Computer in Use. Маркушевская Л.П - 103 стр.

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Университет ИТМО | Санкт-Петербург

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103
Read the text and pay attention to the chronological stages of computer games
development.
Computer Game Prehistory
1. 1890. The USA is hit by a mass movement of the customers to play games on
coin operated devices - the first ones being phonographs. These recording devices
were set up in hotel lobbies, railway stations and small pubs or restaurants. The
working class population, clerks and businesspeople used the machines during their
lunch breaks.
Around 1885 the kinematoscope became the favourite toy of the population. Now
people used to look at wonders of the world, famous buildings, athletic men movies.
In the end of th 1890ies the kinematoscopic devices have again been replaced by
the mutoscopes. Mutoscopes were interactively controllable kinematoscopes. A lever
served as the interface for replay speed, forward/ backward movement or freeze
frames.
The History of Computer Games
2. The history of computer games - mistakenly termed videogames - probably
started in 1961. The early programmers and game designers came up with ideas
which have been taken over by the industry and have nowadays become cultural
stereotypes. Game types like combat games, strategy, simulation or dungeons and
dragons were early 60ies inventions but they are still alive today and probably more
vital than ever. Having a look at the old predecessors of today's Playstation and
Dreamcast games might explain why certain stereotypes are so persistent. Comparing
early games with today’s programmes also shows the technological progress
achieved during the last 4 decades. It seems that the gaming industry and game
technology nowadays challenges the complete computer industry in becoming the
key industrial branch.
Autumn 1961 Digital Equipment Corp. delivers a PDP-1 computer to the MIT in
Cambridge, Mass. This was the first computer equipped with a cathode ray tube
monitor and a keyboard. DEC expected the MIT scientists to develop scientific
programmes with the machine they donated, yet two scientists programmed an
application which is said to have been the first computer game.
1962. Stephen Russell, Peter Samson, Dan Edwards, and Martin Graetz realized
spacewar, a shoot-up game with animated spaceship icons on a black and white
monitor. Two users could shoot the other player’s spaceships in order to "survive".
A number of programmers working on big mainframe computers developed different
computer games during the following years. Most of these games have been
programmed in BASIC programming language:
3. Lunar Lander was a text based simulation game. The user had to type in to what
amount a lunar spacecraft should accelerate or decelerate. The computer then
calculated the fuel consumption, landing speed and height above the lunar ground.
All the information was output in monochrome numbers on a black and white screen.

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