1973 in video games

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The year 1973 saw a substantial increase in the number of video games created and distributed. In coin-operated games, a craze for Pong -style games ignited the first fad for video games both in the United States and other countries such as Japan and the United Kingdom. Time-sharing networks saw greater proliferation of popular programs through type-in listings. The PLATO computer located at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign played host to some of the earliest massively multiplayer games.

Events

• January – Pong is licensed to Midway Mfg, subsidiary of Bally, for release as Winner.
• March – Atari Inc. launches Pong nationally to distributors of coin-operated games across the United States. ^[1]
• August 26–28 – The fourth U.S. American Computer Chess Championship is held in Atlanta, Georgia. It is won by Northwestern University's Chess 3.5 running on a CDC 6400 computer, successor to the undefeated champion from the prior three years. ^{[2] [3]}
• September – The Japanese Amusement Association show is held in Tokyo. The company Kansai Seiki displays the prototype game Playtron, among the first games utilizing color graphics – though it is never released. ^{[4] [5]}
• November 9–11 – The Music Operators of America show is held in Chicago, Illinois. Over a dozen companies exhibit video games at the show, almost all clones or variants of Pong. ^[6]

Financial performance

United States

Arcade

Total Video Game Cabinets: 50,000-70,000 units. ^{[7] [8]}

Total Video Game Revenue (machine sales): $20 million-$77 million. ^{[7] [8]}

Title	Arcade cabinet units (Lifetime)	Manufacturer	Developer	Genre
Paddle Battle	17,000 [9]	Allied Leisure Industries	Universal Research Laboratories	Sports
Pro Tennis	7,000 [10] [Note 1]	Williams Electronics	Magnetic Corporation of America	Sports
Winner	7,000 [11] [12] *	Midway Manufacturing	Atari Inc.	Sports
Tennis Tourney	5,000 [11]	Allied Leisure Industries	Universal Research Laboratories	Sports
Super Soccer	5,000 [11]	Allied Leisure Industries	Universal Research Laboratories	Sports
TV Ping Pong	3,300 [13] *	Ramtek Corporation	Ramtek Corporation	Sports
Gotcha	3,000 [11]	Atari Inc.	Atari Inc.	Maze
Asteroid [Note 2]	2,000 [11]	Midway Manufacturing	Atari Inc.	Racing
Hockey	2,000 [14]	Ramtek Corporation	Ramtek Corporation	Sports
Space Race	1,500 [11]	Atari Inc.	Atari Inc.	Racing
TV Tennis	1,000 [13] * 5,000 [11]	Chicago Coin	Chicago Coin	Sports
Volly	1,000 [14]	Ramtek Corporation	Ramtek Corporation	Sports
Olympic TV Hockey/ Olympic TV Football [Note 3]	750 [13] * 1,000 [11]	Chicago Coin	Chicago Coin	Sports
Elimination!	500 [11]	Kee Games	Atari Inc.	Sports
Pong Doubles [Note 4]	500 [11]	Atari Inc.	Atari Inc.	Sports

(*) Indicates a sales number given by official company sources.

Home consoles

Total Console Revenue (retail): $4.6 million. ^[15]

Title	Game console units (1973)	Manufacturer	Developer
Odyssey	89,000 [16] * 83,000 [17] [Note 5]	Magnavox Co.	Sanders Associates/Magnavox

(*) Indicates a sales number given by official company sources.

Publications

• July – 101 BASIC Computer Games, edited and compiled by David Ahl, is published by Digital Equipment Corporation. The publication is vital in the dissemination of influential mainframe games like Hamurabi , Star Trek , and Lunar Landing variants. ^[18]

