Martin Green <Martin_Green@CONSUMERSGAS.COM> wrote:
>      Consider this a vote for Pong as the first video game.

It's not something that needs to be voted on.

Computer Space was the first commercial coin-operated video arcade game.
It was manufactured and sold by Nutting Associates in 1972.

Pong was introduced in 1973, and was the first >successful< coin-op
video game.

The coin-op Space Wars was introduced by Cinematronics in 1978.

Both Computer Space and Space Wars were based on what may have been the
first non-commercial computer video game:  "Spacewar!", written in 1962
by Steve "Slug" Russell for the DEC PDP-1 computer.

        http://ars-www.uchicago/~eric/lore/spacewar/spacewar.html

There's a PDP-1 simulator in Java that runs Spacewar!:

        http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/spacewar/