It feels very much like a thoroughly modern pastime, but at this point video games have been around for something in the vicinity of half a century. Can you believe that? The form of entertainment that's still looked down on by old fuddy-duddies who can't get their heads around Plants Vs Zombies, let alone Call Of Duty, is probably older than a lot of those conservative thinkers who so decry them. It's also weird to think that us young whipper snappers think we're on the cutting edge with our consoles and online play, even though they've been around since the fifties. Retro's still cool though, right? In those fifty or so years since the very first title was created and patented as such, video games have changed a heck of a lot. It's a form of evolution faster than Darwin could ever have predicted, and with a fair amount of blood, sweat, and homophobic slurs flung over text chats gone into it. In the space of a single generation (in human terms) we've raced through eight generations of home consoles, from the barely-legible 8-bit titles of yore to the dazzlingly high-definition multi-million dollar productions of today. And that's before you consider the arcades which dominated things for years beforehand. When you step back and look at it, that development is even more amazing. From a tiny acorn a dominant, highly profitable and technologically advanced form of entertainment has grown up right before our very eyes. We decided to take a look at some of the biggest moments in that development, the milestones which point to the twenty most important moments in video game history how we got to where we are today, and what that might say about their future.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
