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 Onwards
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
2009 Nintendo release the DSi, Sony release the PSP Go! the first download only hand-held device