Asteroids is a space-themed multidirectional shooter arcade video game designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a single spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers, while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The game becomes harder as the number of asteroids increases.
The history of video games began in the 1950s and 1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframes. Spacewar! was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student hobbyists in 1962 as one of the first such games on a video display. The first consumer video game hardware was released in the early 1970s. The first home video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, and the first arcade video games were Computer Space and Pong. After its home console conversions, numerous companies sprang up to capture Pong's success in both the arcade and the home by cloning the game, causing a series of boom and bust cycles due to oversaturation and lack of innovation.
Missile Command is a 1980 shoot 'em up arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and licensed to Sega for Japanese and European releases. It was designed by Dave Theurer, who also designed Atari's vector graphics game Tempest from the same year. The game was released during the Cold War, and the player uses a trackball to defend six cities from intercontinental ballistic missiles by launching anti-ballistic missiles from three bases.
Frogger is a 1981 arcade action game developed by Konami and published by Sega. In North America, it was distributed by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct five frogs to their homes by dodging traffic on a busy road, then crossing a river by jumping on floating logs and alligators.
Breakout is an arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and released on May 13, 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak, based on conceptualization from Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, who were influenced by the seminal 1972 Atari arcade game Pong. In Breakout, a layer of bricks lines the top third of the screen and the goal is to destroy them all by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them. The arcade game was released in Japan by Namco. Breakout was a worldwide commercial success, among the top five highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976 in both the United States and Japan and then among the top three highest-grossing arcade video games of 1977 in the US and Japan. The 1978 Atari VCS port uses color graphics instead of a monochrome screen with colored overlay.
An action-adventure game is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres.
Robotron: 2084 is a multidirectional shooter developed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar of Vid Kidz and released in arcades by Williams Electronics in 1982. The game is set in the year 2084 in a fictional world where robots have turned against humans in a cybernetic revolt. The aim is to defeat endless waves of robots, rescue surviving humans, and earn as many points as possible.
Jungle Hunt, originally released as Jungle King, is a side-scrolling action game developed by Taito and released for arcades in 1982. It was originally distributed as Jungle King, then quickly modified and re-released as Jungle Hunt due to a copyright dispute over the player character's likeness to Tarzan. Jungle King, along with Moon Patrol released a month earlier, is one of the first video games with parallax scrolling.
Tron is a coin-operated arcade video game manufactured and distributed by Bally Midway in 1982. The game consists of four subgames inspired by the events of the Walt Disney Productions motion picture Tron released earlier in the summer. The lead programmer was Bill Adams. The music programmer was Earl Vickers.
Night Driver is an arcade video game developed by Atari, Inc. and released in the United States in October 1976. It's one of the earliest first-person racing video games and is commonly believed to be one of the first published video games to feature real-time first-person graphics. Night Driver has a black and white display with the hood of the player's car painted on a plastic overlay. The road is rendered as scaled rectangles representing "pylons" that line the edges.
Gun Fight, known as Western Gun in Japan and Europe, is a 1975 multidirectional shooter arcade game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released by Taito in Japan and Europe and by Midway in North America. Based around two Old West cowboys armed with revolvers and squaring off in a duel, it was the first video game to depict human-to-human combat. The Midway version was also the first video game to use a microprocessor instead of TTL. The game's concept was adapted from Sega's 1969 arcade electro-mechanical game Gun Fight.
1976 had new titles such as Road Race, Night Driver, Heavyweight Champ, Sea Wolf and Breakout. The year's highest-grossing arcade games were Namco's F-1 in Japan and Midway's Sea Wolf in the United States.
Nibbler is an arcade snake maze game released in 1982 by Chicago-based developer Rock-Ola. The player navigates a snake through an enclosed maze, consuming objects, and the length of the snake increases with each object consumed. The game was the first to include nine scoring digits, allowing players to surpass one billion points.
Super Breakout is a sequel to the 1976 video game Breakout released in arcades in September 1978 by Atari, Inc. It was written by Ed Rotberg. The game uses the same mechanics as Breakout, but allows the selection of three distinct game modes via a knob on the cabinet—two of which involve multiple, simultaneous balls in play. Both the original and sequel are in black and white with monitor overlays to add color. It was distributed in Japan by Namco and Esco Trading.
Blockade is an arcade video game developed by Lane Hauck for Gremlin and released in November 1976. It is a two-player game where each player controls the direction of an arrow on the screen which creates a trail behind it. The object is the avoid any walls surrounding the playfield or created by each player for a select amount of turns. Blockade spawned many clones which came to be known as snake games.
Dominos is a one, two or four-player video action game packaged in its own distinctively styled upright cabinet that rest directly on the floor.
Tron is an American science fiction media franchise created by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. It began with the eponymous 1982 film produced by Walt Disney Pictures. The original film portrays Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a genius computer programmer and video game developer who becomes transported inside a digital virtual reality known as "The Grid", where he interacts with programs in his quest to escape.
Surround is a video game programmed by Alan Miller and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600. The game plays similarly to the arcade game Blockade (1976), which allows players to navigate a continuously moving block around an enclosed space as a wall trails behind it. Every time the opposite player has their brick hit a wall, the opposing player earns a single point, with the winner being the first to collect ten points.
Space Zap is a space-themed fixed shooter arcade video game developed by Game-A-Tron and licensed to Midway Manufacturing in 1980. The player controls the defenses of an immobile base in the center of the screen which is attacked from the top, bottom, left, and right. Pressing one of four oversized buttons moves the gun in the corresponding direction. A fifth button fires. Space Zap shipped in three form factors: standard upright, cocktail, and Bally's Mini-Myte reduced size cabinet.
