Free Games Overview
Gaming often requires you to purchase expensive software or hardware units in order to play. Video games are big business. In 2007 we saw Halo 3 do 170 million dollars in sales on the first day of its release. Halo is the blockbuster hit franchise from Microsoft which scored the grandest opening ever recorded in entertainment history. Other well known names thrown into the 2007 gaming frenzy include Guitar Hero III from Activision, World of Warcraft from Vivendi’s Blizzard Entertainment and the Wii from Nintendo. The Wii was considered to be the most sought after present for the holiday season. But there are many free games online for the gamer who wishes to save a buck.
The oldest computer game is called Noughts And Crosses which is basically Tic-Tac-Toe. A.S. Douglas programmed this game in 1952 for his PhD dissertation at the University of Cambridge. He was studying the interaction between humans and computers, and at the time the game could not be played beyond the university. The World Wide Web was not developed at that time, but if you went to specific universities you could get computer time on the mainframe to play certain games. William Higinbotham created a game called Tennis for Two in 1958. This evolved into PONG which featured two-dimensional graphics. Atari released PONG in 1972, and it became the first commercially successful arcade video game. Other early games include Computer Space and Spacewar! You can find versions of these classics as free games online.
The genres of free games on the Internet are numerous. Adventure and action games involve war or fighting games where you attack enemy bases after overcoming obstacles such as rivers and canyons. You may have to fight zombies or aliens or some other virtual foe. Arcade games have the games we remember from video arcades of the 1980s. You can find free versions of such classics as Pac Man, Ms Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Centipede, Tron, Super Mario Brothers and dozens more. Sports games are very popular. You may be able to compete against a second player or the computer itself. Your choices include basketball, football, golf, tennis and dozens of other sports. If sports or action is not your cup of tea, puzzle games are popular. Mahjong, Sudoku and many more will keep you entertained for hours. Free games are so plentiful that it seems silly to pay for them.
