Gaming 003: Show Me Your Bits!
In Gaming 002: Attack of the Arcade Era! we covered some gaming ground in the late 70’s to early-80’s time period. Arcades were in full swing, and home video systems like the Atari 2600 were on the rise, thanks to a revolution in cheap computer chips entering the market. These processors were not powerful by todays standards, but were more than capable of running a wide variety of new electronic toys and games, and were cheap enough that they could be put into products that were affordable by an average family.
The problem companies hoping to leverage this exciting new technology faced was what to do about the output. Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) had not yet entered the retail world, and were very much still a science project in the late 1970s. In a few years they would come to dominate cheap handheld toys and games, and later take over the computer monitor from the CRT.
But in the 1970s, LCDs were not an option for anyone wanting to make an electronic game, or even a watch. (LED watches however became popular in the mid 70’s, but were so power-hungry you had to push a button to turn it on, because it could not be on all the time or the battery would go dead — Looking at you, Smart Watch!)
