Digital Gaming
About this episode
This episode discusses the evolution of digital gaming, focusing on major companies and historical gaming systems.
This week we talk about Sony, Nintendo, and the Playstation. We also discuss Grand Theft Auto, the 3DO, and digital dark ages. Recommended Book: 3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years by John Scalzi Transcript The earliest video game consoles that were made to be used in the home, as opposed to being set up in an arcade, were hardwired like their arcade kin. That means rather than being able to play a bunch of different games, they were basically just single-game boxes: you would buy a machine that allowed you to play Pong, for instance, and if you wanted to play another game, even by the same maker, Atari, you would have to buy another whole console with its own screen, controls, etc, to do so. That was the state of the art in the early to mid 1970s. By the late-70s, the concept of swappable games became reality with the introduction of what are called ROM cartridges. ROM stands for read-only memory and is a type of storage common in computers and other devices, which allows whatever you store on it to persist, which is a contrast to RAM, which is the type of memory that determines how much you can do on a device at any given moment, and which disappears when the device is turned off. So…
Topics covered
- digital gaming
- video game history
- console evolution
- ROM cartridges
- gaming industry
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