If It Wasn't For... Trivia Quiz

Answer: Tic-Tac-Toe

"Bertie the Brain" was exhibited at the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. The machine stood approximately 13 feet tall and displayed the game with a grid of lightbulbs. Despite this, the player's opponent was an artificial intelligence and players entered plays with a keypad that had nine possible choices. The role of "X" was always assigned to the "Computer Brain" and the role of "O" was assigned to the "Human Brain".

Where does this game fit into the history of video games? It was unquestionably an electronic game and probably would be considered a computer game in the sense that one played against the computer. Whether it meets all of the requirements of a video game is more debatable, though it seems to meet some of them. (See the conclusion of this quiz for more thoughts.

"Bertie the Brain" was designed by Josef Kates (1921-2018) to showcase his newly invented Additron Tube, which was ten times more efficient than the radio tubes that were used in some of the earliest computers. The increasing popularity of transistors (that were more efficient still) limited the use of Additron Tubes for commercial use.

In 1952, Christopher Strichey's "OXO" would take the concept one step further and display a game of Tic-Tac-Toe as a visual on a computer screen.

Answer: Checkers/Draughts

Christopher Strichey (1916-1975) first developed the idea for a computer program that could play checkers/draughts in 1951. His first attempt was done on the Pilot ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) (1950) at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom. The program utilized the full memory of the mainframe at the time. Attempts to play the game in 1951 were unsuccessful because of programming errors.

By late 1951, Strichey had gained access to the Manchester Mark 1 computer, which had significantly more memory. Access to a programming handbook for the computer compiled by early computer programmer Alan Turing assisted Strichey. By 1952, the computer could execute the program and play the game at a reasonable rate of speed. The game would be one of the first to display its visuals on an electronic screen, meeting another part of the definition of a video game.

The Manchester Mark 1 computer (1948-1949) was located at Victoria University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

Answer: Pool

William Brown and Ted Lewis were both avid pool players, which inspired them to create an electronic version when they were assigned to create a game for the Michigan Digital Special Automatic Computer (MIDSAC) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. The computer had a 13-inch CRT display which allowed for a relatively large display. The programmers were able to program a game that would make thousands of adjustments to the visuals each second to create the illusion of constant motion.

The game displayed a playing area with a set of 15 balls and a 2 inch cue. The sides of the pool table and the pockets were actually drawn on a transparent overlay that was placed over the CRT display. The game would have the balls bounce and disappear when entering a pocket, however. The player would operate controls that included a button that would have the cue stick strike the cue ball, a joystick that moved the cue stick and a knob that adjusted the angle of strike.

The game took about six months to develop and was intended to show the computing power of the MIDSAC.

Answer: The ball could get stuck in the net

While the ball did not get stuck in the net, there was one additional possibility: the opponent could hit the ball back before it landed in the opponent's court. With the primitive graphics of the time, the "court" was indicated by a longer horizontal line and the net by a shorter vertical line. The ball was a point of light. "Tennis for Two" would use an oscilloscope to display the game. Each of the two players had a controller with a button (that hit the ball) and a knob (that adjusted the angle of the shot).

The game was initially demonstrated before hundreds of visitors over a three day period. A improved version of the game was shown in 1959. The game was able to be set to different gravity levels including Jupiter and the Moon. Arguments for "Tennis for Two" being the first video game include that it was designed primarily for entertainment instead of for research purposes(since it didn't really include new technologies as compared to previous games).

William Higinbotham (1910-1994) designed "Tennis for Two" to be played on a Donner Model 30 analog computer at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY. The better known "Pong", developed in 1972, was a game with some similarities in play.

Answer: A needle and a wedge

Some will argue that "Spacewar!" is first true computer video game. Certainly it was one of the first playable at a relatively large number of locations. It was created to be played on the DEC PDP-1 minicomputer located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge, MA, and spread from there to dozens of locations where that particular minicomputer was available.

The game features two human players, each controlling either the needle shaped ship or the wedge shaped ship. In addition to being engaged in combat with each other, the two ships must navigate around a gravity well. Initially the game was played via the switches on the minicomputer, though a custom gamepad was later used. It was possible for the game without a winner as the two ships crashing into each other was a possible endgame condition.

