What was the first arcade video game?

The year was 1971, America was obsessed with space travel thanks to the Apollo missions. Ask any programmer who was working in a lab in the '60s and they'll likely recall playing Spacewar! at least once or twice. Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney had been trying to bring computer games from the science labs to the masses, but the hardware used in labs wasn't exactly affordable to local pizza shops and arcades. The duo got the idea to build out custom hardware dedicated to just one task, running their new game, Computer Space. The game made its public debut in October 1971 at the Music Operators of America Expo. The final product had a futuristic fiberglass cabinet that looked like something straight out of "Star Trek." And to the general public, it was probably easier to fly the USS Enterprise than to play Computer Space. The game was a commercial failure, but Bushnell and Dabney took their learnings and created a new company, Atari, and launched a simpler game you might've heard of, Pong, a year later.