HUTSPIEL [1955]

It's important to remark that though I'm starting here, HUTSPIEL [1955] (one of those video games that only survives as documentation) is not even the first computerized wargame. Earlier attempts more closely resembled the classic "umpire" model of wargaming, ala Reisswitz's Kriegspiel [1824], where you give your instructions and communications to the umpire who is …

Magnavox Odyssey [1971] + Pong [1972]

The most famous Magnavox Odyssey game is Table Tennis. It was the direct inspiration for Pong, and there is an infamous lawsuit decided in Magnavox's favor to that effect, which became famously the first of decades of copyright trolling putting up a hundreds-of-millions tollbooth on the mere concept of video games at home. If we …

Spacewar! [1962]

Spacewar is still the first video game. Not technically: the developers of Spacewar were already aware of a playable Tic Tac Toe implementation on the very computer they were working on, which by that point was already a more-than-decade-long tradition for computers, not to mention Tennis For Two [1958]. (For greater detail on this cascade …