Where did modern day gaming really come from?

nuckles87 said:

The Atari VCS (later known as 2600) was the first widely successful cartridge based gaming console. Before that we had the success of hardwired games like Atari's Pong.

 

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking.

But I just checked, and apparently the Magnavox actually used "a type of removable printed circuit board, called a game card, that inserts into a slot similar to a ROM cartridge slot".

What?  The Magnavox used removable media?  The first video game console ever?  Now, that does surprise me.  I thought that all games were dedicated platforms back then!