ABSTRACT
The 1970s was a decade of technological revolution in the consumer sector that reshaped the nature of entertainment and productivity. Microprocessors and microcontrollers appeared in calculators, microwave ovens, etc enabling new degrees of speed and automation. The Odyssey was the initial entry in what became known as the first generation of home videogames. The result was a unit capable of only a few simple interactions: a player's square could be removed from the screen by colliding with the opponent's square and a projectile could be bounced between the squares. The adoption of microprocessors brought a number of changes in the physical design and development of games as manufacturers could create more uniform sets of boards, resulting in games that could be produced much faster. Most significantly, it shifted the responsibilities of designing the game from engineers to computer programmers. At the same time a second generation of home consoles began utilizing cartridges, providing an almost limitless library of games.
