Atari releases the two-player arcade game Football, a refined version of an internal project called Xs and Os that has been in development for some time. Though it’s a well-executed basic football game, Football’s real innovation is its trackball controller, giving players fluid analog control over their onscreen counterparts.
Atari releases the Breakout cartridge for the Atari VCS, one of the console’s first-ever ports of an existing arcade game and – thanks to two years of advancements in technology – a more sophisticated game than the coin-op that inspired it, which could only display black & white graphics.
Atari releases the Slot Machine cartridge for the Atari VCS, designed and programmed by future Pitfall! programmer David Crane.
Having originally announced a programmable video game console in 1977 before almost cancelling the project, Magnavox launches its first cartridge-based video game console, the Odyssey2. Though intended to compete with the Atari VCS, the Odyssey2 is at a disadvantage thanks to its underpowered Intel processor and a limited graphics set.
Magnavox releases the video game cartridge Take The Money And Run! for the Odyssey2 video game system, designed and programmed by Ed and Linda Averett. This is a two-player maze game that predates Pac-Man.
Atari releases the two-player arcade game Basketball, which features one of the earliest instances of a basketball court drawn in a vaguely 3-D perspective. Like its Football predecessor from Atari, Basketball uses dual trackball controllers.
Atari releases Superman as a cartridge for the Atari 2600. This is the first major synergy between Atari and fellow Warner Communications unit DC Comics, riding on the renewed interest in the character generated by the 1978 movie.
More about Atari 2600 in Phosphor Dot Fossils
Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast
Cinematronics gives arcade players the chance to fall on their swords – or their opponent’s sword – in the first-ever head-to-head fighting video game, Warrior. Combining the company’s “Vectorbeam” vector graphics with a brilliantly colorful backdrop illuminated by blacklight, Warrior is a feast for the eyes and becomes an arcade cult classic.
Some ten years after the real thing put men on the moon, Atari invites arcade space pilots to try their own luck at the controls of the Lunar Lander. A tricky, brainy game based on real physics, requiring players to cancel out unwanted motion in two axes without running out of fuel, the results are perhaps a little too real: quite a few vector-graphic Eagles fail to land in one piece, and quite a few disgruntled pilots don’t come back to try again.
Arcade game maker Midway introduces the coin-op video game Galaxian in American arcades. The game, originated in Japan by Namco, is the first entry in a fruitful relationship between the two companies; another game in the works at Namco will prove to be huge windfall for Midway in 1980.
Magnavox releases the video game cartridge War Of Nerves for the Odyssey2 video game system, designed and programmed by Ed and Linda Averett. With an emphasis on giving orders to a robot army not directly under the player’s micro-managed control, this may be the earliest example of a real-time strategy video game.
Fed up with Atari’s refusal to grant them bylines on the best-selling games they’ve been designing and programming for the Atari VCS, Atari employees Alan Miller, David Crane, Larry Kaplan and Bob Whitehead quit their jobs and form the first third-party video game software house, Activision, with former music executive Jim Levy aboard as the new company’s CEO. Infuriated, Atari files a raft of lawsuits alleging theft of trade secrets, but is ultimately unable to get an injunction preventing Activision from releasing games for the VCS.
After over a year of play testing and preparation, Mattel Electronics launches the first major competitor to the market-dominating Atari VCS video game console: Intellivision (short for “Intelligent Television”). Boasting superior graphics and a library of the first-ever licensed sports titles (though licensed by various pro sports leagues, rather than by specific teams or individuals), Intellivision is well-poised to enter a market where sports games are all-important.
Sierra On-Line releases its first computer game, Hi-Res Adventure #1: Mystery House, for the Apple II computer. Pairing simple text descriptions with even simpler line art, the game marks a turning point in computer adventure games, and sets Sierra on a course to become one of the best-selling game software houses of the ’80s.
Atari releases the home version of Space Invaders as a cartridge for the Atari 2600, the first time that a video game company has licensed another company’s game for home play. (All of Atari’s arcade ports up to this point have been home versions of Atari arcade games.) It turns out to be an astute move: Space Invaders is the “killer app” of the VCS, becoming so popular that the cartridge boosts sales of the system needed to run it.
