CHVG: 1975 - Altair the future!

Birth of the micros... (1975)
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PIC: 8800 prototype - not even a working model

In 1975 the MITS company gets an article featured in the January edition of Popular Electronics.  It showcases their new microcomputer which you can order and build from a kit.  And thus begins the personal computer revolution!  For the first time in history you could pay a reasonable price to get all the parts needed to have an actual working computer in your home.  Before this, the only computers were large-scale mainframes and somewhat smaller (but still largish) minicomputers  sold to big corporations and universities.  To own one of those was tens of thousands of dollars, and sometimes had teams of people to keep it working.  But now... a revolution... the impossible was possible... you could own a personal computer - your own machine! No time-sharing with others, no special rights and privileged access accounts... a device you singularily controlled.  The MITS "Altair 8800" changed the face of computing forever.

Kit $397, Assembled $497

The Altair 8800 initially sold in kit form (not even assembled yet) for $397 (somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,300 in 2024 dollars!).  And for that expensive privilege, you'd better be handy with a soldering gun or you run the risk of owning a very expensive doorstop.  In fact, the Altair 8800 was much more of an engineering project than a "computer" in the sense of how we think of it today.  Even if you managed to assemble, troubleshoot, wire and test the Altair successfully... there wasn't much you could do with it.  At least, not yet.  The input & output consisted of a row of LED lights on the front panel.  Flipping switches up & down, you could "program" your Altair - much like entering binary code into a database.  Sound like fun?  For those interested in computer technology it was a dream come true, amazing as that sounds to modern sensibilities!

You "program" it with those up/down switches
They represent bits in an 8-byte register... Whoah!

Even MITS had NO IDEA of how much pent-up demand there was.  The MITS company had been taking a beating with strong competition in their former cash-cow market - calculators.  They had to borrow heavily to get the Altair created and implemented.  It truly was a make or break event for them, and they barely got their prototype computer finished in time for the Popular Mechanics article.  In fact, the original prototype of the Altair got lost in shipping on its way to New York from New Mexico (to this day, it has never been found! Now there's a mystery to unravel).  The picture on the cover of Popular Mechanics wasn't even a real Altair -- they faked it to make the article deadline.  Gutsy move!  But the gamble paid off.  Altair needed to sell at least 600-800 machines to get out of debt and stave off bankruptcy.  After the article came out, the orders started flowing in and they were soon backed up for months with over 4,000 orders in the queue. 

All this when there really wasn't much that could be done with the lowly Altair. The front panel of switches could be used programming the limited 256k of RAM, with a few lights to interpret and read for output.  But the enthusiasm and the possibilities set the hackers to doing what they do best - innovation & improvisation. The S-100 bus on the Altair became a standard feature for implementing add-on products. Within the first year, RAM upgrades became available, Microsoft came up with a BASIC interpreter you could buy and load from paper tape, terminal screens and keyboards could be their own "projects" to expand the usability.  They actually began to make the Altair - well, DO SOMETHING!

Computers became popular items!

With the launch of the Altair came the launch of computer-magazines like BYTE, featuring articles about all kinds of engineering projects, detailed schematics, and do-it-yourself variations of standard accessories.  A marketplace was born and began to grow.  Computer Clubs sprung up in various areas, mainly so that those elite few who were into the computer-scene could freely share tips, learn from each other, and showcase any new & exciting technology they had discovered.  The famous "Homebrew Computer Club" in the San Francisco Bay Area was the fertile grounds from where Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak launched their very first Apple computer. But we're getting a little ahead of the story.

What most people don't really realize is how dynamic and quickly changing even this early computer industry was.  Competition sprang up quickly - and it was fierce.  Kit Computers became the new hot product in technology, and major and minor players sprung up in a general free-for-all of ideas, designs, and features.  Sphere, IMSAI, SWTPC, OSI's Challenger, Sol-20, Jupiter II, Intercolor, Polymorphic, Heathkit, Cromemco, The Digital Group, The Vector-1... need I go on?  Each of these companies put out their own computer, all incompatible with each other and all jockeying for market share and respectability.  It was a fierce, uncharted and unexplored market and no company hit on the "magic formula", they found niche's inside this niche. Some catered to the budget-conscious, others the business market. Some computers focused on a software library, others their higher-end graphics capabilities (still low-res by any modern measurement).

One of many 1st-gen micro computers jostling for market share

Somewhere into the middle of this crazy market of kit computers, Steve Wozniak built his own machine. He combined a video display and various other features into a microcomputer of his own design. Steve says he built what he had always desired to own, but couldn't afford to buy. This is the guy who used to draw computers on paper, sketching out the circuit boards, transistors, and connections. For him, to actually build and finally own a real computer was a dream come true.

