Video games are a fascinating window into history, allowing players to explore historic eras and immerse themselves in a time period. Historians and gamers often work together to create historical events in gaming that educate and entertain. While no game can ever be perfectly accurate, by working with developers and leveraging gaming's unique features, historians can help correct misconceptions, highlight insights, and provide relevant context. The earliest examples of video gaming began in the 1950s and 1960s when computer scientists started designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframe computers. The most famous early example is Spacewar!, developed by MIT student hobbyists in 1962. It was the first multi-player video game and was played on a large, black and white monitor. Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell saw the potential for arcade and home console video games after seeing a demonstration of Magnavox Odyssey's table tennis game Pong in 1972. He went on to create his own coin-operated games, including Computer Space and a home console version of Pong called Atari 2600 in 1975, which was the first successful home console game. Pong and other arcade video game clones helped to fuel the console industry's rapid growth. Today, this legacy continues with a plethora of fun online games that have expanded the gaming experience, providing endless entertainment for players around the world. By 1983, several factors, including a market saturated with poor quality third-party games and a lack of consumer confidence in industry leader Atari due to the underperformance of some high-profile titles, led to what is known as the "Crash of '83". Many North American video game companies went bankrupt, despite the fact that consumers still purchased consoles and game cartridges. During this same period, advances in microprocessor technology enabled real-time 3D polygonal graphic rendering on gaming consoles and PCs through graphics cards. Optical media via CD-ROM also became popular, enabling the storage of massive amounts of data on disk and the creation of long, complex games that would not fit on cartridges. Nintendo, which had begun as a playing card manufacturer in 1889, took advantage of these advancements by releasing the NES with its breakout hit Super Mario Bros. This and other Nintendo games introduced long-lasting franchises, such as Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Street Fighter (later merged with Capcom to form Square). Microsoft entered the console hardware business in 2001 with its Xbox line, fearing that Sony's Playstation positioned as both a console and entertainment system would displace personal computers as the primary gaming platform. The PlayStation sold well and was followed by the PlayStation 2 in 2005 and the PlayStation 3 in 2006. With a more advanced system, the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 were the first gaming consoles to support online multiplayer gameplay. A generation later, the PlayStation 4 ushered in an era of next-generation high-definition gaming. In the process, it ousted Sega from its position atop the console industry and brought Microsoft into direct competition with Nintendo and Sony for market share.
