The Middle Ages

In 1973, 11 years after the production of SpaceWar! the classic Pong was was created. It was the first commercially available video game. Pong was first at home in markets, fun fairs and entertainment venues, the same enviroinment that would later spawn and host such games as Space Invaders.

But these games still had their limitations, for the most part, the game was single player, and involved basic assessts such as lives (typically 3) and high scores along with levels got expectidly got harder as you progressed. But one of the issues with gaming for this era was that they were for the most part single player games in which winning wasn't the aspect of the game, this was infact close to impossible, simply reaching the high score screen was the more mundane accomplishment of the games of this time.

Although the realm of multiplayer gaming was present it wasnt as popular as it is in nowadays with the likes of CoD, This was quite the case for almost 20 years (1977 to 1993 approximately) That is until the 1993 game Doom took the less popular multigaming market and gave it a much needed boost. Doom gave the players the experience to fight each other in the same game world as several PC's could be hooked up to one another, giving the gamer even more intercation than the usual grab the joystick and kill the aliens style experience that Spacewar! and Space Invaders had left them with.

In combination with what had occured 2 decades previously, the release of The Oddyssey, the first comercial video game console, had opened up a new market and gave gamers a chance of something never really experienced before.This being the ability to play with freinds in multiplayer games on a home console. Because of all this the end of this age compared to the begginning showed many more qualities that could lead the world of gaming into new areas and limitations with players being able to battle multiple people at once. Gaming had been revolutionised for more fun and recreational purposes instead of the competitive highscore screen of it predecesors, not to say that these changes stopped games from being competitive of course.

Moving swiftly onwards to my personal gaming history,the next chapter in my gaming history would move me onto when i got my hands first on a sega megradrive, with lineups such as golden axe and streets of rage dominating my childhood. I remember quite vividly my time playing streets of rage as me and my brother wasted most of our early years sprawled out infront of the television button bashing thugs to a bloody pulp, completing it again and again untill we could pretty much do it blindfold (which for a 9 year old is a damn good acievement!) And in answer to the question what made me keep playing all this time, i think i can answer this by keeping on topic and discussing street of rage 2! Another early game i have more than an imaginable memory about, which as you can guess, yeah, had me and my brother out infront of that television again warping our fragile little minds with uneccessary violence and button bashing. I think one of the reasons i kept playing was for this factor of sequels and how if you get addicted to a game then the release of a title with the number 2 in it becomes something that keeps you coming back for more, but enough of this for now

Toodles for now people