In may ways, Steve's homespun computer was better than what you could buy on the market.  He included a keyboard for entry, and a terminal display.  He could type in programs. One of the programs he typed in was his own BASIC language interpreter. Dutifully the Woz could punch in his machine language program (took him about 30-40 minutes) every time he wanted to showcase his creation. Without anyway to save a program yet, once you unplugged to take the computer elsewhere... you'd have to set it up and type it all in again.

In spite of the challenges, Steve Wozniak was happy to hand out the schematics and share his designs with members of the Homebrew Computer Club. It was very much a time of information sharing and learning from each other.  But Steve Jobs saw an opportunity to make The Woz's computer an actual product, and put a stop to Woz's "freebie" tendencies.  But we'll wait until another post soon enough to delve into that chapter of computer history.

1975 - the two Steves

Before I wrap up this post, I want to analyze the videogame industry during this period and its tie-ins with the "kit computer" craze of 1975-1977.  To be fair, I don't think computer games had much of an impact on this era.  Arcade games were not "software-programs" yet, but were hard-wired, solid-state electronics.  In 1975, the shift began when Gun Fight was the first arcade game to use a microprocessor (an Intel 8080).  But bigger video games news in 1975 was the home version of Pong.  This was state-of-the-art home entertainment. While the arcades were exploring other genres like driving and tank games, Pong and its "TV Games" thinking became the major electronic product on the homefront. But again, more on that in another article I hope to post soon.

The influence of games on technology is most definitely felt, if nothing else, in the desire to put pretty pictures on the screens. Computer graphics were mostly limited to text or ASCII characters - so even a bitmapped graphic was an impressive feat at this time.  There were a few standard games that seemed to appear on every system... like Star Trek, David Ahl's BASIC games, puzzles, word play, and also implementations of traditional card & board games.  The graphics on micros were just too limited (if any at all) for much more than these simple games.

However, Pandora's Box had been opened. The Altair was at the forefront of the new micro-computer industry. They might not yet be powerful or highly useful, but they were programmable and multi-purpose.  It felt like a new day was dawning. Soon in this blog we'll take a look at how the strengths of dedicated gaming systems vs. programmable computers each played heavily into the types of games that appeared on the respective systems. And we'll see the constant efforts to improve gaming on both dedicated consoles and the programmable computers.

The IMSAI 8080 - another contendor, especially for business owners.

CHVG: 1974 - Tank you very much

Chronological History of Video Games:
Kee Games wants to tank you... (1974)
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Here we are, 1974... the year I was born!  Certainly it had to be a magnificent year in gaming, yes?  Nope.  No it wasn't.  While there were some new innovations that did push different genre's forward into the arcade scene, nothing "big" occurred in 1974.  Was more of a development year... a time for ideas to matriculate and formulate.

Atari couldn't make 'em fast enough

I read that only about 8,000 Pong Arcade cabinets had been fulfilled by Atari by end of year.  Although this was still quite a bit more than your average pinball table, for comparison the Odyssey console sold almost 100,000 in its first two years.  (Possibly more, but exact sales figures don't seem to exist... and all the "sold" consoles didn't necessary move to consumers right off.  But this clearly shows why the console market was desired, and groundwork was being laid for a home version of pong and possibly other games.

It was near the end of 1974 that Atari President Nolan Bushnell gave the go-ahead for creating a "Home Pong" unit, thinking it could be a great success for Christmas sales in
1975.

During this year, Atari was trying to out-innovate "The Jackals" (as Nolan Bushnell dubbed the competition)… by coming out with a new game every month.  At first they reiterated with a number of different Pong clones, but eventually they also came up with some new creative ideas that were also hits in their own right:

• Gotcha (first maze game)
• Trak 10 (first racing game)
• Tank (yeah! the first tank game).

Kee Games’s Tank is the first game to store graphics data on a ROM chip. It's also a company that was secretly owned by Atari.  The idea of Kee Games was to get around markets where only 1 distributor could operate.  So Nolan setup another company with his neighbor, Joe Keenan, as the CEO. All the Atari games basically had an identical game with a different name -- distributed by Kee Games.  But after Tank became a huge hit, Atari actually went on to merge Kee Games back into the mothership.

Midway’s TV Basketball is the first arcade game to use human figures as avatars, instead of blocks or vehicles.  But the vast majority of games were variants of Pong.  Still, fairly boring times if you ask me.

