The first three decades of digital gaming saw a flurry of concepts, technologies, and products that were groundbreaking in their era and still matter today. And the drawings their inventors used to document them in patent filings are a nostalgic, charming blast. Here are thirty-two of those sketches–including ones for some the most successful games ever and a few which I’m not sure ever made it to market at all.
As with my earlier patent galleries, I couldn’t have done this one without the wondrous research tool known as Google Patents. The filing dates that follow link to the full patent documents there.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I had an Odyssey…wonder if it still works.
December 30th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
The bottom half of that is “Electronic Quarterback” by Coleco.
December 31st, 2008 at 2:06 pm
My favorite is missing: Mattell’s 1979 Intellivision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision
December 31st, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Carl: I know! I tried hard to find an Intellivision patent, but couldn’t…
–Harry
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:46 am
I totally had the “Interactive Audio Baseball Game”. It may still be in my parents’ attic. It was “cool” because you could buy little cards that had rosters for different baseball teams, including the “Hall of Fame” teams. Of course, all this meant was that the announcer would say “Willie Mays is at the bat” instead of “Babe Ruth”. lol.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:40 am
Wow!
What a blast form the past! I used to have one of those baseball sets when I was small, wow! what memories this brings back, all those little lights, and the buttons that only worked a fraction of the time…
Wow!
January 5th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Where is the Sega Genesis?
January 6th, 2009 at 1:26 am
Are you sure you’re not thinking of Fun and Games or the old and plowed under Shopper’s World in Framingham? I don’t think there was a Natick Mall at the time Gun Fight came out. ;)
January 6th, 2009 at 4:01 am
BlindTyldak: I spent plenty of time at Shopper’s World and Fun and Games, but there was a Natick Mall (a far smaller and more downmarket one than the current version) back then–I spent a lot of time as a kid at the Sears, Woolworth’s, and York Steak House there…
–Harry
January 6th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Tomy produced a toy called “Blip: The Digital Game” in 1977. It uses a complicated set of gears and cogs to display a bouncing light (ball) underneath a translucent glass screen, which is very similar to the “Game Apparatus Utilizing a Display Screen” patent.
January 7th, 2009 at 5:16 am
Let’s face it Guitar Hero is just Simon, the only thing that’s changed is the shape, it’s basically the same game (only Simon was better of course ;-)
January 7th, 2009 at 7:09 am
My sister won that version of the NES that came with ROB and the light gun. Hours of fun. Of course it was too hard to actually play the game Gyromite using ROB.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
#32 Is Starting Lineup Talking Baseball.
That game was amazing.
January 20th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Figure Displaying Game Apparatus
Regarding this game, I was just at my parents home and cleaning out all of my momentos, including an Atari 800. I was attracted to the link on slashdot regarding the Atari Tablet then I browsed over to this article. For what it is worth, I also came across this game that I bought at a JC Penney Outlet for $3.00. I am surprised to her Nintendo held the patent. It was called “Whack a Mole” It was a small handheld game with a left and right button that you held the same way we would eventually come to hold the Nintendo controller. There two others I bought at the same time. One was a juggler and the other was a game where you bounced babies on firemen trampolines as they fell continuously faster out of a burning building. I can’t believe I just ran across this game about a week ago. I remember bringing these to grade school and what a hit I was when I let other kids borrow and play these at lunch time. They ran on small hearing aid style batteries and my next project was to see if I could still find these being made.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:16 am
Frame #18: the pinball machine that utilized the elevated ball tube was called “Xenon” and was released by Bally in 1981. The machine had a very realistic sounding synthesized female voice – which I believe was the first female voice ever heard on a pinball machine – who would exhort you at times to “try a tube shot”. It wasn’t the first machine to have above-the-table action: that honor goes to a 1971 Gottlieb game called “Roller Coaster” that used wireform ramps, which are now standard equipment on most machines. I actually have a “Roller Coaster” unit sitting in storage, waiting for room in my house to put it and two other pins I own. Maybe when my stepdaughters go to college…
January 31st, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Nice point about Guitar Hero being similar to Simon. The similarity gets even closer when you try the freeware Frets on Fire.
February 7th, 2009 at 7:20 am
gallery of diagrams that Technologizer has put together here, so don’t waste any time and dive right in. You won’t be
February 7th, 2009 at 8:01 am
:D
February 7th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Very cool
March 9th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
#22 is indeed a Game and Watch, the title is Vermin, and it is one of my favorites.
May 8th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Page five figure 210 looks like a half-eaten super nintendo controller.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:11 am
Have you thought about the designs for the handheld game Merlin? Also know as the Electronic Wizard, Merlin was a handheld electronic game first made by Parker Brothers in 1978. Merlin is notable as one of the earliest and most popular handheld games, selling over 5 million units during its initial run, as well as one of the most long-lived, remaining popular throughout the 1980s. I absolutely loved this game!
May 18th, 2009 at 12:54 am
When I was a kid, my dad received an arcade-cabinet game that consisted of a joystick that ran a hair-dryer around on two axes, and an attenuator knob which controlled the power of the blower.
The blower would then lift a ping-pong ball to different heights, and carry it along to different targets which would register when the ball passed within its sensors.
The interior of the machine was painted in florescent paint and lit with blacklights.
We received it in the early ’80s (1982, perhaps?), but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were from the early ’70s.
Anyone know what the heck that was?
October 5th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
#21, the wireless Atari controller, was produced for the short-lived Atari 2700 VCS. Details:
http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2700/a2700.html
I saw one of these units in person only once, circa 1983.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:23 am
Anyone eve noticed how poor tech was in 1969? Well they claim they were able to sens someone to the moon with that crap.
Nope.
No chance.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:24 am
Anyone eve noticed how poor tech was in 1969? Well they claim they were able to send someone to the moon with that crap.
Nope.
No chance.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
My first console was a Sega Master System, I have always and it still works.
January 27th, 2010 at 4:36 am
hmm… actually the Amiga Joyboard was a kind of smokescreen produced by the company to have a reasonable excuse if anyone askes what they are working on while trying to hide the development of one of the most revolutionary computers ever…
March 5th, 2010 at 7:09 am
The sprint technique vital to many apprentices fufu, I instantly come to mind when discovering this image in the ticket
March 9th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
Yes there was a whack a mole game & watch, I used to play it!