Making a modern video game is a job for people working together. Video games are played on many kinds of machines, such as computers, game consoles and phones, and some video games are played on a TV at home. The first games were made long ago. Let's go back to the beginning and follow the first games and game machines, one step at a time.

Our first stop is 1958. In 1958, a scientist at a laboratory in New York helped make Tennis for Two, an early electronic game that visitors could play. Next comes the early 1960s. Spacewar! was made at MIT in the early 1960s, and it is one of the earliest video games for a digital computer. Spacewar! was made to show off what a new computer, the PDP-1, could do.

In 1966, Ralph Baer began finding ways to play games on a television. The Magnavox Odyssey was the first home video game console. A console is a game machine, and some video games are played on a TV at home. Computers and phones are also machines that play video games, and so are game consoles. Ralph Baer began his work on games for the TV in 1966, and the Odyssey was the first home console.

Games also moved into public places. Computer Space, made in 1971, was one of the earliest coin-operated arcade video games. In 1972, Atari released the arcade game Pong. Pong was a simple game with two paddles and a ball. Atari engineer Allan Alcorn built Pong after his boss asked for a simple game based on Ping-Pong. Pong was a game that people played in an arcade, and it had a ball and two paddles.

Pong has a funny story of its own. The first Pong machine, in a Sunnyvale, California, bar, stopped working because it was full of quarters. The quarters were the coins that people put in to play. A game that needs coins is a coin-operated game, and Computer Space was one of the earliest coin-operated arcade video games.

Pong then came home. Atari sold a home version of Pong through Sears, a big store chain. Pong was a simple game with two paddles and a ball, and some video games are played on a TV at home. Some game systems let players switch games by putting in a cartridge, and the Atari 2600, released in 1977, played games stored on cartridges.

Cartridges came a little before the Atari 2600. In 1976, the Fairchild Channel F was the first game console to use swappable game cartridges. A player could switch games by putting in a cartridge. The Atari 2600, released in 1977, played games stored on cartridges, too.

Then the video game business ran into trouble. In 1983, sales of home video game systems dropped sharply. That was a slump for the game business. A few years later, things began to turn around. In the mid-1980s, Nintendo's NES helped turn the video game market around after a slump. The video game market had a slump in 1983, and Nintendo's NES helped to turn it around.

Words to know

• cartridge: game holder
• console: game machine
• arcade: coin games
• laboratory: science workplace
• slump: sharp drop