Crash Course Games

The First Home Consoles (1x5)

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So last week Andre talked about Atari’s role in the rise of the video game industry, but Atari wasn’t the only major player in the 1970s. So we’re going to step back a few years and first talk about Ralph Baer who designed the first video game console - the Magnavox Odyssey. The Odyssey would go on to inspire the industry including of course Atari but also Mattel and many others. This was the start of the first console wars and with it we see huge improvements in graphics, gameplay, and of course better storytelling. But we’ll also see a flooding of the market which will have a cost, but we’ll get to that next week.