Obscure Gaming Facts

This may be a one-time deal, as I doubt I'd be able to get many "obscure" facts. But, I think I can pull together a few that many people probably do not know.

Fact #1: Some people may know that Halo started as a real-time strategy game. But, they may not know that, after Halo was turned into a third-person shooter, the console version was in development for the Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. In fact, IGN.com has a preview of the PS2 version of Halo.

Fact #2: Nolan Bushnell may be considered, by some, the "Father" of the video game industry. But a man named Ralph Baer created the first home video game prototype. The prototype included a series of simple games controlled by "paddle" controllers (knobs you turn clockwise or counter-clockwise) and switches, and also included the first ever light-gun. He applied for a patent on the technology on January 15th, 1968.


Fact #3: While Baer may have created the home video game system, he didn't create the first computer game. The first known computer game was made in 1951. The computer was named Nimrod, and it was a computer that was dedicated to playing the logic game Nim. As it was before the age of computer monitors, it used a series of small lights to display the current status of the game.

Fact #4: Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, received very little royalties from his creation until 1996. Due to Russian law in the '80s, the Russian government owned Tetris, and Alexey received no compensation. Even though communism was later abolished in Russia, the ownership laws didn't expire until 1996. At which point, Alexey and a man named Henk Rodgers (who helped secure the home console and handheld rights for Nintendo) started The Tetris Company. This company immediately started securing the rights to Tetris, and it currently owns the rights in several countries. However, they can only enforce ownership of the Tetris name, and not the base concepts of the game. Alexey is currently employed by Microsoft, and has worked on some web-based games for the MSN Games site. One of his more recent creations is Hexic, a game playable via MSN Games, and is pre-loaded on every XBox 360 game console.