Two years later, the same company launched Graham Gooch’s All Star Cricket, which was released on both the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 systems.

The cricket video game industry continued to grow in the early 1990s as the world was drawn in by the switch to day-night cricket and coloured clothing in global tournaments, such as the 1992 World Cup.

Next came International Cricket in 1992, developed by Beam Software and published by Laser Beam Entertainment. It also had a multi-player format, which allowed up to two users to play simultaneously. It was developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Without access to licensing, particularly for player names, the cricket video game included placeholder names similar to a player’s real name. For example, Ian Healy was replaced by I Hilly in the actual game.

Not long after, Beam Software released sequels improving upon their original cricket video game, putting out the Super NES and Super International Cricket in 1994.

Next up in the series of blog posts is the set of cricket video games that initiated the move of the genre to mainstream development even without the ability to push these products to massive gaming markets in North America, Japan and Europe with baseball far more popular over cricket in these regions.

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Some of the first games you could play with the first version of the PlayStation were Crash Bandicoot, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, Dead or Alive, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII/VIII/IX.

The first console didn’t have an internal hard drive. Games had to be saved using memory cards. According to GameSpot, the catalyst for the console actually spawned from a failed partnership with Nintendo, when Sony was in talks with building an add-on for the Super Nintendo. The PlayStation would go on to feature a dual-speed CD-ROM drive, a one-core CPU that had 2MB of RAM along with 1MB of video RAM with graphics that could deliver up to 360,000 polygons per second. The original PlayStation played a pivotal role in transitioning the industry away from 2D graphics to real-time 3D rendering.

Who created the PlayStation?
The console was conceptualized by Ken Kutaragi, an executive of Sony, who is known as the father of the PlayStation.

Nintendo vs Sony
The origins of this console dates back to 1988, when Sony and Nintendo joined to create a solution for the Super Famicom. That deal, which was denied at several points by Nintendo, was reportedly broken as the two companies failed to arrive at a suitable agreement regarding the revenue split for the project. Sony President Norio Ohga later appointed Kutaragi with the sole focus of building the PlayStation to compete with Nintendo.

The PlayStation has continued to make immense strides in the video game console market, which will continue to grow with sleeker innovations to gaming hardware.

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In 1997, Nokia released Snake for a few selected phone models, with the first appearance in a Nokia 6110. Snake immediately gained popularity among users of the mobile phone because of its ease of access, simplicity and suitability for all ages. The mobile game continues to be evolved and added to various devices even today.

Tetris was, in fact, developed much earlier but for computers. Tetris was created as a simple tile-matching game, built on a simple premise of matching “tetriminos”, or geometric forms, as they descended from the top of the screen. It was created by Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984 for the Electronika 60 computer. It was then added as a mobile game much later, in the mid-1990s.

In our next update, we will take a closer look at the start of Tetris, and how the “mind game” took over the world around the turn of the century.

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His initial design of a “game box” was scribbled in a note pad when he was working as an engineer, supervising several hundred employees for a military company. His initial work piqued the interest of his superiors, who then gave him some working capital to the tune of $2500.

A few years of work later, in 1971, Baer and his employer Sanders Associates in Nashua, N.H. filed for the first ever video game patent. Patent No. 3,728,480 was granted two years later. Now, it’s important to note that this patent covered a fairly large segment in the claim, including any device capable of controlling movement on a screen on a domestic television.

Magnavox was the first licensor of the video game console. They sold well over 100,000 units of the game console in the first year.

Over the years, several lawsuits flew across the border as well as within the country, including one with Atari. Magnavox won several lawsuits to the tune of over USD 100 million. Take into account the historical cost of that money for a moment.

From that simple contraption, also called by the creators as a “brown box”, the game console has erupted into the massive market it is today in the gaming verse. Baer had more than 150 patents, both local and domestic, to his name including for products such as submarine tracking systems.

According to an article in the New York Times, “along with Howard Morrison, he invented the electronic game Simon, which was introduced at Studio 54 in Manhattan in 1978 and became a pop culture phenomenon in the 1980s. A saucer-shaped plastic toy with four colored buttons, it lit up and emitted tones in a sequence that the player then had to reproduce. It is still being sold.”

We’ll keep adding more content about the start of the video game industry and how different it is today. Tune in every week for a quick snapshot of the next topic.

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Four years later came the first version of a combat video game as Steve Russell created Spacewar. That was the first video game that had interoperability between networks, such as computers. Multiple users could play Spacewar if it was installed on their computers.

The method of developing these video games have changed drastically, right from the advent of motion graphics. The process of enjoying these video games, however, changed with the rise of the console, an instrument that allowed a user to interact easily with the objective of the video game.

