CHVG: 1973 - Attack of the clones

Begun, the clone wars has... (1973)
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One of many
pong clones

The arcade video game industry floruishes under the PONG breakthrough... and various companies begin producing video games, including Chicago Coin, Midway, Ramtek, Taito, Allied Leisure, and Kee Games (which at this time was secretly owned by Atari). It was a bit of a wild wild west, with only a few companies actually paying Atari a licensing fee before creating their own version of "Pong".

There were a few other experiments going on in the arcade's at this time... like "Space Race" and the infamous "Gotcha" chase game by Atari that featured these incredible controllers (see below)

But otherwise, it was mostly a new phenomenon of Pong variants being synonymous with "Arcade Videogames" or Tele-Video Games or other such weird names. After all, the idea of playing a game on a video screen is still in such infancy, they hadn't even settled on a standard name yet.

 

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COMPUTERS:

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Plato system

Believe it or not, there was this pretty amazing, graphically-driven PLATO system back in 1973. It had a mainframe core, dummy remote terminals, networked multi-user environment and on-screen graphics & typing. Way ahead of its time it seems, and of course primary used in a few institutes of higher education. Departments were allocated space to create their own "lessons" (and unused modules were often co-opted by students and turned into games). It was only available in a few places, but those that had access to PLATO at their university were lucky indeed!

It's been shown how these early systems sparked the imagination of many game developers and early programmers. A lot of people tried to duplicate what they saw on PLATO or other mainframes for years to come as the nascent home-computing market slowly became a more viable gaming platform.

EMPIRE
- Way back in 1973, Empire on the Plato is a networked, multiplayer, arena shooter. Sure, it's mostly text-based and nothing like what we consider to be arena shooters... but the concept is there. It's surprising how far back gaming goes!

MAZE WAR
- A real trail-blazer with a lot of firsts, or early examples. First-person shooter, multi-player concurrently, in-game avatars, 3D realized maze, etc. This was obviously only available on limited mainframe systems, but I think this would be a solid contender for the best game of the year!

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CONSOLES:

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The Odyssey is slowing down a little in sales, however, and the price was dropped to $75 to try to kickstart sales.

Four new add-on games are released for the Odyssey, though, in spite of slow sales. I believe they are quite rare today. I haven't seen examples or playthroughs on any of these:
- Basketball, Brain Wave, Interplanetary Voyage, W.I.N.
- I actually saw a set of all four of these 1973 games go for over $4,000 on ebay!!

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ARCADES:

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ASTEROID - a clone of Space Race... I mention it because the name is similar to the 1979 HUGE hit. But it will be awhile still before we get the actual Asteroids machine you're thinking of. The real blockbuster Atari success. This game wasn't nearly as good.

CHAMPION PING PONG - pong variant
COMPUTER SPACE BALL - pong variant
DAVIS CUP - pong variant
DOCTOR PONG - Atari Pong in a cocktail version for Dr.'s office... didn't do well? duh.
ELEPONG - pong variant
ELIMINATION - 2-4 player pong variant
QUADRAPONG - pong variant
PONG DOUBLES - pong variant
PONG TRON  - of course it's a pong variant...

Holy Frak! Were there no copyrights in 1973? Was there nobody who knew how to program anything but a pong variation? I know, I shouldn't be so hard on the fledgling industry, but my goodness what a boring state the arcades must've been in during 1973. Hey Look, "ELEPONG".. wonder if that plays like PONG? Guess what? Yes... yes it does.

I'm tempted to say Atari screwed up by not patenting PONG, but copyright laws weren't really established for video gaming at this time. And even if they could have received a copyright, it likely would've taken a year or so, and then they'd have to have a legal team going after the cloners. Instead they tried to just stay ahead of the curve, create new games as well as make as many pong machines as they could. And, the market grew by everybody jumping in and copying... so there was some collateral benefits.

What to do with old wine barrels?

* PONG IN A BARREL!  - Well at least THIS is a cool-looking game.  The only clone worth looking up, what a great story.  Nolan Bushnell really was into drinking & partying... even hiding his drinking by building games into his old barrels.  (Nolan, love ya man!). Not to be confused with Barrel-Pong - the small barrel on a platform... the ultra-rare Pong-in-a-Barrel is too cool.  

Wait a second, I just now discovered SNOOPY PONG! How cool is that cabinet?

DUCK HUNT!

Oh yeah... way before Nintendo packaged this into their system we had an electro-mechanical version of duck hunt. I don't even know how these things work, but wish i could try it out. Please can you shoot the dumb dog?

GOTCHA
This looked like it might be fun. This is the first commercial maze game... and even better, the original version looked like a cabinet controlled by two "boobs" as controllers. Yup, the boob game... an attempt to make a female videogame, since most games had a joystick that resembled male anatomy! The controversy over video games begins here - but not for content -- because of the female controllers. It did spawn one of the greatest arcade flyers ever. hee hee

MISSILE RADAR
- Another new type of game from Atari. Shoot missiles to detonate on-coming warheads. 1973 seems like a scary time.

SPACE RACE
- Atari's second game... at least this was gameplay other than ball & paddle. You have to run your spaceship from the bottom of the screen up to the top of the screen, avoiding the little streaky white dots floating on by. Asteroids? Atari really loved its Asteroids, eh?

WATERGATE CAPER
- Ahaha.... Watergate was still big news! "Caper"... too funny. Try to get away with it? Actually it's more like some kind of code cracking game which used the de-facto standard analog wheel to spin the dials.

WINNER, THE VIDEO GAME
- First game by Midway, and graciously they were only 1 of 3 companies that actually paid Atari to license their PONG game.


