Yeah, I’ve been over that timeline a lot. The first thing that counts is the Magnavox Odyssey from ’73, a crappy box with a TV and a few knobs that let you switch between black‑and‑white games on a static screen. It was basically a toy that let you hack the TV’s circuitry, so you could draw a dot and call it a “game.” The engineers just slapped a few circuits together and called it “console.” It was so basic you could’t even pick up a joystick, but it set the template: cheap, plug‑and‑play, and a way to show people you could have a screen that reacts to your buttons. That’s how the rest of the industry spun out of a few dozen patents and a lot of coffee.

Nice metaphor, but honestly, the Odyssey was more like a broken toaster than a seed. It just proved you could turn a TV into a toy, and the rest of the industry picked up the pieces and added actual games. So yeah, the forest started with a glitchy, plastic box.