Willy Higinbotham creates a tennis game on an oscilloscope and analog computer for public demonstration at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958. Although dismantled two years later and largely forgotten, it anticipated later video games.

Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn of Atari develop an arcade table tennis game. When they test it in Andy Capps Tavern in Sunnyvale, California, it stops working. Why? Because people played it so much it jammed with quarters. Pong, an arcade legend, is born.

A missing slice of pizza inspires Namco’s Toru Iwatani to create Pac-Man, which goes on sale in July 1980. That year a version of Pac-Man for Atari 2600 becomes the first arcade hit to appear on a home console. Two years later, Ms. Pac-Man strikes a blow for gender equality by becoming the best-selling arcade game of all time.

Russian mathematician Alexey Pajitnov creates Tetris, a simple but addictive puzzle game. The game leaks out from behind the Iron Curtain, and five years later, Nintendo bundles it with every new Game Boy.

Nintendo’s Game Boy popularizes handheld gaming. Game Boy is not the first handheld system with interchangeable cartridges—Milton Bradley introduced Microvision 10 years earlier—but it charms users with its good game play, ease of use, and long battery life.

Concern about bloodshed in games such as Mortal Kombat prompts United States Senate hearings on video game violence. The controversy riles the industry and prompts the creation of a video game rating system. Ironically, that same year the game Doom popularizes “first person shooters.”

Lara Croft debuts as the star of Eidos’s adventure game Tomb Raider. Players love her, but critics charge that she’s an example of sexism in video games.

Nintendo maintains its dominance of the handheld market with the Nintendo DS, an easy-to-use, portable gaming system packed with two processors, two screens, multiplayer capabilities, and a stylus for the touchscreen. Great games like Super Mario Kart DS helped too.

Microsoft enters the video game market with Xbox and hit games like Halo: Combat Evolved. Four years later, Xbox 360 gains millions of fans with its advanced graphics and seamless online play.

Social games like Farmville and mobile games like Angry Birds shake up the games industry. Millions of people who never would have considered themselves gamers now while away hours playing games on new platforms like Facebook and the iPhone.

Gone Home, The Last of Us, and Papers, Please usher in a new wave of mature video game stories that confront players with tough emotional choices in ethically-complex worlds.

As smartphones and tablets become more popular as gaming platforms, Nintendo’s Switch is a hybrid that blends mobile and console experiences. The innovative system allows players to take hit games like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey with them wherever they go.