In Memoriam: Ralph Baer (1922-2014), co-inventor of TV video games and the home video game console Our dear Ralph. What a man. 92 years old. A life full of technology, audacity, and gumption (with equal measures wise prudence). He died on December 6, 2014 at his home in Manchester, New Hampshire. May he rest in […]
Back in January, I had the wonderful opportunity to conduct an extensive telephone interview with the inventor of home video games, Ralph Baer (I’ll be writing more on him soon, so stay tuned). That epic interview, in a much shorter form, appears in the March 2007 edition of Game Developer magazine, which is available on […]
Two days ago, I flew up to New Hampshire to visit Ralph H. Baer, the Father of Video Games, at his home in Manchester. During my brief stay, Baer was a gracious host and a gentleman to the highest degree. We discussed life, philosophy, WWII, video games, and more. Best of all, he showed me […]
Benj here reporting from my secret base-like hotel room in rainy San Francisco, CA. My grueling 14 hours of travel time today (from the first airport to the hotel) paid off with an unusual and fortuitous coincidence. During my five hour connecting flight from Chicago to SFO, I sat next to none other than the […]
Atari founders circa 1972-73 (from left to right):Ted Dabney, Nolan Bushnell, Larry Emmons, and Allan Alcorn [ Atari Pong turns 50 years old today, and I thought it might be fun to revisit an article I wrote about the game’s creation for Edge Magazine (Issue 248) back in 2012. Since the web version of that […]
The world’s first video game tournament took place at Stanford on October 19, 1972, 45 years ago this week. The Living Computer Museum in Seattle is hosting an event on Thursday to commemorate this anniversary, and in conjunction, they commissioned me to write this article about the history of Spacewar and its influences. — It […]
Note: this article was originally published on 1UP.com on May 15, 2007 under the title “Videogames Turn Forty.” (Original URL: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3159462). Since 1UP is no longer with us, I decided to republish the article here for historical reference. I have learned quite a bit about video game history in the decade since this was originally […]
Today’s the big day. I just launched a Patreon Campaign with the aim of supporting my history work. Click here to become a Patron of Benj Edwards and VC&G. Also, I am doing a livestream Q&A at 1:30 Eastern today. Here’s some of the info from the Patreon page repeated below for future reference.
[ Earlier this year, I asked readers what they wanted to see on VC&G’s tenth anniversary. Most people said “behind the scenes coverage,” but I wasn’t sure how to approach that. So I asked my longtime editing partner Harry McCracken to interview me in the hopes that I might accidentally say something interesting about the […]
“We’ve got a lot of space here, Fred, and I’m tired.” [stamps 7 times] “Fixed.” Forty years ago, Magnavox lifted the veil on the world’s first commercial video game console, the Odyssey. Designed to work with a home TV set, the Odyssey blazed a trail that every game console follows today. While the Odyssey had […]
