Today’s Google Doodle lets you make, play and share your own mini-arcade games in honor of video game console pioneer Jerry Lawson. Lawson led the team that developed the first home video game system with interchangeable game cartridges. Today would have been his 82nd birthday.
Interactive Doodle begins by taking you through a short experience that introduces you to Lawson and his legacy. The first part of the experience is a tutorial that teaches you about the basic controls and editing features. From there, you navigate to five ready-to-play games. You can play these games as is, or click on the pencil icons to edit them.
If you want to create your own game, you can navigate to the main screen, click on the empty box icon with the plus sign, and once you’ve finished creating it, use the share button to send it to your friends.
The five improv games were designed by three American artists and game designers, Davionne Gooden, Lauren Brown and Momo Pixel.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1940, Lawson has been tinkering with electronics since he was a child. He began his career in Palo Alto, California, and joined Fairchild Semiconductor as an engineering consultant. He led the development of the Fairchild Channel F system (F for fun), the first home video game system with interchangeable game cartridges, an 8-way digital joystick, and a pause menu. The system laid the foundation for future game systems such as the Atari, SNES, Dreamcast and others that were developed based on this concept.
In 1980, Lawson left Fairchild to start his own company, VideoSoft, one of the first black-owned video game development companies. videoSoft created a line of software for the Atari 2600 that popularized the cartridge games developed by Lawson and his team.
