As hard as it may be to believe, there was once a time when video games were NOT life-like and an integral part of our lives and of the popular culture.Once upon a time, not so long ago, video games were the realm of nerds and the children of privilege. Let's take a look back at the evolution of the video game console -- from Atari (and before...) to the Xbox One.

The first video games trace back all the way to the 1950's, when academics began researching artificial intelligence, designing simple games, and conducting minor simulations. In 1951, the first computer was commercialized by a division of a typewriter company; upon this commercialization, computer mainframes were adopted by colleges and universities for scientific research. One of the first well-known games to come out of this period was "Tennis for Two," created by William Higginbothin at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island. Using an oscilloscope, players were able to use a metal box to "volley" a ball across a virtual net. This is probably the most primitive version of Pong known to the gaming community!

In 1967, the first video game prototype was released to the general public. The so-called Brown Box was invented by Ralph Baer, who is considered by many in the gaming community to be the Father of the a Video Game. Hooking up to any ordinary television, only six games (tennis, volleyball, handball, chase games, ping-pong, and a light gun game -- notice a pattern amongst the games available?) were available for the consumer. It wasn't until 1972 that the video game console, as it is legally known, became available on a widespread commercial scale.

The Magnavox Odyssey "launched with a dozen included games in the box -- four more sold with a separate light gun -- and six games sold separately. These games were largely variations on the quiz, chase, shooting, and ball-and-paddle games conceived by Baer and his team and made use of screen overlays and accessories such as cards and dice that were also included with the system for additional graphical and gameplay elements. While the games were activated using individual circuit cards inserted into the system, these devices did not contain memory and merely unlocked games already wired into the hardware." (Source) In a nutshell, because computer memory was at such a premium at the time, you couldn't "save the game" and go back to where you were in progress. Each time you started the game, you started a whole new game (Imagine that...)

At the same time, twofold order defense contractors founded Atari and released the first commercially successful video game, Pong, which was based on the earliest versions of ping-pong and tennis. Around this time, the development of games came through on two parallel planes: While one group focused on the development of the video game console, another group (spearheaded by Don Daglow) focused on the development of games on "mainframes" of computers. In 1977, the video game market reached critical mass, and then hit a quick slump, before the second generation of consoles were released and revived the once-fledgling industry.

In 1979, Japan saw the birth of the first-ever color TV console (yes, young ones, there was a time when having a television show you pictures in color was a luxury...ask your grandparents) put out by a company that would soon become a contender in the global market today: Nintendo. Unfortunately for American consumers, this color TV console was only available to the Japanese public. Nintendo wouldn't reach dominance in the American market until 1985, when a "video game crash" in the American market put such companies as Coleco and Bally out of business. While this was going on, the video game arcades were burgeoning in popularity.

In what would become known as the "golden age of video games," Nintendo created such now-classic games as Pac Man, Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy, Golden Axe, and of course The Legend of Zelda. In the tradition of good old fashioned American capitalism, at around this time, Nintendo started receiving some real competition in the market, namely from a fellow Japanese company named Sega (who would go on to have a golden age of its own, creating such classic games as Sonic the Hedgehog and Crash Bandicoot). In response, Nintendo upped the ante with the creation of the Super NES in 1990. From then on, the video game race was on, with each company one-upping the other in terms of graphics, games, and special effects.

In the mid-1990s, the storage of games shifted from plastic discs to CDs in order to accommodate the ever-increasing memory needs of the resulting games. This paved the way for the first-ever Sony PlayStation in 1994. While Nintendo stuck with the cartridge system for its Nintendo 64, Sega's Genesis 2 and 3 competed with the PlayStation by putting their games on discs. It took until 2001 for Nintendo to switch to the discs for their games but, that very same year, Microsoft entered the playing field to bring more competition to the companies with their first-ever Xbox. And this brings us to where we are today: with only three major companies in the market (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo), the video game industry has more or less stabilized, becoming both user friendly and readily ownable with affordable prices. Very few companies have tried to go up against the so-called Big Three, and companies such Atari, Sega, Coleco and NEC have all gone out of business trying. There are only a select few that would try, at this point, to give it a go such as Mattel, who has decided to try its hand at the video game market after more than a 30 year absence. Needless to say, after being voted one of the worst gaming systems of all time (ouch!), it was taken off the market in 2007. So which is your favorite video game system? Share some of your stories of your first-ever consoles!