History of computer games
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The History of Computer Games
The exact year that the first game appeared on a computer is a little hard to date. Many people think that it was "Adventure", a text game that appeared on large min-frame computers in the late 1970's. This was a pretty simple game, which used commands such as "look at tree", "move north. The designers of this game had no clue that it would set the precedent of text-based adventure games for years to come.
Starting in the 1980's, computer game companies began popping up all over the place. Epyx, Broderbund, Sierra On-Line (then called "On-Line Systems"), and SSI all formed in the 80's and started publishing games.
In 1981, home computers started to gain popularity. Apple's, Atari's, and TRS-80's, were the leaders in the market, with dozens of games being produced for them. Also the switch was being made from distributing the games on tape (which was the most popular at the time) to 5 floppy disc. Like the change from the floppy to the CD-ROM in the early 90's, the 5 disc was chosen because it was faster (programs would actually load in a few seconds, compared with minutes with the tape) and could store more data...