The First Quarter : A 25-year History of Video Games

A decent history book on the creation and development of the video game industry, and would have been a perfect companion to Leonard Herman’s Phoenix books, if not for several dozen factual mistakes and the need for some serious editing and proofreading. The author doesn't take kindly to constructive criticism, and when asked about sources for some of his information, claims he no longer has any notes from when he wrote the book. He also lavished praise on another, similar book that's filled with more egregious factual errors and even worse editing and proofreading than any book I've ever read, on any subject.

Notable errors:

Pg. 9 Chicago Coin was the name of the company. Speedway was the name of the game.

Pg. 15 Higinbotham did invent the first video game. The fact that neither Russell or Baer knew about his game is meaningless.

Pg. 17, 18 1st video game was Higginbotham’s Tennis For Two, though it didn’t use a computer.

Pg. 29 Spacewar! and Computer Space are 2 different games.

Pg. 30 States Al Alcorn was the former "sort of" Vice President of Engineering at Atari Corporation, but he left Atari some 4 years before it changed from Atari Inc. to Atari Corp. The same mistake is made again on the following page in regards to Cynthia Villanueva, and again on page 76 with Steve Bristow. The same mix-up with Inc. and Corp is made on pages 76, 180, 222, and 314.

Pg. 31, 41 States Atari's original building was 2,000 square feet, and 10 pages later says Bushnell doubled the size of the building to... 2,000 square feet. Well, what size was it?

Pg. 34 Allan Alcorn stated Pong’s coin box was a sawed-off milk jug.

Pg. 37 Nolan Bushnell was not an employee of Nutting by the time he saw the Magnavox Odyssey system.

Pg. 47 There's always been debate about how many Atari-made Pong machines were made, compared to all the knock-offs. As usual, no proof is ever offered to back up any claims.

Pg. 48 How can anyone have knocked off Breakout in 1975 when the game wasn’t released until 1976?

Pg. 50 Gran Trak/Trak 10 – the game’s original name was Gran Trak 10. Trak 10 was the same game in a smaller “low-key” cabinet.

Pg. 55 Tanks weren’t simply boxes. They looked like little tanks.

Pg. 64, 65 States 8,000 Odysseys sold 1st year, and 100,000 over 2 years, but on page 76 states 100,000 were sold over 4 years. Which is it? Atari’s home version of Pong was called Pong, not Home Pong.

Pg. 80, 147, 169 Stella was NOT a chip but rather the codename for the Atari VCS/2600 system.

Pg. 83, 267 Computer Quiz was the first game to charge a quarter, not Periscope. Periscope was also likely released in 1968, not 1966. No source is offered for the 1966 date.

Pg. 87 No VCS cartridges cost $30 at the time of the system's launch in 1977.

Pg. 93 No proof and no source of Japanese mint tripling production of 100-yen piece.

Pg. 103,104 The original SpaceWar! game by Steve Russell also used a vector monitor, so the fact that Cinematronics 1978 arcade game used one wasn't an improvement on the original.

Pg. 105 Atari's Lunar Lander arcade game did not use a two-handled lever, it was a single lever designed to be used by one hand, as the other hand was needed to control the ship's rotation. Night Driver did not feature 3-D pylons, the pylons are just squares! Tail Gunner was not the first 3-D game, Battlezone was.

Pg. 113 Missile Command did not use an 8-ball-sized trackball, and neither did Football. Both used a large 4" ball. Billiard balls are much smaller.

Pg. 114,115 Pac-Man enemies were monsters, not ghosts. This is plainly stated on the machine’s monitor glass.
Pg. 116 Electronic Games was likely not the first magazine dedicated to video games, UK-based Computer & Video Games was.

Pg. 117 States Williams released its 1st arcade game with Paddle Ball (in 1973) and then states Williams decided to enter the video game market in 1980, when actually they re-entered it. 2 pages later Kent again states Defender was Williams' first video game.

Pg. 118 Jarvis didn’t program Defender? Who did?

Pg. 119 When the planet in Defender explodes, you fly through space, not hyperspace. Humanoids (not astronauts) are carried underneath your ship, not on the front.

Pg. 121 Rotberg created a three-dimensional plane, not plain.

Pg. 125 Dragon Riders never went IN to production.

Pg. 128 The conveyor belt screen was in all Donkey Kong releases.

