The History Of Gaming Recapped In Four Minutes

In half the time it takes to nuke a baked potato, this videogame history lesson might just learn ya somethin’ useful.

Created by a group of German game design students, the clip is a stark, simple jaunt through the last three decades of console gaming. Argue the semantics of the word, but the line-up presented here, even without narrative support, offers a pretty solid evolutionary line from the earliest days of electronic entertainment to our modern Sony and Microsoft consoles.

As a pedantic fellow Escapist newsie argued, the video does fail to include a few minor consoles (the Atari Jaguar, for instance), but the goal here is not to document every single gaming system ever spewed onto the retail space. If it were, this video would be six hours long, and you’d all fall asleep somewhere between the Tandy TRS-80 and the Commodore Vic-20.

Instead, this video documents the strong branches of the evolutionary tree of gaming. Those branches and product lines which have directly contributed to the creation of later systems, and eventually, the games we enjoy today. Those offshoots that went nowhere and inevitably faded into history would merely muck up what is otherwise a simple, clean presentation.

If I do have one qualm however — or possibly, a concept for a sequel video — it’s the lack of any handheld game coverage. Granted, handheld tech isn’t quite as exciting as the latest, greatest console tech, but the weird, wonderful handhelds of the past two decades make for much more interesting subject matter, if for no other reason than the portable space seemingly gives console developers far more freedom to implement wacky design concepts.

Plus, it would give me another chance to publicly mourn the fate of the dearly departed Neo Geo Pocket.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For I’m too busy playing SNK Gals’ Fighters and Shermie is a total jerk.”