Tag: Atari

Atari releases its first product, the arcade game Pong. A more refined version of the basic video ping pong game introduced by the Magnavox Odyssey, it’s simpler than Nolan Bushnell’s earlier attempt to put video games in public spaces (the complicated Computer Space), and is an engineering trial-by-fire for its designer, engineer Al Alcorn. The game is implemented with analog logic rather than an expensive (at the time) microchip, and is a success, ushering in the coin-op video game era to stay.

Atari releases its second arcade game: the very first video racing game, Space Race. Devised to fulfill a contractual game development obligation to rival manufacturer Bally Midway, the game is released by Midway under the title Asteroid, though Atari releases its own “clone” (of its own game) under the title Space Race on this date.

Atari releases its fourth arcade game: the very first video maze game, Gotcha!. The two-player game is essentially a game of tag played in a slowly-shifting maze, with the controllers inexplicably covered with dome-shaped pink rubber covers, leading Gotcha! to be dubbed “the boob game”.

Atari releases the arcade video game Rebound, essentially a video volleyball game. Atari’s “secret” subsidiary, Kee Games, releases the same game as Spike the following month.

Atari introduces its first-person driving game Night Driver, the first video game to attempt to simulate depth in its display. Introduced in black & white, Night Driver will later gain even more popularity in color on Atari’s first programmable home video game system.

One of the very first first-person space games is introduced to arcades by Atari. Despite its flickery graphics, Starship 1 gives would-be space heroes the chance to take aim at the bad guys; perhaps showing the enduring power of a certain science fiction series, Starship 1’s friendly ships look suspiciously like the U.S.S. Enterprise, while its enemy targets look somewhat like Klingon ships.

Atari releases the arcade video game Dominos, Atari’s interpretation of a game genre that will later become linked with light cycles from the 1982 movie Tron.

Atari releases the arcade video game Fire Truck, which requires two players to steer both ends of a speeding fire engine.

Atari releases the arcade game Avalanche, challenging players to catch falling rocks in a bucket without dropping anything; this game later serves as the basis for Activision’s Atari VCS cartridge Kaboom!.

Atari releases the arcade video game Super Breakout, a sequel to the hit 1976 coin-op Breakout.

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 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.

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.

Atari releases the vector graphics arcade game Asteroids, a space game with as much Newtonian physics as can be simulated in a tiny amount of code. As one of Atari’s biggest hits to date, with over 50,000 cabinets produced, a sequel and home console ports are inevitable.

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).