Play Meter magazine publishes its first issue - the first magazine dedicated to covering the video arcade market.  There's a smattering of issues on the archive.org website, but this would be a treasure trove of interesting information if we could get the entire library available someday!

Play Meter Magazine - One of the earliest issues I found

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COMPUTERS:

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The PLATO system is still one of the few systems that have any games on it that are still preserved - and even playable today on various emulators, or the Cyber-1 platform.

SPASIM (PLATO)
  - Here we have the first documented, first-person mainframe game.  Wireframe graphics... a space shooter... very mathematical and definitely more like a sim than anything else.  It's best to watch a video tutorial, you'll get a feel for it without having to learn the tricky controls.

MAZE WAR  (Xerox - Alto)
  - I've now seen this game listed in both 1973 and 1974... so I'm not sure which one specifically to place it in.  But it was an important early game that introduced some of the concepts which become the first-person shooter.  A level editor was even created, and there was network play for player-vs-player action. 

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CONSOLES:

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  - The Odyssey dropped its price again to $50... but no new games were released.  But that's because this system did not really have programmable cartridges. The "carts" they sold simply had jumpers which would select an internal built-in game.  So by 1974, all the games ever designed were released and purchasable.  Odyssey continued to sell in 1974.. but it wasn't long before the system was dead. 

The game card, which isn't quite a cartridge.

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ARCADES:

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ASTROHOCKEY  - (pong variant)
 - It did have 4 variations of gameplay, including player vs. machine.  That's a nice addition.

ATTACK UFO
  - Uh... its a black & white game with UFO's.  That says a lot. Why are we so violent to tourists from other planets? 

BALL PARK
  - Midway releases in America, this Taito (of Japan) baseball game.  Looks pretty decent.  The sports-focus in video games is  a bit pervasive these days isn't it?

BASKETBALL
  - It's a basketball game from Taito, but no way to see it run unfortunately... but is deemed a "Landmark" title, being the first video game to use sprites, and the first to represent human characters.

Arcade flyers can be way better than the games!

CHALLENGE
 - Another Pong clone... by Micro Games.  Also looks like a "micro cabinet"... the thing is tiny.

"Honey, have you seen the Micro Game?"

COUNTDOWN
 - Pong clone, but you start with 5 points and can't let any goals or you lose a point at a time.  

ELIMINATION / QUADRA-PONG
 - 4-player pong clone... which also debuts in the first ever "cocktail" style arcade cabinet.  That's pretty cool. I did like how Atari was innovating from the beginning with game types as well as cabinet variations. Looking at the playing field, you can see the early groundwork for 4-player paddle games like Warlords later on.

FORMULA K
 - This is the Kee Games release of Gran Trak 10.  Same exact innards as...

GRAN TRAK 10 (GRAN TRAK 20 for 2-player)
 - Atari makes the first racing game... (and of course guys wearing helmets show up to play, with hot girls on their shoulder - see exhibit A)  

Safety First!

Gran Trak 10 was not only another hit game, and a growing genre.. but Atari also incorporated some anti-piracy methods.  Inside was a custom-designed ROM for the game, but Atari gave it the same part# as a Texas Instruments Arithmetic Logic Unit.  This mean that when pirates tried to build their own version, they'd order the wrong part and their clones wouldn't work.  Smart Atari!  Especially after all those frickin' pong clones!

But then, an accounting error in the game's production meant that every Gran Trak 10 machine sold at a loss for Atari.  Dumb Atari! It nearly helped bankrupt the company.  They thought, "Sure. we're losing money on each unit - but we'll make up for it in volume."  (okay, I obviously made that up.  Classic joke.)

PIN PONG
 - A black & white pinball simulation game by Atari.  Uhm...  cool... that is if want to take everything that's fun about pinball, remove it, and then sell the sizzle.

PUPPY PONG
 - Cool story behind this... basically a free-play version of Pong, but packaged in a cute yellow dog house. This particular setup had its début at Chuck E. Cheese.  It was a neat attempt at giving kids something fun to play without having to feed it tokens. Only a few survive today, as it never saw a wide release, due to Charles Shultz's complaints about its similarities to Snoopy.  (See Snoopy Pong, 1973).

QWAK!
  - An early light gun game where you shoot ducks out of the sky. And, it sounds like you have your ever-trusty hunting dog to go retrieve the blasted birds.  Aw, those poor ducks - they were so abused by early gamers.  It wasn't until much later when Deer became the big targets for virtual hunters that ducks could breathe a sigh of relief.  