Ralph H. Baer is widely considered as the creator of the home video game console. He started creating the home console back in 1966, with a prototype that was initially scribbled on paper. We’ll get to his fascinating story a little later in our video game historical presentation. Not long after came the video game revolution created by Atari.

We will continue to highlight some of the vital moments in the creation and the business of mobile and video games each week. Tune in soon for the next video game answers.

The post Which were the first video games ever created? appeared first on Stick Sports.

Super League offers users the chance to create their own player and captain one of 70 franchises in the first global Twenty20 league.

Players are tasked with recruiting superstars to their squad – often involving tense contract negotiations – as they attempt to rise up through fifteen divisions to win the Super League trophy.

For the first time in a Stick Cricket game, captains have full control of their team. Whether you want to send the opposition in to bat first, open the bowling with a spinner to unsettle a Star Batsman or promote a pinch hitter at a crucial moment in the match – the choice is yours.

If you prefer just causing carnage with the bat or simply want to simulate a result, you can Fast Track to the end of an innings.

At its core, Stick Cricket Super League boasts the exhilarating six-smashing experience that millions loved in Stick Cricket 2 (Best of 2015 – App Store and Google Play).

Stick Cricket Super League is available now, free on the App Store and Google Play. A press kit is available here.

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London, United Kingdom, 19th January 2016: Stick Sports, creator of the award winning Stick Cricket series and makers of Stick Tennis – the number one sports game on mobile in over 100 countries – today serve up its biggest ever update to Stick Tennis Tour.

Released to coincide with the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Stick Tennis Tour’s first launch netted 20 million downloads worldwide. This major update brings a whole host of brand new features, heavily influenced by the Stick Tennis community, including over 40 realistically detailed courts and more than 180 new tour opponents, each with their own unique playing style and attributes.

As well as customising character appearances before heading onto centre court, players will now also be able to rally with the all time greats and test their skills against some of the best players the tennis world has ever seen… and Tim Henman!

News items and Daily Challenges are also offered up in the game: Stick Tennis Tour players can keep up to speed with the latest goings on at the Australian Open through snippets of actual news, and enjoy simulated challenges modelled directly from events in Melbourne. These Daily Challenges will be extremely dynamic and reactive to live action scenarios taking place at the Australian Open and the Stick Sports team of developers will be able to update a new simulated challenge within minutes of it happening – a speed unrivalled by any tennis game on mobile.

Paul Collins, Managing Director of Stick Sports said: “This is the biggest update we have ever released. The team has worked tirelessly together with the fans and community to perfect a number of fresh features that we hope sports enthusiasts will enjoy the world over. The Australian Open heralds the start of the Grand Slam tournaments every year so it is fitting that we have chosen this prestigious event to coincide with the launch of the World’s most popular mobile tennis game”.

“More than 20 million people around the World loved Stick Tennis, and we’re thrilled to build on that success with Stick Tennis Tour. The game provides a fully immersive career mode that is unparalleled on mobile, coupled with the ‘easy to play, hard to master’ gameplay that made the original a smash hit”.

From Australia to Rio and Mexico to Barcelona, Stick Tennis Tour invites players to jet off on the 28-stage tour and compare progress against competitors and friends via the rankings chart.  Additionally, Stick Tennis Tour gives players the chance to boost attributes through specialised training sessions offered up by their coach, ensuring the tour is enjoyable for all skill levels but remains tough at the highest level in this grand slam 2.0 update!

Stick Tennis Tour is now available to download on iOS and Android devices from the App Store and Google Play Store.

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Just in time for the knockout stage of the World Cup (and England’s early flight home), Stick Sports today launched a follow-up to the world’s most popular cricket game.

Stick Cricket 2, featured by Apple in all cricket-loving countries this week, represents a complete reimagining of a game that has racked up billions of plays since its original launch more than a decade ago.

“We’ve literally gone back to the drawing board, creating completely new graphics and animations,” said Colin Rowe, Creative Director, Stick Sports.

“However, we’ve gone to great lengths to retain everything millions loved about Stick Cricket: smashing sixes, fast gameplay and those frustrating spinners!”

Starting from humble Origins, the Stick Cricket 2 journey requires you to make a name for yourself on the club cricket circuit – including facing off against real-life amateur teams.

Once you’ve enjoyed enough success to catch the eye of the national selectors, you can then live the dream: travel the world playing cricket for your country, facing the best bowlers on the planet.

The all-new animations allow you to thrill the crowd with a raft of unorthodox strokeplay, including the Scoop, Ramp, Switch Hit and Helicopter shots that have revolutionised limited-overs cricket in recent years.

Boasting 90 levels, 24 stadiums, 22 teams and a huge range of gear and novelty outfits to unlock (including a gorilla suit!), Stick Cricket 2 is truly a next-generation six-smashing experience.

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