It is not a video game because there's no video. But the idea is cool and a good representation of the state of art in commuting circuits at that time.
Splitting hairs on "first" is an interesting pursuit.
I prefer selecting "first" in terms of context/influence. Unless Bushnell, just to pick an oft-named starting point, was not inspired by (or even heard of?) the Nimatron then Nolan might be said to have won round one against Nimatron.
I think what's interesting is the direct lineage leading us to, say, Pac Man — not just who checks off the minimal definition of "video game". But as James Burke showed us, working backwards can take us in all manner of strange directions so it is not an easy task.
A single light is a 1x1 pixel matrix. And there is no need for electricity to be a requirement. So a single candle is a video display! Turns out we've had video games all along!
Nuance, but the lights on the Nimatron appear to be the game display (not so with pinball) making it a little more legitimate as the first ... um ... electronic-visual game.
If this kind of thing amuses you can buy a purely mechanical implementation called either Braino or Dr. Nim for about £10. Here's a video on the subject from Matt Parker @ Standup Maths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KABcmczPdg
I was interested in the "Elektro" robot mentioned in the last newspaper article and saw that there was footage of it as part of a movie [0].
> Several minutes of color sound footage of Elektro in action can be seen at 33:55 in the movie, "The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair", a fully-produced hour-long movie made by Westinghouse, which showcased the Westinghouse pavilion
The link [1] from Wikipedia was rough quality so here is a better quality link (queued up) [2]
