This is the ninth in a series of mini-articles on the early history of video games. The game featured here will not receive a review score, and thus will not appear on the Tier List.
Here we go back to a more historical style of post. Neither of these games are playable, but both are historically very important for different reasons, hence why they get their own article.
The "Brown Box"
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| Image from the National Museum of American History. |
Release Date: 1967; technically an unreleased prototype
Platform: Dedicated Console
Genre: Various
Developer(s): Ralph H. Baer
Publisher(s): Sanders Associates
[Ed. I've now done a more thorough overview of the Black Box as part of my Magnavox Odyssey console overview article, which you can read here.]
It might seem a bit odd to the casual observer to cover something that's a prototype; an experiment of sorts. But this little experiment, and its creator, had a massive impact on the formation of the commercialisation of video games.
The Brown Box was developed by Ralph H. Baer, an engineer and inventor born in Germany, migrating to the USA in 1938 prior to the outbreak of World War II due to his family's Jewish background. He ended up studying electronics, and after the conclusion of WWII (where he was drafted into the US Army in military intelligence), he worked as an engineer in various fields before landing at Sanders Associates, a defense contractor, in 1956. It's during his time with Sanders that Baer conceived and created the Brown Box, out of a growing interest in the idea of connecting a device to a TV screen to play games. This was the seventh iteration of the device. It was named the Brown Box due the wood grain vinyl applied to it, apparently to "make the prototype look more attractive to potential investors." [arcade-history.com]
According to arcade-history.com, the device had six built-in games available, a light-gun game, ping-pong, tennis, volleyball, handball and a "chase" game. The light-gun (which looked an awful lot like a real gun) and ping-pong games are of the most interest, as light guns would become a console and arcade staple for many years, and the ping-pong game had influence on Atari's Pong.
What's most important to talk about with the Brown Box is that Baer wanted to manufacture it into an actual commercial product. If it was just an experiment, I highly doubt we'd be talking about it outside of being a historical oddity akin to Relay Moe. Baer found a buyer in Magnavox, who Sanders licensed the device to to make a commercial version of it. The result of this licensing was the Magnavox Odyssey, released in November 1972 as the first home video game console. Based on the Brown Box, it featured many of the same games and functions of the Brown Box, but also expanded the horizons of the Brown Box by introducing many different games and including physical game pieces to use along with the TV part of the game. In a sense, the Odyssey was a hybrid TV/board game device. But more on that when I get around to reviewing the Odyssey proper.
In my eyes, it's pretty clear that the Brown Box makes Ralph Baer the father of console gaming. He's sometimes referred to as the father of video games in general, but there's others who could argue for that title also. Steve Russell and the other creators of Spacewar!? Nolan Bushnell for creating the first arcade game, Computer Space? Or even John Kemeny's invention of the BASIC programming language, on which most of the first home computer games were built? History is not always so simple. But Baer's contribution cannot be denied, and he most certainly invented the home console.
Now, onto the next game...
Computer Quiz
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| Ahh, so this is where Computer Space gets its "interesting" marketing style from... |
Release Date: 1967
Platform: Arcade
Genre: Trivia
Developer(s): Nutting Associates, Inc.
Publisher(s): Nutting Associates, Inc.
Okay, first thing to deal with is the listing of this as an arcade game. The arcade existed long before Computer Space rolled around, but they were mostly filled with pinball machines and electromechanical games that featured some 'video elements', per se, such as large projector screens with moving images, but they weren't actual video games in the sense we understand them as being played on a monitor or TV screen. This is the space in which Computer Quiz (also released under the alternate name I.Q. Computer) resides. An arcade game, but not a video game.
Yes, this game has a screen, used to display the questions and multiple-choice answers, so in some sense one could argue it to be a video game. But most other elements are displayed using more traditional electro-mechanical elements, and there is a second screen for category selection which complicates things even more. The fact that not every aspect of the game appears on the screen disqualifies it from being a proper arcade video game. It's more of a transitional piece.
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| Here's a close-up of the actual machine. |
That being said, why am I even bringing this thing up? Well, in actual fact, it's more about who made it rather than the game itself, as the company that developed it, Nutting Associates, and the two brothers that worked on this game, Bill and Dave Nutting, have left quite a legacy in gaming, particularly in the arcade.
Computer Quiz was quite a strong seller, due to being able to get around the gambling stigma associated with arcades at the time by being viewed as more of an educational device. Across both the Computer Quiz and I.Q. Computer iterations, it sold almost 8000 units - a seriously impressive number at the time. Nutting Associates produced a couple more games in the late 60s, including a two-player version of Computer Quiz and a sports-themed trivia game, Sports World. Nutting Associates had become quite well-known in this trivia game sphere by the end of the decade.
Things changed for Nutting Associates when, in 1971, a young, budding entrepreneur came to them with a game he wanted to sell. It was unlike anything the company had produced before, and evidently they saw potential in the young man and his game, and agreed to manufacture it for him. Of course, I'm talking about Nolan Bushnell and Computer Space, the first true arcade video game. Computer Space was named such in reference to Computer Quiz. Computer Space didn't sell all that well, with 1500 units sold and minimal profit, and so Bushnell and Nutting parted ways. I suspect Nutting Associates may have regretted that decision, considering how Bushnell's next project turned out.
Nutting Associates continued to be involved in arcade games until 1976, with their last project being Ricochet, a licensed clone of TV Pinball by Exidy. Afterwards the company was sold to William "Si" Redd, and absorbed into video poker company Sircoma. But the story of Nutting Associates doesn't really end there, as Bill's brother, Dave Nutting, forged his own path apart from the family venture. He formed Milwaukee Coin Industries, Inc. in 1971 as an electromechanical game manufacturer, and later the creatively-named Dave Nutting Associates after a falling out with MCI.
Dave Nutting's biggest contribution to video games is most likely his introduction of microprocessor technology into arcade game development. Microprocessors opened the floodgates of possibility for arcade game development. Prior to their integration, arcade games were developed using discrete components, commonly known as transistor-to-transistor logic (TTL.) This tech was very limited in what it could accomplish, and most games were primitive in both gameplay and graphics. Microprocessors were much simpler to program, and also allowed greater scope and complexity in game design, as well as more complex and animated graphics.
He demoed the technology to Bally-Midway, who subsequently commissioned him to produce an arcade game with the tech, an adaptation of Taito's Western Gun, which would be released in 1975 as Gun Fight - the first arcade game to use a microprocessor. Dave Nutting Associates effectively became a subsidiary of Bally-Midway from that point onward, developing many of their classic arcade games of the mid-late 70s, most notably Sea Wolf, and also developing their second-generation home console, the Bally Professional Arcade (later known as the Astrocade.) Dave Nutting Associates closed their doors in 1984, I suspect as a result of the video game crash of 1983, with Dave Nutting himself completely quitting video games afterwards. Nutting would pass away in 2020, leaving a substantial legacy in video games that probably doesn't receive the recognition it deserves. He changed the way arcade games were developed completely.
That pretty well sums up these two games (well, technically one is a console) and their developers. While I can't play either games, this post was more about the people who made them, as they are part of the much greater history of video games, and their legacies are significant ones. Look at it like another couple of pieces of the puzzle of video game history being put in place.
Next post I'll get back into playing some games. I might start taking them one at a time from now on, as the games are starting to get more involved and complex. It also might be easier for me to get posts out more consistently focusing on one game per post. Civil War is the next game on my list anyway, and that's quite a hefty game for the standards of the time, as far as I'm aware.
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