This is a little insight on games that all of you take for granted.

The early days.

Video games started out on a  little machine that used vector graphics. The game they ran back in 1962 was Space Wars. Sure this game is awful nowadays but that is the first "game" ever created. It never did go to the public it was only an experiment. 

Alas games would make it to the hands of zitty teenagers. Arcade games were born, but then in 1972 the Odyssey came in all its glory. The games were great at the time but again awful compared to today. What really brought video games to the mainstream was hits such as Asteroids, Pong, Space Invaders and back then that was pretty much it. Pong was also released to public to  play as a standalone system. What this game meant to the industry is a first, multiplayer. I believe no other game will have as much of impact besides maybe Everquest or WOW to games as far as multiplayer goes. As for Asteroids it was one of the first games to use the inventive track ball to move your ship or triangle. Space Invaders is one of those games that can make you want to cry. No matter how many aliens you kill they keep on comin. This is the first game to me to make you and your friends compete seriously for a high score.

The Atari, Intellivision, and Coleco Vision days.

Atari was the first real popular system to where you used cartridges to play. It had countless titles that were brilliantly made. My personal favorite is Pitfall even though it was as hard as nailing a nail with your hand. Lets not forget Adventure, the game that pretty much gave rise to  how we play any single player game. You beat the game and it lets you play on a harder difficulty, is that not what we do now when we play through a single player game, that is if we what the most out of the game. This game also introduces the first easter egg that showed a programmer's name through a wall. Gameplay was great on the system but graphics was Atari's downfall, but did not affect it's popularity very much.  

Intellivision saw things differently, they upped the graphics, that made Atari look like crap. Gameplay was not too great though to me and it seemed to rehash Atari games with nothing groundbreaking.

Coleco Vision system, by the people from Cabbage Patch Kids was a superior system to both but did not do well. It released many add-ons trying to get it to sell even getting an add-on to let you play Atari 2600 games. Finally it died from low sales.

Atari won this three way war even though it was the worst spec. wise,  this foreshadows the events to come with the next race to video game greatness, but let me get my feet wet and tell a tale of the Arcade spectrum and a little bit of the computer world.

During this time huge hits such as Donkey Kong, Galaxian, Tron, Star Wars, Galaga, Pac-Man, Q'bert and Mario Brothers were being released to the arcade market. Donkey Kong is a wildly popular game that introduced two of Nintendo's most important characters, Mario and Donkey Kong. The basic premise to the game was jumping barrels and reaching the end of the level by dodging random things to rescue the princess. Galaxian released by Namco was the first arcade game to use color graphics and it was much like Space Invaders. The huge difference is they came towards your ship. Tron was an insanely hard game with great graphics for the time. Star Wars used vector graphics and it was designed by lines that looked like Tie Fighters that you shot at. You even got to do the run down the Death Star. Galaga, my all-time favorite arcade game was like Galaxian except less, faster, and bigger enemies. Much more fast-paced than any other shooter so far to the arcades. Q'bert is one of quirkiest games ever made, you just have to play it to find out. Essentially you are trying to reach the top of the staircase to finish each level. Finally Mario Brothers which introduced to the world to Luigi. Flipping over animals and stomping them was how you got points. This is an awesome game on two players. 

Now on to the computers which had a huge role in video games. Apple computer was the computer to get if you were a gamer, although many other companies released computers for gaming, Apple was the best. One game in particular that stands out to me as one of the great RPGs of the day is the Ultima series. The game pretty much brought D&D to gaming. This is all I will dwell on computers till later.

NES and Master says it all

Nintendo had some good arcade releases and now saw their opportunity into the console war. Their first system the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES was a system for the masses. Some would argue that it had the greatest lineup of games ever. Games were very awesome including the likes of Mario 1,2, and 3, Metal Gear(  

The guide is not finished, if you read it I will update it and try to finish, if you liked it so far please vote yes and I will finish it later for those of you who want to read more of it. Thank you.