To the entreprenuer goes the spoils. No offense to Bear, but he failed to capitalize on a golden ticket and that's his fault. No blame should be given to Bushnell for having the vision and the hustle to get the game out there. Bushnell saw a dollar signs and went for it - just like any good American entreprenuer would do (the same thing happen when Jobs walked into Xerox PARC). Nothing against Bear, but he was just an engineer who played by the rules. Nolan bent the rules and won big time.
Looks to me like Ralph Baer clearly was the innovator (father of videogames if you like). Years before Bushnell actually new how to bring it to the masses. I'll give Bushnell credit for his contribution, but I think it's "arrogant" or almost an act of "denial" to call the "Baer Pong" not clever! Btw, Baer also had a 2 paddles and a pixel, not just 2 pixels chasing each-other around. Also Bushnell was actually there! The guy saw it, maybe he proceeded to perfect it, but did not invent it!
yea its more magical as a kid. although i liked more games than others, i still played the ones i had
because they were the only games available for me. the empire strikes backs for the game boy, for example,
was a ruthless pile of wookie dung, but i spent countless hours on the stages.
NOW as an adult, and with FAR more money and gaming options than I had as a child, I would rather spend my entire day on the internet than any of my consoles!
everyone claims they were the first at everything while they sit in disdain in their one bedroom flats, same sob story with microsoft and every other tech comp
6:53 - I like how the little kid was reading and dad comes over with the Atari and just shoves the reading material off the table bahahaha way to go pops!
It's sad that Ralph H. Baer is hardly mentioned in this show,even though he created&patented the Video Game idea & even released the first successful games, Pong was released after his system, and Computer Space, the first commercially available arcade game, also isn't mentioned. Ralph's patent also covered the Computer Space type of game style also. I think it's terrible that Nolan Bushnell took one of Baer's ideas form his ping-pong game. Atari later stole Nintendo lock-codes and lost Tetris.
first of all, baer did not invent the concept of computer games. william higinbothom created tennis for two on an oscilloscope in 1958, 8 years before baer even came along and scribbled down his idea. also, just the mere fact that someone patents something first is a weak argument for anything, because it doesn't mean that he's the inventor, but only the first one to secure rights for something. compare that to the companies that patented human genes
also, what about baer did you miss? to my knowledge they covered everything important about him. there's not much more to say other than that the odyssey bombed because baer lacked what bushnell had aplenty: a fun concept for games.
why they didn't mention computer space is beyond me. still, your argument that baer's patent covered also space games lacks, because the game came out half a year before baer showcased his pong version. this also shows greatly that a patent doesn't mean anything
Magnavox owned patents to their 'video' projection/Display and control games, in essence "Video Games" they took Intellivision and other companies to court also besides Atari. In 1985, Nintendo sued Magnavox and tried to invalidate Baer's patents by saying that the first video game was William Higinbotham's Tennis For Two game built in 1958. The court ruled that this game did not use video signals&could not qualify as a video game. As a result, Nintendo lost the suit&continued paying royalties.
not really an important issue for this documentary. it's about how the video game market came into existence and how it developed, not about legal battles. those have been taking place ever since the first companies formed. there were so many, you could make a whole documentary solely centering around that issue. in fact, the tetris documentary i uploaded is dedicated to those legal fights just concerning this 1 game. there's no way a 45min documentary could sidetrack as much as you want it to.
still, thanks for that info. i hadn't known about this yet. it's a perfect example why fighting over complex technical issues in court is usually doomed to fail
i don't know what you mean by lock codes and also the tetris reference makes little sense here since it took place at a time after the computer game business had long been established.
just to make it more clear: atari lost tetris, just like many other companies, because no one knew who owned the rights to license the game for the world market. nintendo was the only one to track down the source and to secure the rights for them.
Atari was still bending the laws, such as dumping revenue in the desert, not checking patents, and when they created Tengen they went to the United States Copyright Office, and illegally got key codes for Nintendo's NES and used them in their unlicensed games after pulling out from Nintendo. Without those codes Atari wouldn't have been able to make their Tetris for NES and eventually lost both court cases. Over the right to release Tetris on the NES and the falsification of records.
i think you're a little harsh and also unfair. i guess you're american. the usa is the only western country i know that has software patents - one of the worst abuses of the patent system ever.
when bushnell adapted baer's concept, software patents hadn't been established yet, so he did nothing wrong. also, he did not just copy the game. he copied the design, but invented his own, far superior concept. two freely movable pixels hardly qualify for a game, while pong had a clear gaming concept
if anything it's unfair that they left out higinbotham and made it look like baer was the grandfather of all computer games - a mistake that seems to mislead many people, as you clearly proved.
funny thought: what do you think about baer now? higinbotham invented a pong-like game almost a decade before baer came along, yet baer patented the idea and even became rich when atari had to pay license fees to him. poor old baer doesn't look so poor now, does he?
