1973 in video games
Events
- March 19 – Kagemasa Kōzuki establishes Konami Industry Co., Ltd.[1] Formerly the owner of a jukebox repair/rental business in Osaka, Japan, Kozuki launches Konami to manufacture amusement machines for video arcades.[2]
- May – Hudson Soft Ltd. is established in Sapporo, Japan for the purpose of marketing telecommunications devices and art photographs.[3]
- Taito, an electro-mechanical arcade game manufacturer, enters the video game industry and opens a North American branch.[4]
- Sega, an electro-mechanical arcade game manufacturer, enters the video game industry with Pong clones.
- Computer Space makes appearances in the films Soylent Green and Sleeper.
- Empire versions I, II and III are developed for the PLATO system by John Daleske. Possibly the first team game ever, the first fifty-player game ever, and numerous other innovations.
- Silas Warner takes over PLATO Empire version I and renames it Conquest.
- Lemonade Stand is developed for the first time.
- Maze War, an ancestor of the first-person shooter genre and an early network game, begins development for the Imlac PDS-1 computer.
Best-selling arcade video games in the United States
The following titles were the best-selling arcade video games of 1973 in the United States, according to annual arcade cabinet sales estimates provided by Ralph H. Baer.[5]
| Rank | Title | Arcade cabinet sales | Manufacturer | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pong | 8,000 | Atari, Inc. | Pong |
| 2 | Pro Tennis | 7,000 | Williams Electronics | |
| Winner | 7,000 | Midway Manufacturing | ||
| 4 | Super Soccer | 5,000 | Allied Leisure | |
| Tennis Tourney | 5,000 | |||
| TV Tennis | 5,000 | Chicago Coin | ||
| 7 | Gotcha | 3,000 | Atari, Inc. | Maze |
| 8 | Asteroid (Space Race) | 2,000 | Midway Manufacturing | Racing |
| 9 | Space Race | 1,500 | Atari, Inc. | |
| 10 | Hockey | 1,000 | Ramtek | Pong |
| TV Hockey | 1,000 | Chicago Coin | ||
| Volley | 1,000 | Ramtek |
Notable releases
Arcade games
- Midway Manufacturing Co. licenses Pong from Atari to produce Winner,[6] their first video game arcade game.[1]
- Atari releases Gotcha, the first commercial maze game, to video arcades.[1]
- Atari releases Pong Doubles to video arcades. A variation on the wildly successful Pong, Pong Doubles is the first video arcade game to include four-player gameplay.[7]
- Atari releases Space Race, the first Arcade Racing game ever.
- Williams Electronics releases Paddle Ball, an unlicensed duplicate of Pong, as their first arcade game.[8]
Computer games
Maze War, an ancestor of the first-person shooter genre, was ported to a number of computer systems. The above image was created from a version of the game written for the Xerox Star 8010 in 1985.
- Steve Colley, Howard Palmer, and Greg Johnson develop Maze War on the Imlac PDS-1 at the NASA Ames Research Center in California.[9] It is recognized as an ancestor of the first-person shooter genre.
- BASIC Computer Games was first published. It included 101 games written in BASIC.
See also
References
- Thomas, Donald A. Jr (2005). "-1973-". ICWhen.com. Archived from the original on October 26, 2002. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
- "Corporate Info / Corporate History". Konami. Archived from the original on February 10, 2006. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
- "Corporate Info. / History". Hudson. Archived from the original on November 24, 2005. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
- "The Golden Age Arcade Historian: Video Game Firsts??". November 22, 2013. Archived from the original on November 5, 2017. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
- Baer, Ralph H. (2005). Videogames: In the Beginning. Rolenta Press. pp. 10–3. ISBN 978-0-9643848-1-1.
- "WINNER from Midway" (PDF). The International Arcade Museum. 1973. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved April 17, 2015.
- Winters, David. "Atari PONG –The first steps–". PONG-Story. Archived from the original on February 13, 2006. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
- Kurtz, Bill (1997). Slot Machines and Coin-Op Games. New Jersey: Chartwell Books. p. 125. ISBN 978-1-55521-731-0.
- "The Maze War 30 Year Retrospective". DigiBarn Games. 2004. Archived from the original on July 17, 2017. Retrieved February 25, 2012.
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