Video games began long before home computers. In 1947, Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a patent for a cathode-ray tube amusement device, inspired by radar screens. Players turned knobs to make a dot on the screen trace a missile arc toward paper targets fixed to the display. Through the 1950s and early 1960s, more games appeared on larger machines, including Christopher Strachey's Checkers in 1952 and Spacewar! on a DEC PDP-1 in 1962. Ralph Baer then built a table tennis game for a television set in 1966, and Magnavox released it as the Odyssey in 1972. Atari's Pong, released in 1972, followed closely and launched the commercial industry.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.