When was the first home video game released and what was it?

Answer 1

Technically the first home game system was the "Odyssey" made by Ralph Baer, distributed through Magnavox, and it didn't seem to have named games. It probably did, and I just don't know them. That's 7 years before I was born. :) I think it was 1972 when the Odyssey came out. Atari came out with "Pong" on a home system (not arcade) in 1975. So technically Odyssey, but to name an actual game, I would say Pong on the Atari.

The list of games for The Odyssey

Analogic, Baseball, Basketball, Brain Wave, Cat & Mouse, Dogfight, Football, Fun Zoo, Handball, Haunted House, Hockey, Invasion, Interplanetary Voyage, Percepts, Prehistoric Safari, Roulette, Shooting Gallery, Shootout, Simon Says (in 1978 the designer Ralph Baer created the electronic game for Mattel), Ski, Soccer, States, Submarine, Table Tennis (the first version of Pong that was copied by Atari and sued by Magnavox, Magnavox won) , Tennis, Volleyball, Win, Wipeout.

It was first available in 1972 and discontinued in 1975 selling 330,000 units.

There was actually one that preceded the odyssey but it was also created by Ralph Baer. It wasn't actually a system, per se, but it was a converted cathode ray tube TV made to play a game he called "come catch me". Where a red square chased a green square. No score was recorded, the game simply reset each time the squares touched.

not sure if these TV's were sold but i am certain that they were prototypes of home Video Games. Magnavox was the only company to take Ralph's new technology at the time.

I think a predecessor to pong was also created before importing it to the odyssey, which also didn't record score. it came with paper and pencils though!

First game came out in 1966, which was pong, but the first time it was fully functional was in 1967.

I believe from my research it was a game called Space Wars, 1961. However that was not popular at all. Pong took the title of the first video game, 1972. :)