A Google Doodle honored gaming pioneer Gerald “Jerry” Lawson on Thursday — what would have been his 82nd birthday — with an interactive game for site visitors to play.
Considered the father of modern gaming, Lawson helped develop the first home video gaming system with interchangeable game cartridges, and even founded his own company, VideoSoft, in the early 1980s. Became one of the first black-owned video game consoles. Growth companies, according to Google.
Liz Haflia/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
“He loved what he did and did what he loved,” his children, Anderson and Karen Lawson, wrote in a statement. “Considering the obvious challenges for African-Americans at the time, his professional achievements were quite remarkable.”
Lawson died in 2011, but in the same year he was recognized as an industry pioneer by the International Game Developers Association for his contributions to gaming. Google stated that his achievements have also been memorialized at the World Video Game Hall of Fame in New York.
Lawson’s children said, “We want to thank Google for working with us to share our father’s story in this Doodle.” “May his story continue to inspire many young people around the world to achieve something remarkable.”
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