Want to know what happened when? Did Sega appear before Atari? Did the Oric 1 appear before the Atom? Get your history right in a quick easy to view guide right here and find out when the defining moments in video game history occured.

Pre 1960

1889

Nintendo Koppai is founded, it later became Nintendo Playing card company

1940

Sega is technically founded known at the time as 'Standard games'

1948

Thomas T Goldsmith has a US Patent granted Entitled "Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device", the patent described a game involving aiming missiles at a target, and was inspired by the radar displays used in World War II. Some consider that this may be the worlds first ever 'video game'.

1951

The Nimrod was the first digital computer exclusively designed to play a game, though its true intention was to illustrate the principles of the (then novel) digital computer for the public

1952

Standard Games (Sega) becomes registered as 'Service Games of Japan'

1958

William Higinbotham creates a game called Tennis for two on an Oscilloscope, considered by many as the first ever 'video game', although a court ruling in a case between Magnavox and Nintendo said that the game did not use video signals, therefore was not a video game

1960

1961

1962

Steve Russell creates 'Spacewar' one of the first digital computer games. Its legacy inspires some of the modern day games.

1963

Nintendo Playing card company became Nintendo Company Limited

1964

1965

Service Games of Japan (Service Games) merges with Rosen Enterprises to form Sega Enterprises

1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

'Computer Space' is considered the worlds first commercially sold coin operated slot machine and therefore the first commercially sold video game. The founders would later go on to found Atari

1972

Magnavox Odyssey is the worlds first video game console

Atari is founded.

Atari release Pong as a coin operated slot machine and later on home consoles, however Magnavox sued Atari on all fronts for copyright and intellectual property infringements because they say their system had a similar concept game called table tennis...and they won.

1973

1974

1975

'Micro-soft' is formed

1976

The tradename 'Microsoft' is registered dropping the hyphen

Fairchild release the Fairchild Channel F console

1977

Atari Release their first console, the Atari 2600

Nintendo Release their first video game console the Color TV game series

1978

Nintendo release their first Video Arcade game, 'Computer Othello'

SNK is founded

1979

1980

Nintendo Release their first in the Game & Watch Series

1981

Nintendo Release the Arcade game Donkey Kong

Crazy Kong is released by Grandstand

1982

1983

Sega release their first video game console, the SG-1000

The Oric-1 is released

1984

The Apple Macintosh is released

1985

Nintendo release the NES

Sega release the Master System

1986

1987

1988

1989

Nintendo release the Game Boy

Atari release the Lynx

1990

Sega release the Game Gear

SNK release the Neo Geo AES

1991

3DO is founded

Sega Mega CD is released

1992

1993

1994

The Playstation is released

1995

Nintendo release the Virtual Boy, it lasts for one year before being discontiuned

1996

1997

1998

Sega release the Dreamcast

SNK release the Neo Geo Pocket and the Neo Geo Pocket Color

Nintendo release the Game boy Color

1999

Bandai release the Wonderswan

2000

The Playstation One is released

The Playstation 2 is released

2001

The Xbox is released

Sega discontinue the Dreamcast and to this day have never produced another home console

SNK is defunct and Playmore is founded by the same business man, Eikichi Kawasaki

Nintendo release the Game Boy Advance

2002

2003

Playmore becomes SNK Playmore, although is again commonly known as SNK as in 1978

3DO is defunct

Nintendo release the Game Boy Advance SP

2004

Nintendo Release the DS

Sony release the PSP

2005

The Xbox 360 is released

Nintendo release the Game Boy Micro

2006

The Playstation 3 is released

2007

2008