![]() Nintendo followed up the Nintendo World Championships with their PowerFest to promote the SNES. State champions got a TV and a free trip to Florida for the finals, with the grand prize winner getting a trip to San Francisco to tour GamePro, EA and Capcom’s offices. This tournament toured 29 cities across the US, and participants clashed for prizes including a $10K savings bond, a 1990 Geo Metro convertible and Nintendo systems.ĭoom, a hit first-person shooter (FPS), became one of the first online competitive multiplayer games with a 4-player deathmatch mode.īlockbuster Video holds their first Video Game Challenge, which gave competitors the choice to rack up a high score at their local Blockbuster in either Super Nintendo (SNES) or Sega Genesis games. The 26 gold cartridges are some of the most valuable collectibles in gaming history, with one having sold in 2014 for $100K! The new console powerhouse Nintendo, with the wildly successful NES, started the “Nintendo World Championships”, which featured a six-minute, 21 second triathlon of Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer and Tetris, all bundled together on a special grey or gold cartridge. The 90s ushered in large national gaming competitions as well as more widespread internet access to the general public. Netrek was a real-time strategy mixed with a shooter that allowed up to 16 players to capture the opposing team’s planets within the Star Trek universe. ![]() The Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System are released, 8-bit home consoles that bring an end to the era of arcade dominanceĪ milestone year for online gaming, 1988 brought us Netrek, one of the first online games and the first online team game/multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), an ancestor to games like League of Legends and DOTA. Later that summer, Day founded the first US National Video Game Team, taking the helm as team captain. The UK had a similarly popular show called First Class that ran around the same time, indicating the interest in esports wasn’t only limited to the US.ĭay tours the US with Billy Mitchell, who set the highest overall score for Donkey Kong in 1982, and a host of other skilled arcade players in the “Electronic Circus”. It ran for four seasons (133 episodes), with winners competing for arcade game cabinets and other prizes. He called this database the “Twin Galaxies National Scoreboard”, officializing the scores of various games and arranging competitions between top players all around the US.Īdditionally, 1982 brought us STARCADE!, a TV game show which featured contestants facing off in arcade games to get the highest cumulative score and included video game-related trivia. The public attention on video game tournaments was further cemented with the release of the original Tron movie, a cult classic which raked in $50 million at the box office on a $17 million dollar budget.Īround this time in 1982, a man named Walter Day founded Twin Galaxies, Inc, created a database of arcade records he gathered after visiting over 100 video game arcades. This was a clear indicator that competitive gaming had arrived in the culture. Over 10,000 gamers gathered around Atari 2600 consoles and rear-projection TVs in what is now often cited as the first esports event. Atari held their Space Invaders Championship in Los Angeles, after several regional qualifiers.
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