When Computer Plays Games

Back in 80's we usually think of computer games being played in amusement arcades or on cheap home computers. But the first computer games were played on powerful mainframe computers in the late 1950s.

These computers were designed for serious tasks, such as data processing. But the technicians running them enjoyed the challenge of trying to make them do something more entertaining. The most notable of the early computer games was developed by Martin Graetz and others at the MIT, in the USA. The year was 1962, and the name of the game was Spacewar. Playing Spacewar quickly became a craze among the students, and people who wanted to do work on the computers often complained that they had been taken over by the games players.

In those days, computers were too expensive to be sold just for playing games, and it was not until the 1970s that computer games went on sale in shops and stores.