Real-time strategy games and first-person shooters especially benefited from these advantages. The mouse was especially influential in popularizing certain genres over others for the PC, as it allowed faster and more accurate movements than console controllers. Increasing graphical capability, larger amounts of memory and the growing popularity of the mouse contributed to the rise of the computer gaming industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Ports and clones of the most recognized graphics-based games, such as Pac-Man, Frogger and Space Invaders, became top sellers on the personal computer. While many early computer games required text commands to be entered via the keyboard, making text adventures and interactive fiction games popular, publishers also took advantage of the arcade game craze sweeping the nation. Personal computers brought games into the home, with manufacturers such as Atari, Texas Instruments and Commodore leading the way in the 1980s. An adaption of tic-tac-toe created in 1952 represents one of the earliest computer games, along with the heavily influential Spacewar!, a space combat game developed by MIT students on a PDP-1 mainframe computer in 1961. With its roots in text-based adventures and simple shooters, computer gaming makes up an integral part of today's electronic games industry.

Backyard baseball 2003 pc