More about Atari 2600 in Phosphor Dot Fossils
Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast
Atari scores a direct hit on arcades everywhere with Missile Command, a game which reminds video game-obsessed youth that the Cold War is still on. (In the months it takes to develop the game, programmer Dave Theurer has recurring nuclear-war-themed nightmares.) Cementing the trakball as a viable controller for fast-paced, non-sports games, Missile Command inspires a popular home video game cartridge (which, in the interest of not giving young gamers nightmares, dispenses with the Cold War theme in favor of a science-fiction explanation of the missiles’ origin).
More on Missile Command in Phosphor Dot Fossils
Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast
Under license from Namco, the game’s Japanese originators, Midway Manufacturing introduces the obsession that is Pac-Man to American arcades. Titled Puck-Man in its homeland (due to the yellow character’s resemblance to a round hockey puck), Midway swaps vowels for fear that vandals will turn the letter P into an F on the arcade cabinets. With its cute characters and instinctive game play, Pac-Man catches on immediately, propelling the video game industry into overdrive.
Arcade game maker Midway introduces the coin-op video game Rally-X in American arcades. The game, originated in Japan by Namco, is rolled out at a 1980 trade show for amusement and arcade machine operators alongside another Namco/Midway import, Pac-Man. With its more-accessible-to-mainstream-America race car elements, Rally-X is considered the hot favorite of the two, possibly a major hit in the making.
Atari releases the home version of Night Driver as a cartridge for the Atari 2600. This game is one of the few to use the console’s “paddle” controllers.
Atari releases the Adventure cartridge for the Atari VCS home video game system. Designed and programmed by Warren Robinett, Adventure is the first of its kind – a VCS game with a playing field larger than the TV screen, mapped out in the program’s memory – but later becomes better remembered for one “room” in the game’s maze which contains the programmer’s name, one of the earliest video game “Easter eggs.”
Chicago-based pinball manufacturer Stern makes one of its earliest forays into the booming video game industry with an altered version of the hit game Space Invaders, retitled Astro Invader. The game proves successful enough for Stern to invest in development of original games.
Japanese import Moon Cresta bursts into American arcades, challenging veterans of previous slide-and-shoot space games to dodge its never-ending waves of multi-colored invaders. Also on display is the best metaphor ever for “extra lives”: the player has to assemble a three-stage rocket to fight off the attackers.
Cinematronics’ vector graphics arcade wargame Armor… Attack hits the market, pitting players against armed ground vehicles and enemy helicopters. (Of course, players have to insert their entire defense budget of 25 cents first, and even then, it’s still down to reflexes.)
Atari releases the arcade game Asteroids Deluxe in the United States, adding shields and other twists to the familiar game play of the smash hit Asteroids.
Cinematronics releases the cult classic arcade game Star Castle, a vector graphics game sending players on a mission to create a tiny vulnerability in a space station’s colorful rotating defense shields. Once its shields have been penetrated, a well timed shot can destroy the enemy fortress.
Atari releases the arcade game Battlezone in the United States, bringing back Tank’s double joysticks but putting the player in the tank in a first-person perspective (complete with “shattered glass” is enemy artillery takes the player’s tank out of commission).
Pinball manufacturer Stern Electronics establishes a firm foothold as a maker of video games with the paranoia-inducing coin-op Berzerk. Featuring voice synthesis disturbingly similar to the voices of Battlestar Galactica’s Cylon warriors, and a bouncy, smiling killer named Evil Otto who appears with little or no warning, Berzerk becomes a cult classic (even meriting a serenade on Buckner & Garcia’s 1982 album Pac-Man Fever).
Boasting a tricky dual-joystick control scheme allowing players fine-tuned control over their on-screen character’s movements, Crazy Climber invades arcades in the States following its introduction in Japan. Cheerfully urging players to “Go for it!”, the cult arcade classic makes splattering on the sidewalks seem fun.
Cashing in on gamers’ desire to fly down a tightly-enclosed trench blowing away enemy spaceships, Cinematronics introduces the “Vectorbeam”-powered arcade game 
California Pacific Computer releases the computer role playing game game