If anyone deserves a place here it is Ralph Baer. I'm not sure what the requirements are but it would be nice if someone who was deserving got the honor while they were still alive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_H._Baer
Well he isn't dead yet (although he is 89 and has been ill) and I am sure according to assembler they should be dead. He is a clever chap, inventing the tv video game, only for Atari to steal it, improve it and make pots of money, only for him to come back and steal Touch Me then improve it before Milton Bradley released it as Simon and for them to make pots of money.
I understand that and I am saying that I disagree. As collectors our intentions are to preserve and alive these pioneers can provide so much more than after they are gone. In some cases we do not have that chance but in some cases we do. Perhaps an honor could be reserved for those who have passed on but some attention should be directed now while they are alive. To me the real tragedy of Gumpei Yokoi was not that he received little recognition after he died but while he was alive. If we could go back in time is there anything you would ask Gumpei Yokoi today? Is there something he could share with us which would make a memorial that much more exciting? There is no time machine but today is tomorrow's time machine. To me it seems a waste not to take advantage of that.
Did a report on him years ago and had some questions I asked him via the email on his site (mentioning his history, patents, etc). Pretty cool guy to respond and help me with that. I definitely consider him the Father of Video Games.
With anything this huge there are bound to be disputes. There were two big disputes. One that Higgenbotham was the first to invent the videogame and two that Bushnell invented pong without first viewing Ralph Baer's pong. In a court case vs Nintendo the courts sided with Ralph on the first dispute. The second is harder to sort out. Nolan has publiclly denied seeing Ralph's invention prior to his release of PONG but Ralph who saves everything produced a signed log book showing that Nolan was there at a demonstration. After seeing this invention Nolan asked Al Acorn to design PONG. So Ralph invented it and Nolan saw it and asked Al Acorn to design it. Putting aside these two disputes, Ralph Baer owns ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY patents. He belongs. Read this. http://www.pong-story.com/inventor.htm
I believe my dad met him at one point after college, when he had just built one of these prototypes, and he got to try it. I'll have to ask him about it again, it's been a few years since he told me the story.
I've met him, reached out to him about a gaming venture I was working on a few years ago, he was very helpful. Very nice guy too! He is the Father of the industry! Clearly a visionary that anyone planning on getting into the games industry should study/read up on!!!!
Woah, I didn't know he escaped Germany 2 months before Kristallnacht. If he had stayed this forum might not exist today.
That's very true, Jack Tramiel was a survivor as well. Tramiel was a co-founder of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which was opened in 1993. He was among many other survivors of the Ahlem labor camp who tracked down U.S. Army veteran Vernon Tott, who was among the 84th Division which rescued survivors from the camp and had taken and kept photographs of at least 16 of the survivors in storage until 2003. Tott, who died of cancer in 2003, was personally commemorated by Tramiel with an inscription on one of the Holocaust Museum's walls saying "To Vernon W. Tott, My Liberator and Hero".[SUP][12][/SUP]
