1973 saw a substantial increase in the amount of video games created and distributed in multiple sectors. In coin-operated games, a craze for Pong-style games ignited the first fad for video games both in the United States and other countries. Time-sharing networks saw greater proliferation of popular programs through type-in listings. The PLATO network played host to some of the earliest massively multiplayer games.
January – Pong is licensed to Midway Mfg, subsidiary of Bally, for release as Winner (1973).
April – Atari Inc. launches Pong nationally to distributors of coin-operated games across the United States.[1]
August 26–28 – The fourth U.S. American Computer Chess Championship is won by Chess 3.5, successor to the undefeated champion from the prior three years.
September – The Japanese Amusement Association show is held in Tokyo. The company Kansai Seiki displays the prototype game Playtron, among the first games utilizing color graphics – though it is never released.[2][3]
November 9–11 – The Music Operators of America show is held in Chicago, IL. Over a dozen companies exhibit video games at the show, almost all clones or variants of Pong.[4]
March – Volly by Ramtek Corp, Rally by For-Play Manufacturing, and Paddle Battle by Allied Leisure are released in the United States, among the first clones of Pong.
April – Ping-Pong by Alca Electronics is released in the UK as the first European coin-op video game.[11]
July – Sega releases Pong-Tron and Taito releases Elepong, the first two video games produced for the coin-operated games market in Japan.
Atari Inc. releases Space Race, a combination of a racing game and obstacle avoidance.
August – Tennis Tourney by Allied Leisure is released, the first four-player variant of Pong.
October – Elimination! is released by Kee Games, a ball-and-paddle game featuring up to four people in an elimination-style contest. Atari's version is released as Quadrapong.
Gotcha is released by Atari, a game featuring characters in a maze. The game is notable for its low-production variant, Color Gotcha, which may be the first commercially-released video game utilizing color graphics.[12]
December – Nutting Associates releases the ball-and-paddle game Wimbledon, among the first color games.
February 25 – Jack Burness completes Moonlander, a graphical version of the Lunar Lander game concept for the DEC GT-40 intelligent terminal. His version features the first overworld map and the first Easter egg in a video game.[13]
August – Empire II is released to PLATO by John Daleske and Silas Warner. This version evolved into an arena combat shooting game featuring fifty simultaneous players on any of eight teams.[15]
Magnavox releases the games Interplanetary Voyage, Basketball, W.I.N., and Brain Wave for the Odyssey at retail. Previously they had provided the game Percepts to customers who returned their survey card, but these were the first commercial releases of console games separate from the hardware.[16]
Official test markets for the Odyssey outside of North America begin.
March 19 – Konami Industry Co., Ltd. is formerly incorporated in Japan by Kagemasa Kōzuki, Yoshinobu Naka, Tatsuo Miyasako.[17]
May – The company Hudson is established in Sapporo, Japan as the business arm of the radio shop CQ Hudson. The company later changed its name to Hudson Soft when it began selling computers and associated software.[18][19]
August – Atari opens their Atari Japan subsidiary to import games for the domestic market.[20]
September 25 – Kee Games Inc. is founded in California. The company is majority owned by the principals of Atari but is presented as a competitor.[20]
October 19 – Exidy Inc. is founded by former Ramtek engineer Pete Kauffman and Samuel Hawes. Their first product was a Pong clone.
Taito Co Ltd. – in the business of coin-operated amusements as well as general import and export – opens its office Taito America in Illinois, the first Japanese company involved with video games to open an American office.[5]
The toy company Nintendo Co. Ltd. establishes the label Nintendo Leisure System to release coin-operated games, starting with the electro-mechanical Laser Clay Shooting Range.
Videomaster of the UK is established to distribute coin-operated Pong games throughout the nation.[21]
^"PONG Into National Distribution; Success for Atari, Inc". Cash Box. 34 (40): 104. April 7, 1973.
^Akagi, Masumi (2005). Soreha "Pon" Kara Hajimatta - Ākēdo TV Gēmu no Naritachi それは「ポン」から始まった-アーケードTVゲームの成り立ち [In the Beginning, There was "Pong" - The Origins of Arcade TV Games]. Amusement News Agency. p. 89. ISBN978-4990251208.
^"Focus on MOA's 25th Anniversary Expo". Cash Box. 35 (21): 50–51. November 24, 1973.
^ abSmith, Alexander (2020). They create worlds: the story of the people and companies that shaped the video game industry. Boca Raton: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN978-0-429-42364-2.
^Jarrell, Timothy (November 1976). "Like Old Man River Midway Sales Go Rollin' Along". Play Meter. 2 (12): 50.
^ abcNeven, John F. (July 11, 1977). "Notice of Motion". Magnavox Company v. Chicago Dynamic Industries, et al. US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
^"Magnavox will drop". Weekly Television Digest with Consumer Electronics. 14 (19): 9. May 13, 1974.
^Meades, Alan F. (2022). Arcade Britannia: a social history of the British amusement arcade. Game Histories / edited by Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN978-0-262-37235-0.
^Carlston, Douglas G. (1985). Software people: an insider's look at the personal computer software industry. New York: Computer Book Division, Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-671-50971-2.
