I promise my review of Viva Pinata 2 is forthcoming. The good news is, I've been playing it a ton, the bad news, it's hard to tear me away long enough to write about it. I almost have the Jeli...

I found this interesting article today on the ol' CBC website, and thought it was worth a note to gamers and game enthusiasts alike. This week marks the 50th anniversary of video games!

Tennis for Two - created by William Higinbotham, an atomic scientist and Bob Dvorak, an engineer - was developed post WWII when Higgenbottom found a description of how one of his lab computers could calculate ballistic missile trajectories and modified it to create the game.

"With some minor programming modifications, he discovered that he could turn the ballistics demonstration into a manually-controlled game resembling tennis. Higinbotham had Dvorak hook up the computer to an oscilloscope, a five-inch screen used to display electric voltages, and add a pair of box-shaped controllers, each with a knob and a button.

The resultant game resembled a tennis court, as seen from the side. A horizontal line represented the court while a short vertical line in the middle was the net. Players could control the ball's direction and speed with the knob on the controller and hit it with the button."

"Tennis for Two," as it was dubbed, was a simple reworking of the analog computer's basic functions. To Higinbotham, it was no big deal."

Happy Birthday Video Games! My how far you've come...

Read the entire CBC article to find out more about the birth of gaming - Video games turn 50