While today’s gamers sit in front of their televisions with our eyes glued to the screen and hands affixed to their controller we may forget just how video games all started. Long before PlayStation and the Xbox become house hold names in 1972 Ralph H. Baer , a.k.a “Father of Video Games” invented the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, which also pre-dates the Atari 2600.

At the age of 89 Baer has witnessed the evolution of gaming first hand as video games have made the huge technical leap forward from Pong to Uncharted. And while players may be impressed with the changing face of video games over the decades, Baer isn’t too happy with what the industry has become.

I think it’s a disgrace,” Baer stated in a recent interview. “What I created got abominated. You can see the same thing in music, literature, art — any form of art,” he added.

Despite his dissatisfaction with the entertainment medium he helped create nearly 50 years ago, Ralph H. Baer is still proud of his contribution to the video game industry. In the late 80s Baer created the first motion controller for the Nintendo NES system ( which Nintendo rejected at the time ) that involved a camera mounted on a television which tracked a player’s movements. Sounds a lot like the Eye Toy doesn’t it?

Via