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LEVEL ONE
Premiere: Wednesday, Nov. 21, at 8 p.m. ET/PT
In the 1950s, the Cold War quickly evolved between the world superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union. Mutually assured destruction enforced an uneasy stalemate, yet also drove computer technology to create missile simulations to predict the results of a nuclear war. This same computer technology was used to develop the first computer game in 1958 — Tennis for Two. The Space Race and the Vietnam war coincided with Steve Russell's game Space War! and the emergence of the first true giants in the video game business — Nolan Bushnell and Atari. In post-World War II Japan, electronics and computer technology emerged to rebuild a land and economy devastated by the atomic bomb. Space Invaders and Pac-Man soon followed, and the golden age of video games was born. Among others, individuals featured in this episode include Steve Russell, Nolan Bushnell, Ralph Baer (considered by many to be the inventor of the video game) and Toru Iwatani (Pac-Man designer). Video games emerged as a form of entertainment where the player was in control, as opposed to the more passive diversion of watching television.