Games

Fun Facts About Games

• Arcade Space Invaders was a massive hit in Japan when it was released in 1978. It temporarily caused a nationwide shortage of 100-yen coins.
• Board Most people think of Monopoly when thinking about popular board games. But it's a relatively recent game compared to Senet — the world's oldest board game. Senet dates back over 5,000 years and has been found in Egyptian tombs.
• Card Poker and Solitaire are consistent top contenders for the most popular card game using the standard 52-card deck. But Bridge, Spades and Hearts are close competitors, while Go Fish, War and Crazy Eights are the most commonly played family games, especially in the U.S.
• Computer Tennis for Two predates Atari's Pong by over a decade for the earliest interactive electronic game. Created in 1958, players used knobs and buttons to control a dot on an analog computer with cathode-ray tube display.
• Dice The ancient Greeks used the knucklebones of sheep, goats and cattle as dice precursors. These objects, which have four distinct resting sides, have been found in excavations dating back 8,000 years and paved the way for the cubical dice we know today.
• Role-Playing Dungeons & Dragons is widely recognized as the first commercially available fantasy role-playing game with cooperative storytelling, character development, and abstract combat. Created in 1974, it evolved from the earlier wargame Chainmail (1971) which sent players' miniature figures into large-scale tactical battles under rigid rules.
• Puzzles The first jigsaw puzzle was invented in 1760 by a mapmaker and engraver. He pasted maps onto wood and cut them along national borders to teach geography to children. Initially very expensive and aimed at wealthy families, the concept quickly spread and eventually evolved into the modern jigsaw puzzle.
• War The popular board game Risk was first released in France and the U.S. in the late-1950s. But it was hardly the first in the world. That was a wargame invented in Prussia in 1780, designed to teach military strategy to officers. Players moved pieces square-by-square on a large, terrain-based board which could be arranged differently for varied battlefields.