Notable releases

Gotcha

Arcade games

• March – Volly by Ramtek Corp, Rally by For-Play Manufacturing, and Paddle Battle by Allied Leisure are released in the United States, among the first clones of Pong .
• April – Ping-Pong by Alca Electronics is released in the UK as the first European coin-op video game. ^[19]
• July – Sega releases Pong-Tron and Taito releases Elepong, the first two video games produced for the coin-operated games market in Japan. ^[20]
  • Atari Inc. releases Space Race, a combination of a racing game and obstacle avoidance. ^[21]
• August – Tennis Tourney by Allied Leisure is released, the first four-player variant of Pong. ^[22]
• September – Gotcha is released by Atari, a game featuring characters in a maze. ^[23] The game is notable for its low-production variant, Color Gotcha, which may be the first commercially released video game utilizing color graphics. ^[24]
• October – Elimination! is released by Kee Games, a ball-and-paddle game featuring up to four people in an elimination-style contest. Atari's version is released as Quadrapong.
• December – Nutting Associates releases the ball-and-paddle game Wimbledon, among the first color games. ^[25]

Computer games

• February 25 – Jack Burness completes Moonlander , a graphical version of the Lunar Lander game concept for the DEC GT-40 intelligent terminal. His version features the first overworld map and the first Easter egg in a video game. ^[26]
• May – Hunt the Wumpus by Gregory Yob is first distributed on paper tape by the People's Computer Company newsletter. ^[27]
  • Empire by John Daleske of Iowa State University is released on the PLATO IV, a game featuring trading and resource management elements with up to eight players. ^[28]
• August – Empire II is released to PLATO by John Daleske and Silas Warner. This version evolved into an arena combat shooting game featuring fifty simultaneous players on any of eight teams. ^{[29] [30]}

Console games

• July – Magnavox releases the games Interplanetary Voyage, Basketball, W.I.N., and Brain Wave for the Odyssey at retail. ^[31] Previously they had provided the game Percepts to customers who returned their survey card, but these were the first commercial releases of console games separate from the hardware. ^[32]

Hardware

Consoles

• Official test markets for the Odyssey console outside of North America begin. ^[33]
• Several clones of the Odyssey appear in Europe, including Spain's Overkal. ^[34]

Business

• March 19 – Konami Industry Co., Ltd. is formerly incorporated in Japan by Kagemasa Kōzuki, Yoshinobu Naka, Tatsuo Miyasako. ^[35]
• May – The company Hudson is established in Sapporo, Japan as the business arm of the radio shop CQ Hudson. The company later changed its name to Hudson Soft when it began selling computers and associated software. ^{[36] [37]}
• August – Atari opens their Atari Japan subsidiary to import games for the domestic market. ^[38]
• September 25 – Kee Games Inc. is founded in California. The company is majority owned by the principals of Atari but is presented as a competitor. ^[39]
• October 19 – Exidy Inc. is founded by former Ramtek engineer Pete Kauffman and Samuel Hawes. Their first product was a Pong clone.
• Taito Co Ltd. – in the business of coin-operated amusements as well as general import and export – opens its office Taito America in Illinois, the first Japanese company involved with video games to open an American office. ^[40]
• The toy company Nintendo Co. Ltd. establishes the label Nintendo Leisure System to release coin-operated games, starting with the electro-mechanical Laser Clay Shooting Range.
• Videomaster of the UK is established to distribute coin-operated Pong games throughout the nation. ^[41]

See also

• 1973 in games

Notes

1. Ralph Baer's numbers compiled in April 1976 are mostly estimates without direct access to sales figures.
2. Licensed version of Space Race.
3. Released under both names.
4. Atari's version of Elimination!.
5. Ralph Baer's numbers for Odyssey units sold per year contradict those of official figures disclosed by Magnavox in 1974.

