Where did modern day gaming really come from?

[Mnementh]

robzo100 said:

This is more of a flat out question, and although there may be some objective and factual answers I imagine a lot of people have their own opinion since there's bound to be some legitimate unknowns.  Me personally, I'm just not really sure and now the question is really eating at my curiosity.  Here's all I really know in vague chunks

 

• Arcades started in America and pinball machines were essential their predecessors.  But when did Arcades start in Japan?  And was the overlap unrelated?
• I know there were some home console attempts in the US before the NES came along, but the NES is where modern console gaming finally "launched."
• But why Japan?  Why did home console gaming appeal so much to Japan and the US?  Was it beause they were economically stable enough to have a financially able customer base?  Why didn't Europe catch on fire with this new entertainment like America (maybe "American consumerism?).

What are the major milestones and then some of the smaller ones in between?

 

1. I don't know.

2. No. The first and second gen formed the third (NES). This created a market, showed the basics what to do. Nintendo was present and learned how to do things. And it showed the problems, with the gaming-crash. So I would say, without Atari and the others in first and second gen the NES would look different or wouldn't even happened. So console-gaming launched really with the the first two gens.

3. Japan was big enough to sustain a manufacturer alone and closed enough to stay mostly free of the influence of the gaming-crash. That's why Japan. The US is simply a big but mostly homogen market (same rules, same currency, same language) and also wealthy in a global scale. That's why it is a good target for every consumer-product. Europe may be wealthy, but it has different languages and had back then different currencies and different laws.

You also might want to look at these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_video_game

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_game#History