Gaming

Daigo Umehara parried 15 hits in a row in 2004 with one pixel of health left, and Street Fighter fans still talk about it. Most of these stories trace the business behind home and arcade games. Nintendo began in 1889 making handmade playing cards in Kyoto. Sega started in 1940 supplying slot machines to American bases in Hawaii. Atari took its name from a term in the board game Go. Pac-Man was first called Puck Man, until executives worried vandals would change one letter.

• Metal GearMetal Gear became a stealth game because its computer could not handle a gunfight.

  10 min
• Virtual realityThe first head-mounted display was so heavy it hung from the ceiling. Ivan Sutherland named it The Sword of Damocles.

  12 min
• Sega SaturnAt the first E3 in 1995, Sega announced its Saturn console had already shipped.

  13 min
• SegaSega began in 1940 by supplying slot machines to American military bases in Hawaii. It later made Sonic the Hedgehog.

  14 min
• Grand Theft AutoGrand Theft Auto was voted one of Britain's top 10 designs in 2006. It sat beside Concorde and the Spitfire.

  10 min
• Game BoyNintendo's president canceled the Game Boy on the spot in 1988. One engineer kept working on its screen anyway.

  11 min
• Role-playing video gameFinal Fantasy VII arrived in 1997 with a record-breaking budget of around $45 million.

  10 min
• Nintendo Entertainment SystemThe Nintendo Entertainment System launched into a video game market the press had called dead.

  14 min
• Donkey KongDonkey Kong is a video game franchise, and even its name was a small piece of design. Shigeru Miyamoto chose donkey to suggest stubbornness and kong to hint at a gorilla. The ape he built around that name began as a villain, and for years…

  24 min
• Arcade gameA journalist ended New York City's pinball ban by calling a shot. Roger Sharpe did it before the city council in 1976.

  14 min
• The Legend of ZeldaAs a boy, Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto walked into a cave carrying a lantern. That memory shaped every dungeon.

  11 min
• Street FighterStreet Fighter player Daigo Umehara parried 15 hits in a row with one pixel of health left in 2004.

  9 min
• Resident EvilResident Evil was almost named Biohazard, but the name was already taken. A DOS game and a punk band held it.

  11 min
• NintendoNintendo began in 1889 as a maker of handmade playing cards. Fusajiro Yamauchi opened the shop in Kyoto.

  12 min
• Sonic the HedgehogSonic the Hedgehog, a franchise about a blue hedgehog with supersonic speed, had reached 1.77 billion in combined series sales and free-to-play mobile downloads by 2024. Sega counts it as its flagship. Three Japanese developers created it:…

  23 min
• PlayStationThe morning after Sony unveiled its PlayStation in 1991, Nintendo dropped the deal.

  14 min
• XboxMicrosoft tested the name Xbox as the option it expected to lose. Instead, it scored highest in consumer surveys.

  10 min
• Mortal KombatMortal Kombat began as a planned Jean-Claude Van Damme movie game, but the deal fell through.

  11 min
• MinecraftMinecraft, the 2011 sandbox game from the Swedish company Mojang Studios, tells its only story through a poem of roughly 1,500 words. The End Poem was written by the Irish novelist Julian Gough. It scrolls past in about nine minutes when a…

  25 min
• World of WarcraftVice summed up World of Warcraft in 2019 with a single sentence. "Most people," it wrote, "know someone who's said they were 'addicted' to World of Warcraft." The game came from Blizzard Entertainment, which released it for Windows and…

  20 min
• Super MarioSuper Mario is a Nintendo platform game series, and in the United Kingdom the wider Mario franchise is recognized by 91% of adults. That makes it the most famous video game franchise there. Shigeru Miyamoto created the series, and its star…

  18 min
• Video gameThe North American home video game market crashed in 1983 after dozens of companies cloned popular games.

  9 min
• AtariAtari took its name from a warning in the board game Go. In Go, atari means a group of stones is in danger of capture.

  11 min
• Pac-ManPac-Man was first called Puck Man, until executives feared vandals would change the P to an F.

  12 min
• Final FantasyHironobu Sakaguchi planned to quit games if Final Fantasy failed. The 1987 role-playing game saved Square instead.

  11 min
• Space InvadersSpace Invaders sped up as aliens vanished by accident, and its designer kept the quirk.

  14 min
• TetrisTetris holds a strange record among video games. It has appeared on at least 70 platforms, more than any other game. Guinness World Records also counts roughly 220 official versions, each with its own music and images. The puzzle was…

  26 min
• Doom (franchise)Doom is an American media franchise created by five people: John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, and Tom Hall. Its hero never receives a proper name. Players call him Doomguy, the Doom Marine, or, in later entries, the…

  15 min