References

1. "PONG Into National Distribution; Success for Atari, Inc". Cash Box. 34 (40): 104. April 7, 1973.
2. "Computer against computer in chess match". The Daily Herald. August 17, 1973. pp. Section 2, 2.
3. Kenny Jr., Herbert (September 30, 1973). "Computer conquer space, but not Bobby Fischer". The Boston Globe. pp. A-24.
4. Akagi, Masumi (2005). Soreha "Pon" Kara Hajimatta - Ākēdo TV Gēmu no Naritachiそれは「ポン」から始まった-アーケードTVゲームの成り立ち[In the Beginning, There was "Pong" - The Origins of Arcade TV Games]. Amusement News Agency. p. 89. ISBN   978-4990251208.
5. shmuplations (December 29, 2021). "Kasco and the Electro-Mechanical Golden Age - shmuplations.com" . Retrieved July 21, 2024.
6. "Focus on MOA's 25th Anniversary Expo". Cash Box. 35 (21): 50–51. November 24, 1973.
7. Cole, Bernard C. (June 27, 1974). "A whole new game". Electronics: 69–70.
8. The Coin Operated and Home Electronic Games Market. Frost & Sullivan Inc. 1976. p. 87.
9. Smith, Alexander (November 27, 2019). They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry. Vol. 1: 1971 – 1982. CRC Press. p. 173. ISBN   978-1-138-38990-8.
10. Baer, Ralph H. (2005). Videogames: In the Beginning. Rolenta Press. p. 12. ISBN   978-0-9643848-1-1.
11. Baer 2005, p. 10.
12. Jarrell, Timothy (November 1976). "Like Old Man River Midway Sales Go Rollin' Along". Play Meter. 2 (12): 50.
13. Neven, John F. (July 11, 1977). "Notice of Motion". Magnavox Company v. Chicago Dynamic Industries, et al. US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
14. Baer 2005, p. 12.
15. The Electronic Games Market in the U.S. Frost & Sullivan Inc. 1983. p. 26.
16. "Magnavox will drop". Weekly Television Digest with Consumer Electronics. 14 (19): 9. May 13, 1974.
17. Baer 2005, p. 86.
18. Smith 2019, p. 244–245.
19. Meades, Alan F. (2022). Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade. Game Histories / edited by Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. p. 124. ISBN   978-0-262-37235-0.
20. Akagi, Masumi (2005). アーケードTVゲームリスト国内•海外編(1971-2005)[List of Arcade TV Games (1971-2005)] (in Japanese). アミューズメント通信社. pp. 34, 40. ISBN   978-4990251215.
21. "Atari Bows 'SPACE RACE'". Cash Box. 35 (3): 39. July 21, 1973.
22. "4-Player, 50c, TV Game From ALI". Cash Box: 48. August 25, 1973.
23. "Atari Ships 'Pong Doubles' & 'Gotcha'". Cash Box. 35 (13): 54. September 29, 1973.
24. Fries, Ed (May 25, 2016). "Fixing Color Gotcha" . Retrieved July 24, 2024.
25. "Nutting Industries Ships Color Tennis TV". Cash Box. 35 (23): 44. December 8, 1973.
26. Willaert, "Critical Kate" (April 11, 2021). "Moonlander: One Giant Leap For Game Design". A Critical Hit!. Retrieved July 24, 2024.
27. "Lost in the Caves". People's Computer Company. 1 (5): 4. May 1973.
28. Daleske, John. "PLATO Empire - Empire 1". www.daleske.com. Retrieved July 24, 2024.
29. Daleske, John. "PLATO Empire - Empire 2 - Tactics". www.daleske.com. Retrieved July 24, 2024.
30. Dear, Brian (2017). The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture. New York: Pantheon Books. pp. 267–269. ISBN   978-1-101-87155-3.
31. Lewis, Barbara (July 28, 1973). "Television Does Have Advantages". The Telegraph-Journal and Evening Times-Globe. p. 11.
32. Willaert, "Critical Kate" (February 9, 2020). "Box Art History #1: The First Video Games In Boxes Were For Magnavox's Odyssey". A Critical Hit!. Retrieved July 24, 2024.
33. Baer 2005, p. 90.
34. Martorell, Martin F. (April 18, 2024). "Overkal - The History of the Spanish Magnavox Odyssey clone". prehistoricgaming. Retrieved December 22, 2024.
35. "Corporate Info / Corporate History". Konami. Archived from the original on February 10, 2006. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
36. Carlston, Douglas G. (1985). Software People: An Insider's Look at the Personal Computer Software Industry. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 254–255. ISBN   978-0-671-50971-2.
37. "Corporate Info. / History". Hudson. Archived from the original on November 24, 2005. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
38. Goldberg, Marty; Vendel, Curt (2012). Atari Inc.: Business is Fun. Syzygy Press. p. 122. ISBN   978-0985597405.
39. Goldberg & Vendel 2012, pp. 128–129.
40. Smith 2019, p. 199.
41. Eglin, Roger (June 26, 1977). "Big shots with a small screen". Sunday Times. p. 63.