Video games came about in the 1970's which by the end of the decade became the most popular childhood activity. Many adults at the time questioned the possible effects that these games could have on children and were almost certain that they would be negative effects. During the middle 1980's companies released games for personal computers leaving the home video game console to be a thing of the past. Despite the new technology, the home video game console hit a resurge in popularity with the release of the Nintendo in 1986. With the competition between computer games and video game systems skyrocketing, the advancement of technology as well as the content of the games were changed emensly. Due to this rapid improvement the content of these games became more visually violent and extremely detailed.
Video games have been known to contain violence since their conception. Trying to determine that there is violence in a video game is very easy to answer and that is, yes. Violence plays an important role in video games with first person shooter violence present in the earliest to the most advanced modern games. Wonder Boy and Space Invaders can be looked upon as a couple examples of these early games that contain violence. The game Wonder Boy is a game that contains hero killing monsters that vanish when they die, the hero is allowed to shoot arrows, swing swords and throw rocks at the monster. Upon the death of the hero he falls off of the screen as the monsters vanish in a cloud of smoke after an explosion occurs. This may not be a very high degree of violence but despite the fact it set a trend for any game that followed. .
In the modern game Goldeneye 007 the characters that portray the movie don't just vanish off the screen or into a cloud of dust, they perform human like reactions in conjunction with sound depending on where exactly they were hit.