What is the "True Origin" of Video Games?

This is a weird one to answer.

Depending upon who you ask, there’s many different answers to the question “What is the origin of video games?” When you look up the definition of “video game”, you find out that it is “a game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a television screen or other display screen”. With that definition, we can rule some things out.

Let me explain.

According to The National Museum of Play, the origin of video games dates all the way back to 1940 (wow that’s so old). This machine was created by Edward U. Condon and was called the Nimatron. The Nimatron was a computer that played a game called Nim. The computer apparently won 90% of all games it played. The game was played on the Nimatron with lightbanks. The light would turn off when a button was pressed, and this would represent the “objects” in the game of Nim. Because it uses lights and not a screen, we can assume it’s not a “video game” by the exact definition, so now we move on.

The first game with a true display screen would not be until 1958 when William Higinbotham created Tennis for Two. It was a game similar to Pong (which would not be created until the 1970s), where a dot bounced between two sides. Now, many consider this the first video game, since it was an electronic game displayed on a screen, but does the oscilloscope hooked up to an analog computer count? If the answer is no, then can continue.

The first true computer game came from MIT students that developed Spacewar! in 1962. The first home console, the Magnavox Odyssey was patented in 1968 and released in 1972. Depending on what you define as a “video game”, with this information, I’m sure you can figure for yourself which is the first video game. (My money’s on Spacewar!.)