Video games have been applauded as the entertainment of the future and dismissed as brain-ruining wastes of time. No matter how you feel about video games, it’s hard to ignore the impact they’ve had on society and technology in their relatively short existence. This short film made by four Munich university students nicely illustrates the evolution of gaming from the very first video game (even before Pong!) to the current generation of wildly interactive music-playing games.

Gamers will undoubtedly notice that quite a few well-loved games are missing from the film. The students behind the project acknowledge that they could have covered more games, but with limited time and resources they used what they could. Due to the “one-shot” nature of the film, adding more games and more systems would have meant more chance for mistakes that would have caused the crew to start the entire take over. The video games highlighted in the clever little film are:

Tennis for Two, Oscilloscope, 1958
Pacman, Arcade, 1980
Donkey Kong, NES, 1986
Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, 1991
Street Fighter II. SNES, 1991
Super Mario 64, Nintendo 64, 1996
Final Fantasy VII, Sony Playstation, 1997
Need for Speed: Hot Pursiut 2, Sony Playstation 2, 2002
Ecco the Dolphin, Sega Dreamcast, 2000 (included as an example of a gaming “flop”)
Super Smash Bros. Melee, Nintendo Game Cube, 2001
Wii Sports Golf, Nintendo Wii, 2006
God of War III, Sony Playstation 3, 2010
Rock Band, XBox 360, 2008