"Rise of the Video Game" is a five part series on The Discovery Channel about the history of video games. The first episode aired in November of 2007. The series ran under the tile "I, VIDEOGAME" in Europe.

Episodes

Taken from here

"Level One" - Originally broadcast on November 21, 2007. The first computer game, called Tennis for Two

Tennis for Two

Tennis for Two was a game developed in 1958 on an analog computer, which simulates a game of tennis or ping pong on an oscilloscope. Created by American physicist William Higinbotham, it is important in the history of video games as one of the first electronic games to use a graphical...

, was made in 1958.

"Level Two" - Originally broadcast on November 28, 2007. Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros.

is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist...

, Sonic the Hedgehog

Sonic the Hedgehog (character)

, trademarked Sonic The Hedgehog, is a video game character and the main protagonist of the Sonic video game series released by Sega, as well as in numerous spin-off comics, cartoons, and a feature film. The first game was released on June 23, 1991, to provide Sega with a mascot to rival Nintendo's...

, Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong

is a fictional gorilla in the Donkey Kong and Mario series. He is roughly twice the size of a normal gorilla, weighing approximately 800 pounds. Donkey Kong first appeared in Nintendo's popular 1981 video game of the same name. Since then he has appeared in over 20 games in his own series, as well...

, Zelda

The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda, originally released as in Japan, is a video game developed and published by Nintendo, and designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. Set in the fantasy land of Hyrule, the plot centers on a boy named Link, the playable protagonist, who aims to collect the eight fragments...

, King's Quest

King's Quest

King's Quest is an adventure game series created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installment, the series was primarily responsible for building the reputation...

, Leisure Suit Larry

Leisure Suit Larry

Leisure Suit Larry is a series of adventure games written by Al Lowe and published by Sierra from 1987 to 2009. The main character, whose full name is Larry Laffer, is a balding, dorky, double entendre-speaking, leisure suit-wearing "loser" in his 40s...

, EA Sports

EA Sports

EA Sports is a brand of Electronic Arts that creates and develops sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to mimic real-life sports networks by calling themselves "EA Sports Network" with pictures or endorsements of real commentators such as John...

 and Grand Theft Auto 3 are discussed. An insight to home Video game consoles

Video game console

A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...

 is discussed, including what made the ones that succeeded popular.

"Level Three" - December 5, 2007. This episode discusses three-dimensional video games such as Battlezone

Battlezone

Battlezone is an arcade game from Atari released in 1980. It displays a wireframe view on a horizontal black and white vector monitor...

and Rescue on Fractalus!, and first-person shooters such as Wolfenstein 3D

Wolfenstein 3D

Wolfenstein 3D is a video game that is generally regarded by critics and gaming journalists as having both popularized the first-person shooter genre on the PC and created the basic archetype upon which all subsequent games of the same genre would be built. It was created by id Software and...

, Doom, America's Army

America's Army

America's Army is a series of video games and other media developed by the United States Army and released as a global public relations initiative to help with recruitment. America's Army was conceived by Colonel Casey Wardynski and is managed by the U.S...

, and Full Spectrum Warrior

Full Spectrum Warrior

Full Spectrum Warrior is a real-time tactics videogame. It was developed by the Institute for Creative Technologies in association with Pandemic Studios and published by THQ. It was released on June 1, 2004 for the Xbox, September 21, 2004 for Windows and on March 23, 2005 for the PlayStation 2...

.

"Level Four" - December 12, 2007. Simulation games such as Black and White

Black & White (computer game)

Black & White is a 2001 video game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts and Feral Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh. A god game, it includes elements of artificial life, strategy, and fighting games....

, Sim City and Populous

Populous

-External links:*...

are discussed with their creators such as Will Wright, Peter Molyneux

Peter Molyneux

Peter Douglas Molyneux OBE is an English computer game designer and game programmer. He created the God games Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and Black & White, among others, as well as business simulation games such as Theme Park and more recently, the RPG series Fable.Despite the success of his games,...

 and Sid Meier

Sid Meier

Sidney K. "Sid" Meier is a Canadian programmer and designer of several popular computer strategy games, most notably Civilization. He has won accolades for his contributions to the computer games industry...

.

"Level Five" - December 19, 2007. Internet gaming is discussed.

Errors

• The first video game was "Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device" in 1940.Fallowed by "OXO" by Alexander Douglas in 1952, which was the first Video Game to use memory and actual graphics.

• Tennis for Two
  Tennis for Two
  Tennis for Two was a game developed in 1958 on an analog computer, which simulates a game of tennis or ping pong on an oscilloscope. Created by American physicist William Higinbotham, it is important in the history of video games as one of the first electronic games to use a graphical...
  
  was not the first computer game. OXO
  OXO
  OXO was a computer game written for the EDSAC computer in 1952, an implementation of the game known as Noughts and Crosses in the UK, or tic-tac-toe in the United States. It was written by Alexander S. Douglas as an illustration for his Ph.D. thesis on human-computer interaction for the University...
  
   by Alexander Douglas was the first (1952).

• Sierra's second game was not King's Quest. It was The Wizard and the Princess.

• Battlezone was not first first-person game. Night Driver
  Night Driver
  Night Driver is a 1976 arcade game by Atari Inc. It was one of the earliest first-person racing games, and is believed to be one of the first published games to display real-time first-person graphics....
  
   came long before it.

• Battlezone was not what made the Army look into simulation. At the time Battlezone came out Evans and Sutherland already had highly detailed military simulations.

• Rescue on Fractalus! was not the first game to have first-person flight. In home games it was subLogic
  Sublogic
  Sublogic may refer to:* subLOGIC, a flight simulation company * Sublogic Corporation, a Dutch netlabel...
  
  's Flight Sim

• Doom did not have a higher frame rate than Wolfenstein 3D
  Wolfenstein 3D
  Wolfenstein 3D is a video game that is generally regarded by critics and gaming journalists as having both popularized the first-person shooter genre on the PC and created the basic archetype upon which all subsequent games of the same genre would be built. It was created by id Software and...
  
  . They had the same frame rate.

• Graeme Devine
  Graeme Devine
  Graeme Devine is a computer game designer and programmer who co-founded Trilobyte, created bestselling games The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, and designed id Software's Quake III Arena. He was also Chairman of the International Game Developers Association from 2002-2003...
  
   did not create Pole Position
  Pole Position
  Pole Position is a racing video game released in 1982 by Namco. It was published by Namco in Japan and by Atari, Inc. in the United States...
  
  

• Super Mario Bros. did not introduce Luigi, as he appeared in Mario Bros. much earlier.