REBOUND
  - Pong you say?  NAY I say! So much different... you see, the ball bounces up & down across the screen instead of side-to-side   Oh my? Gravity is involved!?  Your little paddles (er, psuedo-people) hit the ball over the net and to the other side.  Yeah, I'm a bit sick of all these pong-like games myself, but at least it's a welcome variation.  Was also a very realistic sales flyer:

What even is going on here?

SMATCH
 - WTF? Another great name for some sport game, hah! (I think this was another pong-like game, but was distributed overseas?)

SPEED RACE
  - A Taito release, also known as Racer or Wheels.  This was a ground breaking game, innovating with such concepts as vertical scrolling, sprites with collision detection and a driving wheel for a controller.  One of the first driving games.

Go Speed Racer!

SUPER PONG
 - Even Atari is enamoured with Pong, and puts out this 4th title in the series.  Three paddles per player and better ball physics... increased speed, serve from anywhere - Viola!  Another easy buck from a proven concept, yes?  

TANK
 - Ah yes... the Combat cartridge that first shipped with the Atari 2600 game was based on this original arcade game (albeit with a ton of crazy added variations).  The idea was cool, though.. control a tank and shoot the other guy before they shoot you.  It combined maze games with tank control games... both fun genres IMO.

The original "Tank" was an instant hit. So Kee Games (Atari), quickly devised a plan to launch a whole series of Tank games. They designed a boardset that could be easily modified to change the game. This would allow them to come out with a new Tank game whenever they wanted, with no real extra work needed.  And to think how many variations were included even on the simple Atari 2600 - "Combat" or "Video Olympics" is just staggering progress.

Tank was Kee Games biggest hit

TOUCH ME
 - Okay...  have to mention this game, simply for it's awesome title!  Technically it's not a video game - it's just Atari's version of the vastly more popular Simon.  Atari also released a hand-held Touch Me as well (a year or so later) so you could play with yourself anywhere - "No mom, I'm just playing Touch me!"  Oh, Atari...  trail blazers, yes... but man could they  make some boner decisions.  Oh sorry.. bad choice of words.  

But the real ironic twist is Ralph Baer (remember the original Odyssey?) sees Touch Me, copies it, and creates Simon. Remember, Nolan Bushnell copied the Odyssey (Ralph's machine) and got in trouble.  But Ralph Baer copies Atari, gets away with it... and Simon somehow goes on to become so popular that it actually has the impression of being the original, and Touch Me feeling like the clone.  Nice one... you sly devil Ralph!

You wanna play Touch Me?
(is not a good pickup line)

TV BASKETBALL
 - kinda cool... at least they got a BBall hoop on the screen... or at least the flyer says so.

WHAM BAM
 - No seriously, I'm not making this stuff up.  And here I thought, "Wham Bam, Thank You Ma'am!" was a recent saying, but one look at this flyer, and I think you can guess where this game got its name from!  Holy moly...

WILD GUNMAN:
 - WOW!  Now that I see this, I vaguely remember watching somebody at a pizza parlor playing around with this game.  It was so intriguing.  It could've been a clone, but I had totally forgotten about that memory.  This was really a technological stretch. Long long before Dragon's Lair, they were trying to interact with live-motion here.  

I swear I saw this once (or at least something like it)

Wild Gunman was Nintendo's first 16mm film projector games and becomes Nintendo's first big export product, in Europe and USA, because the effects of Japan's oil shortage that occurred in 1973 began showing : Japan's economy went into a tailspin and people couldn't afford using their money on Nintendo's Shooting Ranges anymore.

An updated version of the game was released in the arcades and in the Nintendo NES, ten years later in 1984, replacing photographic images with cartoon-style video game sprites. In this version the player also waited for the opponent's eyes to flash (accompanied by a speech bubble reading 'FIRE!!').  On October 4, 1997, Gunpei Yokoi, the creator of this game was tragically killed in an automobile accident, at the age of 56.

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CULTURE:

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Angering an entire generation of kids...

The Rubik's cube invented

The MRI invented.

CP/M was created by Gary Kildall, founding Digital Research
  - which gave lots of ideas and future fodder for people like Bill Gates, yeah?

Dungeons & Dragons was released!  (and all the future nerds rejoice...)

Pepsi was first American company to sell a consumer product in USSR… 

PLATO games really are leaders… Spacesim, M199H, pedit5, Empire, etc. 

Taito started making games… like "Basketball" and Speed Race (like Monaco GP)

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GAME OF THE YEAR:
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TANK (Kee Games + Atari  = Kataree?)