Steve Russell (born 1937), working with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and several others, designed and programmed "Spacewar!" Two video games from 1971--"Computer Space" and "Galaxy Game"--are considered updated versions of "Spacewar!"

Answer: Nim

The name for "Marienbad" came from a 1961 French film "Last Year at Marienbad" which included scenes where a variant of Nim was played. The game allowed a single player to compete against the computer in removing matches from a set. The player who was forced to take the last match was the loser. The base version of the game had four rows of matches with either one, three, five, or seven matches in each row. Results were displayed on a print-out.

The game was designed for play on an Odra 1003 computer at the Elwo company. The designer of the game created a game algorithm where the computer would always win if the human player made a single mistake. Like many of the earliest computer games, the use of "Marienbad" did not spread too far.

Interestingly "Marienbad" was not the earliest electronic or computerized version of Nim. "Nimrod" was a 1951 British electronic version of Nim playable on a single custom-designed computer. An even earlier electronic version of Nim was played on a electromechanical device called the "Nimatron" at the 1940 World's Fair. I had considered using one of these devices in this quiz, but thought that identifying the game played as Nim would then be too easy.

Engineer Witold Podgórski of Poland was the designer of the game.

Answer: Sumer

"The Sumerian Game" is set in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash. The player fills the role of three consecutive kings of Lagash. The player allocates grain and workers while responding to the impact of previous decisions and random disasters. The game would be played over a large number of rounds. The 1964 version is the first version of the game while a modified version was developed in 1966 that included taped audio lectures and a slide show to increase the historical information presented in the simulation. (Some consider the slide show to be the first cut scenes in video game play).

The original game was programmed using FOCAL. David Ahl would rewrite the program for the game in BASIC in the early 1970s, allowing it to be played on microcomputers (personal computers). His version was known as "Hamurabi" (sic).

Mabel Addis (1912-2004) is considered the first female designer of a computer game.

Answer: US Civil War

"Civil War" featured fourteen battles from the US Civil War. The first player to win eight battles would win the game. Having a smaller number of casualties in the battle was considered a win. During the game, players would decide various variables such as amounts of money spent on ammunition, food supplies, and soldiers' pay.

The text-based game was originally designed to be one player competing against the computer. "Civil War" was originally played on multi-user mainframe computers. A later variation would allow two players to compete against each other. In later years, the game would be adapted for several different gaming platforms as late as the 1980s.

Credit for creating "Civil War" is generally given to three students from Lexington High School (Lexington, MA): L. Cram, L. Goodie, and D. Hubbard for the original game and G. Paul and R. Hess for the two player variation.

Answer: Outer Space

If it is coincidental that the game "Space Travel" was created in the year that people first travelled to the Moon, it seems very appropriate. In the game the player would fly a spaceship through a two-dimensional model of the solar system. landing and taking off from various planets and moons. In the game, the spaceship would be affected by the gravitation of only the strongest gravity pull (usually either the largest or closest planet/moon).

Even as late as 1969, the images of the game were made with white lines on a black screen. The game was developed on a GE 635 computer. Interestingly for this sort of games, commands were typed in rather than being sent through a controller. The game was programmed using the Fortran computer language.

Ken Thompson (born 1943) designed and programmed "Space Travel" at Bell Labs. The game played an important role in the development of the Unix Operating System.

Answer: Baseball

Baseball-themed games went back at least as far as a 1960 game created by John Burgeson on a IBM 1620 computer. With that game, however, after the player had selected members of the team's roster, there were very few game decisions to make afterwards. With "Baseball" (1971), players could continue to make decisions throughout the game. For instance, a manager could choose that a pitcher pitch to a player, issue an intentional walk or could have that pitcher replaced by a reliever.

Daglow would continue to modify his game throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, adapting it for various gaming platforms. Due to a six character limit on file names, the original game was called "BASBAL". A player could use the game to play as little as a single game or simulate an entire season. Coincidentally, both John Burgeson and Don Daglow had membership in the Society for American Baseball Research.

Don Daglow (born 1953) was a student at Pomona College in Claremont, CA, when the game was created on a computer terminal connected to a PDP-10 mainframe computer.