Release Date: 1952
Made by: Alexander S. Douglas
Console: EDSAC computer
Bias Disclaimer: Believe it or not, I have participated in several games of Tic Tac Toe in my years so expectations are obviously high.
It’s hard to actually pinpoint the first video game ever created and therefore it's hard to figure out where exactly to start this blog. Around the late 1940’s - early 1950’s it seemed like everyone spontaneously decided that now was the perfect time to implement games onto those very expensive and humongous room-filling computers (you know the ones). Virtually all of these early video games featured the concept of simulating basic games that already existed in real life, such as Tic Tac Toe, which left little room for the creative exploration that is common in the medium we know and love today. These games are obviously not really on the same level as games designed for commercial use and nor were they supposed to be. The primary focus of these primitive games was for research purposes only, often being used to showcase how powerful those behemoth machines that ran them were at the time. In fact, the exclusivity of these games was mainly due to their academic and technological constructs and is the reason why we can't be sure what the first video game ever created was. There was simply not a way to share their unique and often immovable machinery and the nature of the research didn't necessarily make them prime public news at the time so many games that were created then have been either forgotten or lost over the ensuing years.
Alan Turing seems to somewhat have started it though by creating the first computer program for Chess in the late 1940's. This was of course despite the fact that no machine at the time was powerful enough to actually run it. By the time a computer good enough had been constructed, it took a half an hour for each individual move to actually take place...so you can see why we’re skipping that one right off the bat.
A previous Tic Tac Toe game had also been created before OXO for a machine known as 'Bertie the Brain' though most people would challenge that this is not a video game anyways as it lacked moving simulated graphics. The computer basically just interacted with a giant pre-constructed light-up external game board so there wasn't much difference between it and say, a lamp.
However, our titular OXO and a checkers simulator called English Draughts were the first games to be displayed on an actual screen with actual computer graphics that we know of so I think it's safe to say that this may be the closest we'll get to figuring out what the first true video game was. As for choosing which one to review, it honestly doesn't matter that much in the long run. They are both simulations of games that already exist and their importance doesn't really lie in the gameplay. But for the sake of getting this show on the road, OXO has a wealth of information about it on the internet and English Draughts seems to only possess a silly name, so OXO wins by default.
A previous Tic Tac Toe game had also been created before OXO for a machine known as 'Bertie the Brain' though most people would challenge that this is not a video game anyways as it lacked moving simulated graphics. The computer basically just interacted with a giant pre-constructed light-up external game board so there wasn't much difference between it and say, a lamp.
However, our titular OXO and a checkers simulator called English Draughts were the first games to be displayed on an actual screen with actual computer graphics that we know of so I think it's safe to say that this may be the closest we'll get to figuring out what the first true video game was. As for choosing which one to review, it honestly doesn't matter that much in the long run. They are both simulations of games that already exist and their importance doesn't really lie in the gameplay. But for the sake of getting this show on the road, OXO has a wealth of information about it on the internet and English Draughts seems to only possess a silly name, so OXO wins by default.
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EDSAC computer control desk at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory
But again, it’s not really the content of the game that gets OXO all of its much deserved praise and attention; it’s really just the technology. These early games were all developed to showcase how powerful the machines that ran them truly were and indeed, they were absolutely marvels of their time. Computers that were able to run a variety of tasks were not previously heard of before the war so anything that could showcase this particular step up were heavily commended. The EDSAC computer that ran OXO was used to create many techniques that are still found in operating systems today and featured a kick-ass rotary dial as one of its input mechanisms. Honestly I’m not sure that we can’t just go ahead and call OXO the first phone game since it used that rotary dial as a controller, but let’s skip ahead to the actual review.
The game itself has a slight learning curve when it comes to the simulated interface. Replicating a computer from the 50’s onto our modern day technology takes some rather drastic adjustments that leave you grasping for something familiar to latch on to. The rotary dial which was part of the physical input for the original system is now navigated with a mouse, which you know didn’t even exist back in the day and the gameplay involves you ‘dialing’ the different numbers in order to place your X’s on the grid (hitting 1 starts you off in the bottom right area, 2 places an 'X' in the bottom middle etc.) It’s definitely not an interface for the uninformed, but the controls are fairly simple once you’ve stopped panicking. The Tic Tac Toe part of the game manages to play well as is expected for such a basic game and I think it’s fairly poetic that one of the first video games ever created simulates one of the oldest known games from real life.
How 99% of Tic Tac Toe games end.
Links: If you’re looking to play the game for yourself, I have to say you may be out of luck. There was an EDSAC simulator available here but it seems that the software is currently unavailable for whatever reason and may or may not make a reappearance in the future.
If you want to play a broken version of the game you can make an attempt at this link here. It’s the one I initially used before I realized that the browser game is terribly programmed and doesn’t actually work at all (originally I thought I was just not understanding how to work something so old school but turns out someone else just doesn’t know how to work new school flash).
But a better idea of what the game simulated for modern day is actually like can be found here on Youtube where several people thankfully got an emulator to work and recorded it for the rest of us nerds.
If you are just interested in playing a good old game of tic tac toe however, you can do that here or really on any spare piece of paper laying around your room.
Next update be prepared because we’ll actually be playing a game ourselves! Who would’ve thought?
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