How old is the oldest computer game?

The oldest computer game is generally considered to be "Tennis for Two", created in 1958 by William Higinbotham, an American physicist. It was a simple tennis simulation game displayed on an oscilloscope, and it allowed two players to control paddles and hit a ball back and forth.

However, there are several other early games that also contributed to the development of computer gaming. Here's a brief timeline of the oldest computer games:

1. Tennis for Two (1958)

• Creator: William Higinbotham
• Platform: Oscilloscope
• Description: It was a two-player tennis game displayed on an oscilloscope screen. While it wasn’t a computer game in the modern sense, it used electronics to simulate the game of tennis.

2. Spacewar! (1962)

• Creator: Steve Russell and others at MIT
• Platform: PDP-1 (mainframe computer)
• Description: One of the first widely recognized interactive computer games. It featured two spaceships shooting at each other while navigating the gravitational field of a star. Spacewar! became a benchmark for early video games and was one of the first games to spread to multiple computers.

3. The Origin of "Computer Games"

• Early computer games were often experimental programs created by researchers or enthusiasts, rather than commercial products. Many of these were simple, text-based games or used rudimentary graphics.

4. The First Commercial Video Game:

While Tennis for Two and Spacewar! were early pioneers in interactive entertainment, the first commercially successful computer-based game was "Pong", created by Nolan Bushnell in 1972. Pong was a simplified version of Tennis for Two and became the first widely popular arcade game, sparking the modern video game industry.

Summary:

• The oldest computer game could be Tennis for Two from 1958 (although it was on an oscilloscope and not on a computer as we think of them today).
• Spacewar! from 1962 is often cited as the first interactive computer game, created for the PDP-1 mainframe.
• Pong (1972) was the first commercially successful video game, leading to the birth of the video game industry.

Fun Fact:

Though Tennis for Two is widely acknowledged as the oldest computer game, some researchers also consider early military simulations or graphical experiments in universities from the 1950s to be precursors to modern gaming. However, these were not games in the sense we recognize today, but rather educational or experimental programs.