1958: Willy Higinbotham of the Brookhaven National Laboratories in New York, devises a table tennis game that can be played on an oscilloscope. Seeing no commercial or scientific potential for the game, he fails to patent it. Doh!
1967: Ralph Baer, often dubbed the father of video games, invents the first game console.
1972: Year Zero. Magnavox begins manufacturing The Odyssey, Baer's pioneering commercial TV games system. Pong, the still-beloved rudimentary tennis game, appears in bars and amusement arcades. Atari is formed.
1977: The Atari 2600, the first home console to use cartridges, is launched on an enthusiastic market. Children stop reading books.
1978: Space Invaders, a cultural phenomenon of intergalactic proportions, throbs sideways into our lives. The Zeitgeist is rapidly colonised.
1980: Pac-Man, non-violent, though poignantly mortal, begins scurrying about his maze. Significantly, the game appeals to both genders.
1983: The great crash. Atari's shares plummet as punters appear to tire of video games. It's all over. Children begin reading books again.
1985: It's not all over. The Nintendo Entertainment System is launched and rapidly makes a star of Super Mario (and his brothers), pictured right. What are these books you speak of?
1989: The Nintendo Game Boy, a portable system, is launched. It has notable success with a surprisingly cerebral puzzle game entitled Tetris.
1994: The Sony PlayStation, which takes CDs rather than cartridges, arrives just in time for the economic boom in Ireland.
1996: Tomb Raider turns Lara Croft, a generously bottomed archaeologist, into the first virtual sex symbol.
2001: Microsoft belatedly enters the gaming business with the X-Box.
2006: Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, who between them now dominate the home gaming market, line up for the most hotly-contested console derby yet. PlayStation 3, though not launched until November, starts as ante-post favourite.
