1.Pong was a great hit when itcame out. Move your cursor toget the slides to bounce backthe moving square -- it willspeed up as you progress.That same year, Magnavox offeredthe first home video game system.Dubbed the Odyssey, it did noteven have a microprocessor! Thecore of the system was a boardwith about four-dozen transistorsand diodes. The Odyssey was very(Read this paragraph first)Video games have beenlimited -- it could only produce veryaround since the early 1970s. The first commercialsimple graphics, and required thatarcade video game, Computer Space by Nuttingcustom plastic overlays be tapedAssociates, was introduced in 1971. In 1972, Atariover the television screen. In 1975,introduced Pong to the arcades. An interesting item Atari introduced a home version ofto note is that Atari was formed by Nolan Bushnell, its popular arcade game, Pong.the man who developed Computer Space. He left The original home version of PongNutting Associates to found Atari, which then was sold exclusively through Sears,produced Pong, the first truly successful and even carried the Sears logo.commercial arcade video gamePong was a phenomenal success,opening the door to the future ofhome video games.Although the Fairchild Channel F,released in 1976, was the first trueremovable game system, Atarionce again had the first suchsystem to be a commercialsuccess. Introduced in 1977 as theAtari Video Computer System(VCS), the 2600 used removablecartridges, allowing a multitude ofgames to be played using the samehardware.The hardware in the 2600 was

2. Playing video games demands an interactive involvement of the players. As a player, youstart identifying with some character in the game and act for it. This excited state of mindhas a positive effect on the player. It is also said that playing video games is surely betterthan watching television as video games are interactive.Playing video games involves problem solving, planning, estimation and analysis of themoves or actions of both you and your opponent. This affects the player positively bydeveloping in him/her problem-solving skills, analytical and estimation skills and quickdecision-making.In playing video games, you need to manage your resources such as the time, your armoror your people. This is a virtual activity but it evolves abilities of resource managementand testing. You learn to recognize the types of situations and react to them withdetermination. You learn to map the virtual world scenarios to those in the real world. 3. Video games have always been infamous for theiranti-social aspect and the violence that is shown inthem. They have been seen as negatively affectingthe players in terms of lack of social skills,inefficiency, obesity and laziness. We lack anunbiased view, thus not being able to experience thepositive effects of video games. The negativitiesbrought in by video games are due to the unrestrictedduration for which they are played. Video games arepopular among the children and the youngsters ofAmerica. If there is no limit to the time for which achild is allowed to play a video game or nosupervision on the way in which the game is played,the not-so-positive effects of video games will startshowing.Health problems;If you spend all of your free time playing videogames and skip meals or lose sleep because ofyour excessive game play, a video gameaddiction can negatively impact your health. TheMayo Clinic notes that children who spend morethan two hours a day in front of a television orvideo games in lieu of participating in physicalactivity may suffer from childhood obesity. Inaddition, the University of Texas at Dallas notesthat the addiction can lead to such medicalissues as backaches, headaches, eyestrain andcarpal tunnel syndrome--pain and numbness thatyou may feel in your wrists, hands, shouldersand elbows. 4. The Wii is a home video gameconsole released by Nintendoon November 19, 2006. As aseventh-generation console,the Wii competes withMicrosofts Xbox 360 andSonys PlayStation 3. Nintendostates that its console targets abroader demographic than thatof the two others. As of the firstquarter of 2012, the Wii leadsthe generation over thePlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 inworldwide sales, and inDecember 2009, the consolebroke the record for best-sellingconsole in a single month in theUnited States. 5. Todays U.S. military recruits enjoy anarsenal of simulators and videogames that sharpen their fightingskills and may even protect them fromthe mental stresses of combat. Butexperts caution that virtual realitycould also help mask the reality ofwar.That has not stopped the military fromembracing video games to recruit andtrain a young generation of gamerswho typically play commercial gamessuch as "Modern Warfare 2," whichpassed $1 billion in sales in January. 6. There is a huge hype surrounding the launch of every new game system - Game Cube, Xbox, and Sony PlayStation 2 being just few of the latest.Affecting children age 4 all the way to 45 year-old adults, these video games have called for concern in our society regarding issues such asaddiction, depression, and even aggression related to the playing of video games. A recent study of children in their early teens found that almosta third played video games daily, and that 7% played for at least 30 hours a week. What is more, some of these games being played like MortalCombat, Marvel Vs. Capcom, and Doom are very interactive in the violence of slaughtering the opponent. The video game industries even putsigns like "Real-life violence" and "Violence level - not recommended for children under age of 12" on their box covers, arcade fronts, and evenon the game CDs themselves.In the modern popular game Goldeneye 007 bad guys no longer disappear in a cloud of smoke when killed. Instead they perform an elaboratemaneuver when killed. For example, those shot in the neck fall to their knees and then face while clutching at their throats. Other games such asUnreal Tournament and Half-Life are gorier. In these games when characters get shot a large spray of blood covers the walls and floor near thecharacter, and on the occasions when explosives are used, the characters burst into small but recognizable body parts. In spite of the violence,the violent video games are also the more popular games on the market. When video games first came out, indeed they were addictive...however, there seems to be a strong correlation now between the violent nature of games these days and the aggressive tendencies in gameplayers. 7. The portrayal of women in video games has oftenbeen the subject of both academic studies andcontroversy. Two recurring themes are the level ofindependence of female characters from their malecounterparts, and their objectification andsexualization. Early portrayals presented women in subsidiary roles,dependent of a male protagonist. More modern videogames have evolved to include women in active andself-reliant attitudes, but in some cases have alsoincreased the level of physical attractiveness cateringto the audience of male players. Controversy centerson the same lines of the portrayal of women ingeneral media including sexism, the girl treated as anarchetype, and violence towards women. The latterhas been perceived as being aggravated by theinteractivity inherent to the media. 8. It was a heartbreaking end to aremarkable three-week search for ateen who had run away over anXbox.On the ground, hundreds of policeand volunteers trudged throughmuddy fields outside Barrie, while incyberspace police officers probedthe virtual world of online gaming.Morning, all hope of finding 15-year-old Brandon Crisp alive was lostwhen deer hunters found the bodyof a teen in a heavily wooded area.Police said the body, which appearsto be Brandon, was found about twokilometres from where the boysabandoned bicycle was found twoweeks earlier.