In the 1980s, more serious gamers could be found at the local arcade putting coins into arcade games like Outrun, Street Fighter, and R-Type. At the same time, the first home computer games began to appear, first the Sinclair ZX-81 and later the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore C64.
These computers loaded games from cassette tapes, but they were cheap to buy, and many families could afford to have a gaming machine in the home for the first time. Games were controlled via the computer keyboard or via joysticks with a “fire” button that could be peripherally connected to the computer.
The 1990s saw many home users move to 16-bit home computers like the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. Priced slightly higher than older 8-bit machines, but still affordable for most families, the Amiga and ST had more memory than their predecessors and loaded games from 3.5-inch floppy drives. This meant that users could enjoy much faster load times for their games, as well as significantly faster games with better graphics and sound.
Around the same time, the first home game consoles began to appear, with the Sega Master System and Nintendo 64 being the most popular. These were later superseded by 16-bit consoles, the Sega Megadrive and the Super Nintendo or SNES. The console’s games were stored on cartridges, meaning they loaded almost instantly; however, the games themselves were more expensive than comparable games for the Amiga and ST.
In the late 1990s, 16-bit home computers began to die out as more and more people were able to own a home PC, which they could also use for gaming. At the same time, consoles also took another step forward with the launch of Sony’s first PlayStation, featuring enhanced graphics and never-before-seen levels of gameplay.
As PC ownership became more widespread, console makers faced a constant challenge in making their machines popular. They have responded by producing increasingly advanced consoles. The Nintendo Wii is an example, which introduced a new concept of wireless controllers that respond to human movement.
At the same time, the Internet started to play an important role in everyday life and games have unsurprisingly embraced it. Now gamers on consoles or PCs can join distributed multiplayer games with their own friends or complete strangers located anywhere in the world. It is no longer necessary to have a physical copy of the game you are playing, as was the case in the old days. The games can now be played completely online, in some cases for free.
Gaming has certainly come a long way since the days of the ZX Spectrum, and one can only begin to speculate what changes will have occurred in another 30 years!