1973 in video gaming

List of years in video gaming (table)
... 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 ... 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 ... 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 ...
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Events

• March 19 – Kagemasa Kozuki establishes Konami Industry Co., Ltd.^[1] Formerly the owner of a jukebox repair/rental business in Osaka, Japan, Kozuki launches Konami to manufacture amusement machines for video arcades.^[2]
• May – Hudson Soft Ltd. is established in Sapporo, Japan for the purpose of marketing telecommunications devices and art photographs.^[3]
• Taito, an electro-mechanical arcade game manufacturer, enters the video game industry and opens a North American branch.^[4]
• Sega, an electro-mechanical arcade game manufacturer, enters the video game industry with Pong clones.
• Computer Space makes appearances in the films Soylent Green and Sleeper.
• Empire versions I, II and III are developed for the PLATO system by John Daleske. Possibly the first team game ever, the first fifty-player game ever, and numerous other innovations.
• Silas Warner takes over PLATO Empire version I and renames it Civilization.
• Lemonade Stand is developed for the first time.
• Maze War, an ancestor of the first-person shooter genre and an early network game, begins development for the Imlac PDS-1 computer.

Notable releases

• Midway Manufacturing Co. licenses Pong from Atari to produce Winner,^[5] their first video game arcade game.^[1]
• Atari releases Gotcha, the first commercial maze game, to video arcades.^[1]
• Atari releases PONG Doubles to video arcades. A variation on the wildly successful PONG, PONG Doubles is the first video arcade game to include four-player gameplay.^[6]
• Williams Electronics releases Paddle Ball, an unlicensed duplicate of Pong, as their first arcade game.^[7]
• BASIC Computer Games was first published. It included 101 games written in BASIC.

References

1. Thomas, Donald A. Jr (2005). "-1973-". ICWhen.com. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
2. "Corporate Info / Corporate History". Konami. Archived from the original on February 10, 2006. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
3. "Corporate Info. / History". Hudson. Archived from the original on November 24, 2005. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
4. http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/video-game-firsts.html
5. "WINNER from Midway" (PDF). The International Arcade Museum. 1973. Retrieved April 17, 2015.
6. Winters, David. "Atari PONG –The first steps–". PONG-Story. Archived from the original on February 13, 2006. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
7. Kurtz, Bill (1997). Slot Machines and Coin-Op Games. New Jersey: Chartwell Books. p. 125. ISBN 978-1-55521-731-0.