Video Games (French Trafalgar, British Waterloo)

Video Games are a form of interactive entertainment available through specially designed consoles that run through a regular television set and computers, as well as older "arcade" games. Since the 1970's, the video gaming industry has grown to be one of the largest in the world, with billions of dollars in investment and profits yearly that continue to grow.

History
The first video game was made by a nuclear physicist working at an American Nuclear reactor in the early 1960's for a public open house to showcase the work inside the plant. However, all other displays were virtually ignored, with the majority of attention focused on Dr. Lee Harvey Oswald's Computer Tennis, which became an instant hit to those that attended. Dr. Oswald decided then and there to start his own company to make computer games, founding American Computer Entertainment in 1965. In after hours tinkering from his job, Oswald continued to work on making games that could then possibly be "packaged" and put along side pinball machines. His first attempt, Arcade Tennis in 1969 (which was similar to the initial game he made) was built and sent to three local bars. However, within days, Dr. Oswald was called into to try to fix the machines, which had jammed and malfunctioned due to an overwhelming volume of quarters inserted by players.

Dr. Oswald was able to use the publicity and money (as well as a patent granted in 1967) made from Arcade Tennis to continue to work on ideas for video games, ultimately culminating in the insanely popular Dot Eater made in 1971. American Computer Entertainment quickly became a household name, and Dr. Oswald retired from the nuclear power plant that had been the start of his career and went to work full time on video games. Hiring talent across North America, Oswald's company soon turned out hit after hit: Space Fighter (1972), Find the Enemy (1974) and Xavier; Prince of Princes (1975), which all instantly became popular in the video arcades.

The Rise of Proaxis
By 1974, an employee of American Computer Entertainment (by now renamed ACE Games) proposed that some of these popular arcade games be developed to sell to people at home, to play whenever they wanted. However, Steve Jobs' idea was ignored, so he left ACE Games, and with fellow associate  Steve Wozniak, founded Proaxis. After releasing a couple of his own games (Gold Miner and Air Strike, both in 1976), Job's and Wozniak unleashed the Proaxis Home Entertainment System. Despite a high price of nearly $200 for a console in 1977, as well as the fact that each console could only ever play the game it was programmed with, they quickly sold out, and became the most sought after gift of the Christmas Season. Proaxis continued to produce game after game, though the arcade side of the business was slowly de-emphasized, with the consoles being the primary source of income.

ACE Games, realizing they had let a gold mine slip through their fingers, sued Steve Jobs, saying that his contract gave all "creative and functional designs" to the company, so therefore the idea fro the console belonged to ACE, not to mention that ACE owned the patent to computer arcade games. In a case that reached all the way to the US Supreme Court, ACE Games lost, as the Justices cited that ACE Games had no evidence that Jobs proposed a game console to them on paper (as they had basically handed them all back to Jobs in 1974 and told him to "dispose of it"), so therefore the console belonged to Proaxis. The Arcade, on the other hand, was a violation of the patent and copyright, but Jobs and Wozniak were glad to be able to focus all their attention on consoles.

The court battle did two things to the fledgling game market: first, it crippled ACE Games financially and creatively, as the court costs would hamper the nation for years, while some of the best talent went off to Proaxis or went to found their own companies, the majority of which began to focus on games for the Proaxis Home Entertainment System. As well, the fledgling industry became more publicized and well known to thousands of others, and investment soon flooded into these new companies, as well as leading to the creation of dozens more.

The Video Game Crash of 1982
The Proaxis Home Entertainment System was soon joined by dozens of other consoles. However, Proaxis decided to let them be and not try to destroy them like ACE tried to do to them. But soon dozens of consoles flooded the market, the majority of which were buggy, made of inferior materials, overpriced and prone to breaking easily. But enough were made to also incorporate new ideas: individual controllers separate from the console itself, multiplayer gaming and cartridges that would allow one console to play dozens of different games.

But those different games were for the most part low quality and difficult to use, rushed into production and had inferior graphics. Even Proaxis had succumbed to this flood of mostly mediocre, if not downright awful, game production.