New Games - Page 12958
Bouncing Ball
1953
Bouncing Ball
1953
The first known game incorporating graphics that updated in real time, rather than only when the player made a move, was a simulation of a bouncing ball created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student Oliver Aberth for the Whirlwind I computer. He began creating the simulation in February 1951, before the computer was completed in April. It allowed users to adjust the frequency of the bounces with a knob, and sometime between late 1951 and 1953 he made it into a game by adding a hole in the floor for players to aim for.Checkers
1952
Checkers
1952
Strachey's program inspired Arthur Samuel to develop his own checkers game in 1952 for the IBM 701 and although the IBM 701 machine on which he developed his Samuel Checkers program was among the most powerful computers of its time, its memory was not sufficient to game out every possible outcome of each move. Samuel got around this limitation by introducing what is now called “alpha-beta pruning,” a scoring system that allowed the program to evaluate the likelihood of winning from certain positions without playing them out to the end of the game. Like a human player, Samuel Checkers looked as many moves ahead as it could and made its decisions from there.Sheep and Gates
1952
Sheep and Gates
1952
A video game created by Stanley Gill and involved a dot (termed a sheep) approaching a line in which one of two gates could be opened. The Stanley Gill game was controlled via the lightbeam of the EDSAC's paper-tape reader. Interrupting it (such as by the player placing their hand in it) would open the upper gate. Leaving the beam unbroken would result in the lower gate opening.OXO
1952
OXO
1952
star 3.1OXO was a computer game developed by Alexander S. Douglas in 1952 for the EDSAC computer, which simulates a game of Noughts and crosses, also sometimes called Tic-tac-toe. OXO is the earliest known game to display visuals on a video monitor. To play OXO, the player would enter input using a rotary telephone controller, and output was displayed on the computer's 35×16 dot matrix cathode ray tube. Each game was played against an artificially intelligent opponent.Draughts
1952
Draughts
1952
A game of draughts (a.k.a. checkers) written for the Ferranti Mark 1 computer by Christopher Strachey at the University of Manchester between 1951 and 1952. In the summer of 1952, the program was able to "play a complete game of Draughts at a reasonable speed".Mate-in-Two
1951
Mate-in-Two
1951
Robot Chess is an early chess game in which the user can play against an AI. The AI is only powerful enough to compute "mate-in-two" problems and thus the game didn't represent a full game of chess. Players would enter moves of the Ferranti Mark 1 and the computer would print out the response move. The simulation ignores some chess rules such as en passant, promotion and castling.Bertie the Brain
1950
Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device
1947
The cathode ray tube amusement device is the earliest known interactive electronic game to use a cathode ray tube (CRT). It is a device that records and controls the quality of an electronic signal. The strength of the electronic signals produced by the amusement device is controlled by knobs which influences the trajectory of the CRT's light beam. The device is purely electromechanical and does not use any memory device, computer, or programming. The player turns a control knob to position the CRT beam on the screen; to the player, the beam appears as a dot, which represents a reticle or scope. The player has a restricted amount of time in which to maneuver the dot so that it overlaps an airplane, and then to fire at the airplane by pressing a button. If the beam's gun falls within the predefined mechanical coordinates of a target when the user presses the button, then the CRT beam defocuses, simulating an explosion.