Pg. 133 Berzerk was released in 1980, not 1981. The game even shows a 1980 date onscreen.

Pg. 139 Atari Games, not Atari Coin-operated Games.

Pg. 147 The VCS did not have a 6-year lifespan. It was released in October 1977 and discontinued in January 1992, making for a 15-year lifespan.

Pg. 149 David Crane didn't do a VCS Football game, Bob Whitehead did.

Pg. 152 The VCS wasn't restricted to 2K games.

Pg. 153 VCS Adventure only had one bat.

Pg. 154 The boy credited with being the first to find the VCS Adventure secret was 15 years old, not 12. Also, Steve Wright of Atari coined the term "Easter egg", not Electronic Games magazine. Kent at least got the correct year for the game's release - 1980.

Pg. 155 The VCS was released in October 1977, and sales were not better “the rest of the year”. The system’s sales were slow until Space Invaders was released for it in 1980. Kassar’s statement that Atari never advertised their products (before he arrived) is completely false.

Pg. 160 The Intellivision did not have the same basic processor as the VCS. Not even close to being similar. Kassar clearly didn’t understand or appreciate Atari’s programmers – ask ANY of them! And his tale about sitting with someone for 4 hours while they read him poetry is yet more unsubstantiated nonsense from Kassar. For starters, who was the programmer in question??

Pg. 161 Warren Robinett’s late name misspelled.

Pg. 169 Not only did Colecovision not have 48K of RAM, neither did any other consoles at the time.

Pg. 171 States Coleco made a "flawless" version of Donkey Kong? For starters, Donkey Kong is on the wrong side of the screen. For another, the game only has 3 of the 4 levels found in the arcade. Hardly flawless, and just one of many biased opinions Kent inserted throughout the book.

Pg. 179 “Atari had agreed to pay royalties on the VCS version of Donkey Kong.” What does Atari have to do with the case of Nintendo vs Universal? Besides, Coleco released the VCS version of Donkey Kong, not Atari.

Pg. 182 You didn’t have to run towards enemies in Berzerk, you simply had to face them.

Pg. 186 Tron wasn't the first movie to feature computer-drawn effects.1973's Westworld had it beat by 9 years.

Pg. 187 Atari didn’t ship 12 million Pac-Man carts in 1982, and they certainly didn’t sell for $25.75 retail.

Pg. 195 Tod Frye wasn’t contracted to program VCS Pac-Man, he was an Atari employee!

Pg. 196 Kassar’s statement that 5 million VCS E.T. carts were made is incorrect, as is his statement that “practically all of them came back”.

Pg. 198 Claims GCC made 72 games between 1982 and 1984? Prove it.

Pg. 202 Quotes Roger Hector as calling Howard Delman "Dillman".

Pg. 203 Neither Roger Hector, Ed Rotberg, or Howard Delman recall a 3rd VCS game they did, only 2 (Lasercade and Meltdown).

Pg. 219 EA might have been the first computer game company (at the time) to license an athlete’s name, Atari licensed Pele’s name for VCS Championship Soccer (and EA later released games for consoles such as the Genesis).
Pg. 220 CBS Electronics had licensed Madden’s name and image for a football game several years before Electronic Arts.

Pg. 221 Atari’s MindLink was never released.

Pg. 229, 230 The VCS and the NES do not use the same processor chip. The VCS used a 6507, which was unique to the VCS.

Pg. 230 The VCS had only 4K of RAM, not 256K! Minter (?) and Alcorn did NOT design the VCS, Atari’s Grass Valley research group did.

Pg. 291 Warner split Atari in 1984, not 1985.

Pg. 317 Nintendo tried to enlist Atari Inc. not Atari Corp.

Pg. 318 Mattel never released any handheld video games.

Pg. 319 Starpath didn’t abandon their Sweat game. It wasn’t completed because it was for the VCS and the market had crashed. The programmers started over from scratch when they made Summer Games.

Pg. 341 Boulder Dash also featured a character that tapped its foot. The game was released the year after Major Havoc.

Pg. 383 Why is “video game” suddenly being hyphenated?

Pg. 392 Jeff Minter never programmed for the Atari VCS.

Pg. 405 Imagic is not spelled like “iMagic”. That’s something that started years later, with Apple.

Pg. 420, 462 Bushnell co-founded Atari. He was not the sole founder.