1972 It begins: Pong is invented 1978 Space Invaders blips its way into arcades everywhere 1977 The Atari 2600 game system sells millions of units and brings arcade action home 1980 Pac-Man released 1982 First hit song based on a video game, Pac-Man Fever: “I got a pocket full of quarters …” 1981 First all-video game magazine: Electronic Games 1982 Video games first appear on the cover of TIME 1982 Tron, the first movie about video games, tanks at the box office 1983 E.T. becomes a video game –and flops 1983 A-list athletes star in games like Julius Erving & Larry Bird: One-On-One 1983 Journey is the first rock group to have its own arcade game. It’s not much better than … 1990 … the King of Pop’s Michael Jackson’s Moon-walker 1993 First legislative outcry: the Senate investigates video-game violence 1993 Myst is released. People start to wonder, Are video games art? 1993 First movie based on a game: Super Mario Brothers 1995 Sony releases the PlayStation in the U.S. 1994 Big-name actors are popping up in video games. Dennis Hopper lends his voice talents to Hell 1996 Video games get their first sex symbol, Lara Croft 1996 Suddenly game sound tracks are seriously hip: WipeOut XL features the Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers and others 1997 Tamagotchi mania! 1998 Seinfeld’s “Frogger” episode airs, in which George obsesses over his high score on an old arcade game 1999 First Classic Gaming Expo opens in Las Vegas. Vintage games sell for top dollar. Video-game nostalgia is officially a phenomenon 1999 The Columbine shootings create new wave of video-game anxiety 1999 First game with an old-skool rap sound track. Thrasher: Skate and Destroy boasts Run DMC, Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa and the Sugar Hill Gang 2000 Games imitate life as The Sims sells millions of copies 2002 G4, the first all-games TV network, debuts 2005 The Detroit Symphony Orchestra performs Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu’s score for the video game Final Fantasy
