I'm doubling up for This Week in Video Game History again -- this time due to last weekend's July 4th celebration. Not that I celebrated, being Canadian and all, but I'm never against a day off. Let the light-hearted romp through history begin!

July 4

1961 -- Happy birthday Richard Garriott! The designer from the Ultima series has been instrumental in the development of RPGs and MMOs. Pretty shitty birthday for a guy who likes to call himself Lord British.

July 5

1950 -- Bandai starts as a company. Now playing second fiddle to Namco after their merger, Bandai had a legacy in video games unto itself. I mean who can forget the NES Power Pad? Well, Bandai didn’t make it! They instead made a similar product which Nintendo bought out only to redesign it. Ahh...memories!

1987 -- Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards slimes itself on to store shelves. The continued existence of Leisure Suit Larry begs a couple questions. Who even likes Leisure Suit Larry? And perhaps more important: Who is turned on by those games? Let’s hope for the sake of humanity that answer to both is no one.

1996 -- Sega releases Nights into Dreams for the Saturn. Despite a lackluster return on the Wii, Nights was nonetheless important. It was an early example to prove the viability of analog control.

July 6

2005 -- The first Video Games Live concert takes place in Los Angeles. I’m alright with any event that allows Tommy Tallarico to shred sweet licks in public on a regular basis.

July 7

2000 -- Square releases Final Fantasy 9. Remember when this was going to be a return to form without all the weird semi-science-fiction worlds featuring protagonists with strange hair, questionable genders, and all too many zippers? So do I. Sigh.

July 8

1947 -- The Roswell incident, which would spawn countless of terrible games and get Harvey Smith’s ass fired some 70 years later, occurs. (Harvey Smith, producer for BlackSite: Area 51, spoke out about internal policies at Midway, after which he was let go.)

2007 -- The Wii Zapper is introduced! Humankind has yet to find a purpose for this mysterious device.

July 9

1982 -- Tron hits theatres and the arcade game debuts simultaneously. Personally, I feel it is only the second best video game/hacker movie from the early 1980s. I’m a WarGames kind of guy, but I’ve never worn an artfully crafted hockey helmet with spandex, so what do I know?

July 10

2008 -- The iTunes App Store opens for business. While technically it's part of a closed ecosystem for only one type of smartphone, you would be hard pressed to find anything as influential to video game business and development.

Hit the next page for all of this week's anniversaries.