A Brief History Of The Video Game Console

For a brief history of the video game console you have to go back to 1972 when the first game console was released. It was called the Magnavox Odyssey, there were a number of other basic consoles that were brought out in the 1970's by Atari and Fairchild.

However things did not start to get interesting until 1983 when the Nintendo Entertainment System was released. It supported high-resolution, full colour, tiled backgrounds as well as high-resolution sprites. This console gave us one of the most popular gaming characters of all time – Mario.

Next came the Master System from Sega which did not fare that well, however they were able to release a next-generation console the Sega Mega Drive in 1988 2 years before Nintendo could bring out their Super NES.

The Sega Mega Drive was quite popular for a time, it had noticeably improved graphics and a wide range of titles. The Super NES came out in 1990 and was an instant hit. It was still a reasonably basic grey box like its' predecessor but the games were a marked improvement.

Star Fox on the SNES was a revolution in home gaming. It was a realistic space simulation shoot 'em up that wowed gaming fans. Also on the SNES was Street Fighter II, one of the most successful games of all time. It had a whole generation of gamers trying to learn how to master Ryu's fireball move and Ken's tricky Dragon Punch.

The Atari Jaguar and the 3DO were the next consoles to be released. Due to high prices and a shortage of quality games neither of these consoles really took off even though they were technically superior to the SNES and Mega Drive.