MORE NOTES:
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- Midway enters video arcade games with their licensed Pong clone, "Winner". They go on to out-manufacture Atari.
- Konami also born in 1973, but no games yet.
- SEGA also gets into video game market (vs. mechanical games) with its Pong clone.
Atari is topping $1 million / month. And still steadily growing.
- LEMONADE STAND - comes out on some mainframe. precursor to popular genre
- BASIC Computer Games - book written by David H. Ahl. This collection of type-in programs is the first of many in this format... goes on to becomes a staple on many early computer platforms.
- XEROC Park has the amazing ALTO machine! So ahead of its time… just expensive!

CHVG: 1971

Chronological History of Video Games:

Early History of Video Games (1971)

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Look at that... cabinet!

Computer Space:
The "arcade video game" got its first actual commercial game in 1971... Computer Space. Nolan Bushnell was an engineer/entrepreneur who experienced Spacewar! while attending college, and was now involved with the arcade scene. He thought it'd be a hit if he could make Spacewar! playable in the arcades, alongside the other electro-mechanical games, pinball machines and more. The only problem was that it was still prohibitively expensive to setup a PDP microcomputer... it would never enough money to pay for the equipment.

The solution he came up with was a more simplistic version of Spacewar! that could run on dedicated transistors. (how this actually works is beyond me, since it has nothing to do with programming, and everything to do with engineering). Nolan called his game Computer Space (ironically, since he had just ditched the actual computer part of the design entirely). He made a deal with his employer, Nutting Associates, to produce and sell the game. They made about 1500 cabinets total, and it was such a futuristic and cool looking design they've become collector items, and have even made cameo movie appearances. (see links at end of article).

As a commercial endeavor, it wasn't a huge hit. The usual reason you'll hear a lot of videogame history books is that the game was "too complicated." Well, I'll have more to say on that front after we first take a look at the OTHER big arcade development of 1971.

Resides in the Computer History Museum - Mtn. View, CA

Galaxy Game:
Remember how Nolan decided it was too expensive to run Spacewar! commercially on that expensive PDP11? Well we actually have a glimpse into the road not taken with Galaxy Game. This was a version of Spacewar! modified for coin-operation at 10 cents a game, or 25 cents for 3 plays. It was installed at the Tresidder Union at Stanford University in September, 1971, beating Nolan's Computer Space into customer usage by a month or two.

But, this was not a commercial product. It was only a prototype... a test market game if you will. Programmed by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, it ran on a single PDP11. Eventually it had two separate vector displays... two games running, and each one you could have 2 players competing head-to-head.

Th estimated hardware cost was around $20,000 in 1971 money. At 10 cents a play, you'd make your money back after just 200,000 games... well, you'd also have to earn money for the rent, power, cleaning, maintenance and repairs. So basically never.

In June 1972 the hardware was updated... allowing four to eight consoles to run at the same time. It was actually well-received on campus, much like Spacewar! had many fans in its time. Galaxy Game remained on campus until May of 1979, with reported wait times of as much as an hour during its peak popularity.

Was it really too complex?

Too Complicated?
We'll see the first mega-hit of arcade games in 1972, Pong (it' really not a secret). And that game was very simple... just a single analog knob for each player. Thus the reasoning is always that Nolan Bushnell's Computer Space failed commercially because it was just too complicated. But I don't think so. I think it was just a boring game. Have you watched game footage?

Example:


If it was so complicated, why was Spacewar! so popular? Why was Galaxy Game so popular and remained so for years? I've even seen Galaxy Game described as an instant hit. How can you have an instant hit if the controls were so complicated!?

No, I don't think the reason for its failure was simply its level of complexity. I believe Computer Space just didn't hold enough interest for players to WANT to learn it. This is proven again and again as games got more complex. Look at Defender (1980)! It was a game with a myriad of buttons, an up/down joystick, and also incredible difficulty. But because it had some whiz-bang action, a story and really fun gameplay, people learned it. By far the most complex thing of its day, yet it was a HUGE success.

So, to me anyway, I think saying "too complicated" is just a cop-out. Time to admit the game looked cool, was certainly a pioneer, but the gameplay lacked staying power. And that's okay. It's part of a rich history now.

Unfortunately it's hard to play either of these games today. You have to visit a museum to play Galaxy Game, and Computer Space is also more of a museum display than video game even in retro arcades. Still.. I really like the cabinet for Computer Space, very slick! Wish there were more out there, and would love to try the authentic experience.

MOVIE:
A Computer Space unit appears in the 1973 movie 'Soylent Green', starring Charlton Heston. It appears briefly on screen being played by a woman while policeman Heston is visiting the apartment's owner.

MOVIE:

A yellow Computer Space unit appears in the 1975 movie 'Jaws', during the arcade/beach scene (approximately 40 minutes from the beginning).

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COMPUTER GAMING:
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Ralph Baer's Brown Box (prototype) is picked up by Magnavox for exclusive manufacturing and distribution. We are going to look at the very first home video game console coming soon.

OREGON TRAIL
- Yes, this venerable game actually got its start in 1971, where you'd play by entering some commands into a terminal, and then a printer/teletype would print out some results, and you'd play on. This really isn't anything like the classroom classic which was a school staple in the late 80's. Text-only... printed out. Imagine the trees destroyed by typing BANG! to hunt for food as the paper spooled ever onward.

I remember playing what I thought was Oregon Trail in 6th grade. My school had a Commodore lab, though... and looking into it I believe it was actually a knock-off from a type-in magazine listing called Westward Ho. But yes, I love the constant evolution of Edutainment and hope to cover a lot more of it in the future.


CIVILIZATION / a.k.a. Empire
- This was an early version of a management/economy simulation, written for the PDP 11/45 platform. Naturally, as all "unpurposeful" data in the early computing days - it was deleted.

And finally...
The first emails were sent over ARPANET - and established the @ sign in email addresses.