THE VIDEO SHELF · history of video games
The First Video Game
An hour-long, carefully sourced video essay from Ahoy asking what counts as a video game and which one was truly first. It examines Tennis for Two, Spacewar, Pong, the Brown Box and a 1947 CRT device.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN recommends it as the thorough, well-researched answer to the first video game question.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Ahoy
- Topic
- history of video games
- Format
- documentary
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 4
- HN mentions in dataset
- 5
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2020–2026
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Related: A great video documentary on The First Video Game, by one of the best YouTube producers in this field: [VIDEO]
icelancer on Hacker News · 2021-11
In The Magnavox Odyssey was the first commercial home video game consoleThis indirectly reminds me of this youtube video: [VIDEO] It's a long one, but it tries to answer when the first video game was made. Most of it, though, is trying to figure out what it means to be a video game in the first …
banana_giraffe on Hacker News · 2020-10
In EXoDOS: Collecting every game developed for DOS from original mediaVideo games are like compilers, or computers themselves - there isn't really a first one. Far enough back, there are things which are clearly not video games; recently enough, there are things which clearly are video games, and in between, there is a parade of …
twic on Hacker News · 2023-02
In C Port of Ken Thompson's Space Travel
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.