Pong was a hugely successful early arcade video game released by Atari in 1972. It featured simple two-dimensional graphics where players controlled movable lines that bounced a square back and forth. This helped popularize home video game systems like the Magnavox Odyssey and Atari home Pong games. While crude by today's standards, Pong demonstrated gaming could be commercially viable and helped launch the multi-billion dollar industry.

2. Pong was a great hit when it
came out. Move your cursor to
get the slides to bounce back
the moving square -- it will
speed up as you progress.
That same year, Magnavox offered
the first home video game system.
Dubbed the Odyssey, it did not
even have a microprocessor! The
core of the system was a board
with about four-dozen transistors
and diodes. The Odyssey was very
(Read this paragraph first)Video games have been limited -- it could only produce very
around since the early 1970s. The first commercial simple graphics, and required that
arcade video game, Computer Space by Nutting custom plastic overlays be taped
Associates, was introduced in 1971. In 1972, Atari over the television screen. In 1975,
introduced Pong to the arcades. An interesting item Atari introduced a home version of
to note is that Atari was formed by Nolan Bushnell, its popular arcade game, Pong.
the man who developed Computer Space. He left The original home version of Pong
Nutting Associates to found Atari, which then was sold exclusively through Sears,
produced Pong, the first truly successful and even carried the Sears logo.
commercial arcade video game Pong was a phenomenal success,
opening the door to the future of
home video games.
Although the Fairchild Channel F,
released in 1976, was the first true
removable game system, Atari
once again had the first such
system to be a commercial
success. Introduced in 1977 as the
Atari Video Computer System
(VCS), the 2600 used removable
cartridges, allowing a multitude of
games to be played using the same
hardware.
The hardware in the 2600 was

3. Playing video games demands an interactive involvement of the players. As a player, you
start identifying with some character in the game and act for it. This excited state of mind
has a positive effect on the player. It is also said that playing video games is surely better
than watching television as video games are interactive.
Playing video games involves problem solving, planning, estimation and analysis of the
moves or actions of both you and your opponent. This affects the player positively by
developing in him/her problem-solving skills, analytical and estimation skills and quick
decision-making.
In playing video games, you need to manage your resources such as the time, your armor
or your people. This is a virtual activity but it evolves abilities of resource management
and testing. You learn to recognize the types of situations and react to them with
determination. You learn to map the virtual world scenarios to those in the real world.

4. Video games have always been infamous for their
anti-social aspect and the violence that is shown in
them. They have been seen as negatively affecting
the players in terms of lack of social skills,
inefficiency, obesity and laziness. We lack an
unbiased view, thus not being able to experience the
positive effects of video games. The negativities
brought in by video games are due to the unrestricted
duration for which they are played. Video games are
popular among the children and the youngsters of
America. If there is no limit to the time for which a
child is allowed to play a video game or no
supervision on the way in which the game is played,
the not-so-positive effects of video games will start
showing.
Health problems;
If you spend all of your free time playing video
games and skip meals or lose sleep because of
your excessive game play, a video game
addiction can negatively impact your health. The
Mayo Clinic notes that children who spend more
than two hours a day in front of a television or
video games in lieu of participating in physical
activity may suffer from childhood obesity. In
addition, the University of Texas at Dallas notes
that the addiction can lead to such medical
issues as backaches, headaches, eyestrain and
carpal tunnel syndrome--pain and numbness that
you may feel in your wrists, hands, shoulders
and elbows.

5. • The Wii is a home video game
console released by Nintendo
on November 19, 2006. As a
seventh-generation console,
the Wii competes with
Microsoft's Xbox 360 and
Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo
states that its console targets a
broader demographic than that
of the two others. As of the first
quarter of 2012, the Wii leads
the generation over the
PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in
worldwide sales, and in
December 2009, the console
broke the record for best-selling
console in a single month in the
United States.

6. Today's U.S. military recruits enjoy an
arsenal of simulators and video
games that sharpen their fighting
skills and may even protect them from
the mental stresses of combat. But
experts caution that virtual reality
could also help mask the reality of
war.
That has not stopped the military from
embracing video games to recruit and
train a young generation of gamers
who typically play commercial games
such as "Modern Warfare 2," which
passed $1 billion in sales in January.

7. There is a huge hype surrounding the launch of every new game system - Game Cube, Xbox, and Sony PlayStation 2 being just few of the latest.
Affecting children age 4 all the way to 45 year-old adults, these video games have called for concern in our society regarding issues such as
addiction, depression, and even aggression related to the playing of video games. A recent study of children in their early teens found that almost
a third played video games daily, and that 7% played for at least 30 hours a week. What is more, some of these games being played like Mortal
Combat, Marvel Vs. Capcom, and Doom are very interactive in the violence of slaughtering the opponent. The video game industries even put
signs like "Real-life violence" and "Violence level - not recommended for children under age of 12" on their box covers, arcade fronts, and even
on the game CDs themselves.
In the modern popular game Goldeneye 007 bad guys no longer disappear in a cloud of smoke when killed. Instead they perform an elaborate
maneuver when killed. For example, those shot in the neck fall to their knees and then face while clutching at their throats. Other games such as
Unreal Tournament and Half-Life are gorier. In these games when characters get shot a large spray of blood covers the walls and floor near the
character, and on the occasions when explosives are used, the characters burst into small but recognizable body parts. In spite of the violence,
the violent video games are also the more popular games on the market. When video games first came out, indeed they were addictive...
however, there seems to be a strong correlation now between the violent nature of games these days and the aggressive tendencies in game
players.

8. • The portrayal of women in video games has often
been the subject of both academic studies and
controversy. Two recurring themes are the level of
independence of female characters from their male
counterparts, and their objectification and
sexualization.
• Early portrayals presented women in subsidiary roles,
dependent of a male protagonist. More modern video
games have evolved to include women in active and
self-reliant attitudes, but in some cases have also
increased the level of physical attractiveness catering
to the audience of male players. Controversy centers
on the same lines of the portrayal of women in
general media including sexism, the girl treated as an
archetype, and violence towards women. The latter
has been perceived as being aggravated by the
interactivity inherent to the media.

9. It was a heartbreaking end to a
remarkable three-week search for a
teen who had run away over an
Xbox.
On the ground, hundreds of police
and volunteers trudged through
muddy fields outside Barrie, while in
cyberspace police officers probed
the virtual world of online gaming.
Morning, all hope of finding 15-year-
old Brandon Crisp alive was lost
when deer hunters found the body
of a teen in a heavily wooded area.
Police said the body, which appears
to be Brandon, was found about two
kilometres from where the boy's
abandoned bicycle was found two
weeks earlier.