What is considered by some to be the first video game — Tennis For Two — was played on an oscilloscope at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958. Fifty-six years later, oscilloscopes can still play video games — in this case, Quake.
Watch Quake being played on an oscilloscope
Owen S. Good is a longtime veteran of video games writing, well known for his coverage of sports and racing games.
Finnish modder Pekka Väänänen got Quake, the 1996 landmark of PC gaming, to run on a Huawei V-422 oscilloscope. You can see it in the video above, which shows a playthrough of Quake’s first level.
Oscilloscopes measure electrical signals, so the video output here is some kind of weird cross between vector graphics and a Pink Floyd laser show from 1983. It's not the only piece of highly specialized scientific equipment to run video games, either.
A more detailed technical report on how this all works may be read here.
See More:
Most Popular
- All the new video games launching in 2026
- Cassian Andor says luck brought him this far. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Star Wars history disagree
- How Thunderbolts* evolved from a Die Hard movie into a Breakfast Club movie
- The fact that Lune from Clair Obscur is barefoot the whole time is not gross, it’s fun
- Thunderbolts*’ writer didn’t know Marvel cut his Taskmaster arc until he saw the movie
