Football (1978 video game)

Last updated
Football
Atari Football Poster.png
North American arcade flyer
Developer(s) Atari, Inc.
Publisher(s)
Designer(s) Steve Bristow
Programmer(s) Michael Albaugh [2]
Platform(s) Arcade, Atari 2600
ReleaseArcade
2600
Genre(s) Sports
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Football (also known as Atari Football) is a 1978 American football video game developed and released by Atari, Inc. for arcades. Players are represented by X's and O's. While predated by Sega's World Cup, Football is credited with popularizing the trackball controller and is also the first non-racing vertically scrolling video game. [5] It was distributed in Japan by Namco in 1979.

Contents

Football was the second highest-earning arcade video game of 1979 in the United States. That year Atari released a more challenging four-player version of the arcade game programmed by Dave Theurer, who later created Missile Command and Tempest .

Gameplay

Development

The game was designed by Steve Bristow and programmed by Michael Albaugh, with the hardware engineered by Dave Stubben. The game's use of a trackball was inspired by an earlier Japanese association football (soccer) game that had used trackball controls. [6] [7] When the team saw the game, they brought a cabinet to their lab and imitated the trackball controls. [7]

An earlier association football game that used trackball controls was Sega's World Cup , released seven months earlier in March 1978, [8] [9] but in 2001 Steven L. Kent reported that Stubben attributed the earlier trackball soccer game to Taito. [7] In a later 2017 interview, Albaugh said he was uncertain which company it was from, but remembers it was from a Japanese company. [6]

Atari's Football was released in October 1978. [3]

Reception

Football was the second highest-earning 1979 in the United States, below only Space Invaders (1978). [10]

Legacy

Although not the first trackball game, predated by Sega's World Cup in March 1978, [8] [9] Atari Football is credited with popularizing the trackball.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Foot Ball". Media Arts Database. Agency for Cultural Affairs . Retrieved 31 May 2021.
  2. ↑ Stilphen, Scott (2017). "Michael Albaugh interview". Atari Compendium. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
  3. 1 2 "Production Numbers" (PDF). Atari. 1999. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 May 2013. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
  4. ↑ "Atari VCS game release dates". Atari Archive.
  5. ↑ Words: GamesRadar US on October 8, 2010 (2010-10-08). "Gaming's most important evolutions". GamesRadar. Retrieved 2013-02-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  6. 1 2 Stilphen, Scott (2017). "Michael Albaugh interview". Atari Compendium. Retrieved 2 May 2021. I saw a soccer game with one (I remember only that it was Japanese, and a soccer game. Taito is plausible).
  7. 1 2 3 Kent, Steve L. (2001). The ultimate history of video games: from Pong to Pokémon and beyond: the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world . Prima. p. 118. ISBN   0-7615-3643-4. Contrary to a popular notion, Football was not the first game to use a trak-ball controller. According to Dave Stubben, who created the hardware for Atari Football, Taito beat Atari to market with a soccer game that used one. According to Steve Bristow, when his engineers saw the game, they brought a copy into their lab and imitated it.
  8. 1 2 Sega Arcade History. Famitsu DC (in Japanese). Enterbrain. 2002. p. 34.
  9. 1 2 "WORLD CUP（ワールドカップ）". Sega (in Japanese). Retrieved 2 May 2021.
  10. ↑ "Video Games". RePlay. November 1979.
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