Electronic games with any type screen the 1947 "Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device" seems 2be the fist with a screen of it's own, then Claude Shannon's 1950 Computer Chess,& Alexander S. Douglas' 1952 XOX game,before Tennis for Two, a sideview videogame. Baer patent the video display/projection&control box, for Videogames, hence the word 'video'. Like a LAZER or other devise, if Bushnell had tried to patent 'Computer Space' he would have found Baer already had a patent for that type of device.
@GameDocumentaries, I also notice no mention of Spacewar! which was a true computer game in 1962 running on DEC PDP-1 computers, and not long after ported to any computer with a video display. But in documentaries, like all art, accuracy sometimes takes a back seat to a good story arc. People can find out the true story, with it's not-so-simple beginnings by doing their own research on the web.
when i heard people sa e.t was that bad its caused the vido game crash of 83 i wlys thought it was just a joke... i even thought the crash was an exageratin=/
To the entreprenuer goes the spoils. No offense to Bear, but he failed to capitalize on a golden ticket and that's his fault. No blame should be given to Bushnell for having the vision and the hustle to get the game out there. Bushnell saw a dollar signs and went for it - just like any good American entreprenuer would do (the same thing happen when Jobs walked into Xerox PARC). Nothing against Bear, but he was just an engineer who played by the rules. Nolan bent the rules and won big time.
r3dfella 1 week ago
My god, how far we've come!
invaderhim23 2 months ago
Looks to me like Ralph Baer clearly was the innovator (father of videogames if you like). Years before Bushnell actually new how to bring it to the masses. I'll give Bushnell credit for his contribution, but I think it's "arrogant" or almost an act of "denial" to call the "Baer Pong" not clever! Btw, Baer also had a 2 paddles and a pixel, not just 2 pixels chasing each-other around. Also Bushnell was actually there! The guy saw it, maybe he proceeded to perfect it, but did not invent it!
Soepieman99 3 months ago
Comment removed
Soepieman99 3 months ago
2 pixels made loads of dollars
SadDepressedClown 3 months ago 3
Once again, not really bothered to watch the whole video. This crap about this video-game nonsense will just deteriorate my mind.
theguyyouate6 5 months ago
ralph baer owes me money...
dahmeredsback 6 months ago
@AZleb no they came along when online gaming came along, before online gaming was fun. If was a hobby not a way of life.
kidsteal 6 months ago
So this is where the fanboys and COD vs HALO started!!!!!!!!!!!
AZleb 7 months ago
As a kid i had ET and used to play it all the time ,dont know why but i liked it lol. But back then i used to like all my games i owned
fpvshitsonhsv 9 months ago
@fpvshitsonhsv
yea its more magical as a kid. although i liked more games than others, i still played the ones i had
because they were the only games available for me. the empire strikes backs for the game boy, for example,
was a ruthless pile of wookie dung, but i spent countless hours on the stages.
NOW as an adult, and with FAR more money and gaming options than I had as a child, I would rather spend my entire day on the internet than any of my consoles!
DeadIslandTrailers 9 months ago
lol E.T fails the world
cjjtheone 10 months ago
10:17
hurriedly produced, poor quality corporate video games?? i find that hard to believe.
Dagarvs 11 months ago
thats money yo 500 to 2 mil
crackfiendables 1 year ago
everyone claims they were the first at everything while they sit in disdain in their one bedroom flats, same sob story with microsoft and every other tech comp
crackfiendables 1 year ago
Here I was thinking Nolan Bushnell was a genius, turns out he's just a typical run of the mill thief LOL...
mookixox 1 year ago
It's called MARKETING. This guy didn't market it well enough.
visionimagify 1 year ago
THIS IS A FUCKING OUTRAGE! BOYCOTT ATARI!!
THAT FAT FUCKING BLOODSUCKING JEW WHORE NERD DEGENERATE HOT TUB BATHING BASTARD
Cakerolled 1 year ago
"they were New Yorkers' translation (Jews).
Eidelmania 1 year ago
@Eidelmania hahaha
myautomobilefunk 1 year ago
Thanks for putting this up, I've been showing it to my computer class and they enjoy it!
michelle050384 1 year ago
6:53 - I like how the little kid was reading and dad comes over with the Atari and just shoves the reading material off the table bahahaha way to go pops!
jdmikeg4 1 year ago
fucking business men, the scum of the earth. always fucking shit up
BigHashTouraj 1 year ago 2
so the Atari VCS was the Atari 2600?
rytsurai 1 year ago
The way the narrator pronounces Taito is disgusting in its ignorance.
