My day with Ralph Baer

admin1 · April 18, 2006, 3:59pm

All,

Thought you may be interested to see some photos and video of my day at Ralph Baer’s home For those that are too young ;), Ralph Baer is THE father of the video game industry. He created the first home videogame system in 1967 back ad Sanders Associates and the technology became the Magnavox Odyssey. I got to actually play on the 40 year old ORIGINAL Brown Box prototype against it’s creator. AWESOME!

Check it out here: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/ChrisM/20060418

-Chris

Matzon · April 18, 2006, 6:48pm

Damn you! ;D
nice pics - love the vidclips from the 70’ies

Tzan · April 18, 2006, 11:15pm

Wow, awsome stuff Chris!

I’m saving a copy of those old demo clips.

K.I.L.E.R · April 19, 2006, 4:39am

WOW!
Very interesting.

Off to tell some friends

erikd · April 25, 2006, 5:07am

Wow, that must have been a great experience!

Here’s a nice article on the odyssey and Ralph Baer:
http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/odyssey/index.shtml

Mr_Light · May 9, 2006, 1:28pm

I feel young again horray ;D

Schabby · September 10, 2006, 1:36pm

Hehe, not exactly my generation anymore but thanks for the history lesson! ;D

What’s the gun doing on this photo? http://blogs.sun.com/ChrisM/resource/RB15s.jpg

tortoise · September 10, 2006, 1:37pm

It’s a light gun, ala the NES zapper. Technically light guns are easy to implement, so Ralph made one for his console.

Schabby · September 10, 2006, 1:48pm

A light gun in the seventies? Doesn’t it require complicated sensors? How does it work?

meshounah · November 30, 2007, 3:01am

the light gun(the NES one) works by the game first replacing the sprite to shoot with a big white box and the light gun reports whether it detected this box… however IIRC the NES gun will not work on digital T.Vs due to the refresh rate.

princec · June 22, 2008, 4:39pm

(Think it’s time the sticky was taken off this one)

Cas

h3ckboy · February 9, 2009, 3:27pm

sweet. how long has this been sticky? but heck it is cool.

admin1 · February 9, 2009, 5:26pm

Sticky for a long time, and it will stay that way A lot of people have been able to discover the materials and they have made their way to other sites. Because it is a historical collection of sorts, I’ll keep a pin in this

-Chris

h3ckboy · February 9, 2009, 5:58pm

OK, but really though how long haas it been up?

lhkbob · March 6, 2009, 9:20pm

Since April 18, 2006, when the first post occurred.

h3ckboy · March 7, 2009, 7:04am

wow :o, that is a long time sticky.

appel · March 25, 2009, 12:45am

I remember spending a day with Alan Cox and Eric Raymond almost a decade ago. Myself and other buddies got these guys to visit us and give talks at computer and Linux-dedicated conferences.

It’s fun to stand in the presence of these guys, one of the main developers of Linux and one of the brain behind the open-source movement. But oh man, if I ever became famous like them, please don’t make me look (or smell) like them!