AUSTIN — The Austin Game Developers Conference this week played host to a small museum of priceless gaming artifacts.
The University of Texas Videogame Archive had a booth in the exhibitors hall at the Austin GDC. Chief among the archive’s collectibles is a perfect replica of Ralph Baer’s “Brown Box”, a prototype of the world’s first game console, which was originally built in 1968.
The device plays a game that’s similar to Pong. Controllers feature three twisty knobs: one controlling the vertical movement of your avatar (a square), one controlling its horizontal movement, and one putting English on the movement of the ball you’re batting back and forth (a smaller square).
Joel Reed Parker of GameSetWatch was kicking my ass in a two-player match. Luckily, the Brown Box is so primitive that it doesn’t keep score.
More amazing artifacts below.
Warren Spector donated some of his papers to the archive, including this original design document for the game that became Deus Ex.
Here’s an early sketch of a Deus Ex GEP gun.
Finally, here are some issues of vintage game development zines, with contributions by the likes of Dani Bunten (then still going by “Dan”) and Chris Crawford.
Thanks to Zach Vowell of the UT game archive for showing me this great stuff.
*Photos: Chris Baker/Wired.com