game." "Bushnell worked at Lagoon Amusement Park for many years while attending college. He was made manager of the games department two seasons after starting. While working there, he became familiar with arcade electro-mechanical games such as Chicago Coin's racing game Speedway (1969), watching customers play and helping to maintain the machinery while learning how it worked, developing his understanding of how the game business operates. He was also interested in the Midway arcade games, where theme park customers would have to use skill and luck to ultimately achieve the goal and win the prize. He liked the concept of getting people curious about the game and from there getting them to pay the fee in order to play." 1972 - Pong 1978 - Beneath Apple Manor 1980 - Akalabeth 1981 - Wizardry, Ultima Western culture is in the midst of a Talibanesque repudiation of fun for fun's sake(as well as art for art's sake). Some of this is by progressives. Some of this is by Christian conservatives. I don't blame them. They can't help themselves. This is just the way they are. But, despite the new progressive insistence that everything is political, video games remain an unprecedented refuge from these people.