1981 Simon. Simon is the classic electronic memory game with four colored buttons (red, blue, green, and yellow) that light up and play tones in sequence. Players must repeat the increasingly long patterns. It became a cultural icon of the late 1970s and 1980s and remains in production in... various forms today. The game was invented by Ralph H. Baer (often called the “Father of Video Games” for creating the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console) and Howard J. Morrison, working with the toy design firm Marvin Glass and Associates. Programmer Lenny Cope developed the core software (originally titled Follow Me), with additional assembly language code contributions from Charles Kapps. The idea came from Atari’s 1974 arcade game Touch Me, which Baer and Morrison saw at a 1976 trade show. Baer later described Touch Me as having “Nice gameplay. Terrible execution. Visually boring. Miserable, rasping sounds.” They improved the concept by using a Texas Instruments TMS 1000 microcontroller, redesigning it as a portable unit, and selecting four harmonious tones based on the notes a bugle can play (so any sequence would sound pleasant). They filed for a patent in 1977 (U.S. Patent 4,207,087, “Microcomputer controlled game,” granted in 1980). Milton Bradley licensed the design, refined the prototype from a rectangular box into the iconic circular “saucer” shape, added difficulty levels, and renamed it Simon after the children’s game “Simon Says.” Milton Bradley launched Simon on May 15, 1978, with a midnight promotional event at the famous New York disco Studio 54, where a large model hung over the dance floor. It retailed for about $24.95 (roughly $120 in today’s dollars) and became one of the top-selling toys of the 1978 Christmas season, with shortages reported in stores. It went on to sell millions of units and became a pop-culture symbol of the era. Milton Bradley (later acquired by Hasbro in 1984) released several variants: •Super Simon (1979) — a larger rectangular two-player version. •Pocket Simon (1980) — a smaller portable version. •Later editions included Simon Squared (double-sided), motion-controlled versions like Simon Air, wearable Simon Optix, and many modern updates with new features and colors. Simon helped popularize electronic handheld games and demonstrated that microprocessor-based toys could succeed with the public. Its simple, addictive gameplay has endured for decades, with new versions still sold by Hasbro. Simon was among the first widely successful consumer microcontroller toys/games. The original design is held in collections such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and The Strong National Museum of Play.show more

Brian Roemmele

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