OneUpWithNichole – Week 2 Blog Post

From Blips to Boss Battles: How We Got Here

Okay, so confession: I always thought video games just existed. Like, boom – someone made Pong, then came Mario, and the rest is history. But this week, digging through the weird, wild timeline of early gaming kind of blew my mind.

Before Consoles, There Were Carnival Games?!

Back in the 1960s and 70s, games weren’t just played – they were engineered by total tech nerds (and I say that with love). Imagine a world where a mechanical duck that could fake-digest food or a strength tester with blinking lights was the cutting edge of “fun.” That’s what arcade machines evolved from – literal carnival machines (Williams, 2017).

When arcade culture exploded in the late 70s and early 80s, it wasn’t just flashy lights and high scores. Games like Missile Command and Space Invaders gave players a break from Cold War stress while draining their quarters with strategic difficulty spikes. Whether they meant to or not, these developers gamified anxiety – and people were hooked (Williams, 2017).

Meanwhile… PC Games Were Getting Deep

While consoles were focused on pixels and mascots, home computers were telling stories. Like, actual stories. Interactive fiction games such as Zork and Adventure didn’t need graphics – just your imagination and a command line. It was minimal, brilliant, and weirdly poetic (Williams, 2017).

Simulation games followed right behind. Flight Simulator, Rogue, Ultima – they weren’t just about play, they were about world-building and system thinking. And yeah, this was the seed that grew into games like The Sims, Skyrim, or Age of Empires (Williams, 2017).

The 80s: Where Genres Took Shape

If arcades built excitement, and home consoles brought the action into living rooms, then PCs raised a new kind of gamer. CRPGs (computer role-playing games) like Wizardry and Ultima turned game time into an investment strategy, inventory management, and storytelling. By the late 80s, games like SimCity and Civilization were making players gods and mayors in digital worlds, and suddenly you weren’t just playing – you were in charge (Williams, 2017).

The tech didn’t stop either. Graphic interfaces, mouse controls, early RTS titles (Dune II, anyone?) – they made games smarter, faster, and more immersive. All of this laid the groundwork for basically every genre we know today (Williams, 2017).

From Typing Commands to Clicking Worlds

Looking back, I can see how the language of games evolved right alongside the tech. Early games used typed commands – “go north,” “pick up key” – and it felt like you were having a conversation with the machine. Later, it was all about the joystick, the D-pad, and eventually the mouse. By the time I was playing Crash Bandicoot, language had shifted to icons, buttons, and reflexes. Now, games talk back through voice acting, cutscenes, and choice-driven dialogue. It’s wild to think that every evolution in how we play also changed how we speak to games – and how they speak to us.

My Place in the Timeline

Somewhere between Pac-Man and Sonic, I was born in 1987, right as these shifts were happening. I missed the heyday of arcades, but my mom didn’t – she loved them, so she kept us around them for as long as she could. Our first system was an Atari – even though by then, Ataris were already old, but we were very young. The very first game I beat? Mario, of course! Then came that darn Crash Bandicoot. I played that game for years – never did beat it.

But I remember those days. You had to blow into cartridges because your uncle said, “This is how,” and we did – we all did. Then came that dreaded dial-up – ugh! I remember getting my own computer in my bedroom; I was probably 11 at the time. And I swear, every hour it was, “Get off the computer, we need to use the phone!”

Well, I didn’t know it then, but my obsession with figuring out that computer – all the games on it, the different applications, how to download and burn music – was built on decades of innovation that started way before my time. And here I thought it was all new and that I was going to be ahead of my time!

Looking Back to Move Forward

Now, learning all this? I see the threads that connect all those early genres to the games we play now. From 8-bit dungeons to open-world epics, none of it just happened. It was built – line by line, pixel by pixel – by people who believed computers weren’t just for spreadsheets (Williams, 2017).

References

Williams, A. (2017). History of digital games.