KarlheinzSchelker 2 years ago 5
10:44 the thing that happens to so many great gaming companies
malitano 2 years ago
It's sad that Ralph H. Baer is hardly mentioned in this show,even though he created&patented the Video Game idea & even released the first successful games, Pong was released after his system, and Computer Space, the first commercially available arcade game, also isn't mentioned. Ralph's patent also covered the Computer Space type of game style also. I think it's terrible that Nolan Bushnell took one of Baer's ideas form his ping-pong game. Atari later stole Nintendo lock-codes and lost Tetris.
TearyEyesAnderson 2 years ago 6
uh...so many misconceptions...
first of all, baer did not invent the concept of computer games. william higinbothom created tennis for two on an oscilloscope in 1958, 8 years before baer even came along and scribbled down his idea. also, just the mere fact that someone patents something first is a weak argument for anything, because it doesn't mean that he's the inventor, but only the first one to secure rights for something. compare that to the companies that patented human genes
GameDocumentaries 2 years ago
also, what about baer did you miss? to my knowledge they covered everything important about him. there's not much more to say other than that the odyssey bombed because baer lacked what bushnell had aplenty: a fun concept for games.
why they didn't mention computer space is beyond me. still, your argument that baer's patent covered also space games lacks, because the game came out half a year before baer showcased his pong version. this also shows greatly that a patent doesn't mean anything
GameDocumentaries 2 years ago
Magnavox owned patents to their 'video' projection/Display and control games, in essence "Video Games" they took Intellivision and other companies to court also besides Atari. In 1985, Nintendo sued Magnavox and tried to invalidate Baer's patents by saying that the first video game was William Higinbotham's Tennis For Two game built in 1958. The court ruled that this game did not use video signals&could not qualify as a video game. As a result, Nintendo lost the suit&continued paying royalties.
TearyEyesAnderson 2 years ago
not really an important issue for this documentary. it's about how the video game market came into existence and how it developed, not about legal battles. those have been taking place ever since the first companies formed. there were so many, you could make a whole documentary solely centering around that issue. in fact, the tetris documentary i uploaded is dedicated to those legal fights just concerning this 1 game. there's no way a 45min documentary could sidetrack as much as you want it to.
GameDocumentaries 2 years ago
still, thanks for that info. i hadn't known about this yet. it's a perfect example why fighting over complex technical issues in court is usually doomed to fail
GameDocumentaries 2 years ago
i don't know what you mean by lock codes and also the tetris reference makes little sense here since it took place at a time after the computer game business had long been established.
just to make it more clear: atari lost tetris, just like many other companies, because no one knew who owned the rights to license the game for the world market. nintendo was the only one to track down the source and to secure the rights for them.
GameDocumentaries 2 years ago
Atari was still bending the laws, such as dumping revenue in the desert, not checking patents, and when they created Tengen they went to the United States Copyright Office, and illegally got key codes for Nintendo's NES and used them in their unlicensed games after pulling out from Nintendo. Without those codes Atari wouldn't have been able to make their Tetris for NES and eventually lost both court cases. Over the right to release Tetris on the NES and the falsification of records.
TearyEyesAnderson 2 years ago
i think you're a little harsh and also unfair. i guess you're american. the usa is the only western country i know that has software patents - one of the worst abuses of the patent system ever.
when bushnell adapted baer's concept, software patents hadn't been established yet, so he did nothing wrong. also, he did not just copy the game. he copied the design, but invented his own, far superior concept. two freely movable pixels hardly qualify for a game, while pong had a clear gaming concept
GameDocumentaries 2 years ago 11
if anything it's unfair that they left out higinbotham and made it look like baer was the grandfather of all computer games - a mistake that seems to mislead many people, as you clearly proved.
funny thought: what do you think about baer now? higinbotham invented a pong-like game almost a decade before baer came along, yet baer patented the idea and even became rich when atari had to pay license fees to him. poor old baer doesn't look so poor now, does he?
GameDocumentaries 2 years ago 9
Electronic games with any type screen the 1947 "Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device" seems 2be the fist with a screen of it's own, then Claude Shannon's 1950 Computer Chess,& Alexander S. Douglas' 1952 XOX game,before Tennis for Two, a sideview videogame. Baer patent the video display/projection&control box, for Videogames, hence the word 'video'. Like a LAZER or other devise, if Bushnell had tried to patent 'Computer Space' he would have found Baer already had a patent for that type of device.
TearyEyesAnderson 2 years ago
@GameDocumentaries, I also notice no mention of Spacewar! which was a true computer game in 1962 running on DEC PDP-1 computers, and not long after ported to any computer with a video display. But in documentaries, like all art, accuracy sometimes takes a back seat to a good story arc. People can find out the true story, with it's not-so-simple beginnings by doing their own research on the web.
dowekeller 1 year ago
when i heard people sa e.t was that bad its caused the vido game crash of 83 i wlys thought it was just a joke... i even thought the crash was an exageratin=/
wow! lol
johnny654949 2 years ago
That ET game at the end really made me chuckle
AccordionManiac 2 years ago
I have an atari :)
eatcomics 2 years ago