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A video game is an electronic game played on a video screen (normally a television, computer monitor, or built-in screen when played on a handheld machine).

There are many types, or genres, of video games: role-playing games; shooters, first-person shooters, side-scrollers, and platformers.

Video games usually come on CDs, DVDs or downloaded digitally. Many games used to come inside of acartridge. A specialized device used to play video games at home is called a console. There have been many types of consoles and home computers used to play video games. Some of the first consoles made were the Atari 2600 in the 1970s and the Sega Master System and Nintendo Entertainment System in the 1980s. The newest line of video game consoles are Microsoft's Xbox Series X or Series S Sony's PlayStation 5 and Nintendo's Nintendo Switch 2. The best-selling video game console to date is the PlayStation 2, made by Sony.

People can also use computers to play games, which are sometimes called PC games. Older gaming consoles do not get many games after a while, but in recent years newer consoles rarely get the older games. A lot of the time console games which are unplayable or are on older hardware are ported or emulated on PCs (see emulator). This means that new computers can play many old console games along with games made just for new computers. Older games are emulated because of the ease of downloadingTemplate:Fact them as opposed to having to use older hardware. Additionally, emulating games usually provides better performance as opposed to using the older hardware to access the games.

People can play portable video games anywhere. Mobile devices (running operating systems such as iOS or Android) also can download games, making them a popular choice for gaming out and about. Mobile phones have many games, and some games on console are accessible by using a mobile emulator. Not all PC or console games are on mobile or iPad/ iPod/Tablet without an emulator.