Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Pong is a 1972 sports video game developed and published by Atari for arcades.It is one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work and decided to manufacture the game.
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and video game console and home computer development company which operated between 1972 and 1984. During its years of operation, it developed and produced over 350 arcade, console, and computer games for its own systems, and almost 100 ports of games for home computers such as the Commodore 64.
It is the first Japanese-developed home video game console, with the unusual feature of a wireless connection to the television via a UHF antenna. October – The Tele-Games home version of Pong (sometimes called Home Pong) is made available for purchase in Sears retail stores. [2]
It was shortly followed by the release of the home version of Pong by Atari Inc. in 1975 based on the arcade game. A number of clones of both systems rushed to fill the nascent home console market and the video game industry suffered a small recession in 1977 due to this.
The Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders, released in 1980, was considered the killer app for home video game consoles, helping to quadruple the console's sales that year. [57] Similarly, Coleco had beaten Atari to a key licensing deal with Nintendo to bring Donkey Kong as a pack-in game for the Colecovision, helping to drive its sales.
One of these was the idea of a home version of Pong, a concept they had first considered as early as 1973. The cost of integrated circuits to support a home version had fallen enough to be suitable for a home console by 1974, and initial design work on console began in earnest in late 1974 by Alcorn, Harold Lee and Bob Brown.
April – Ping-Pong by Alca Electronics is released in the UK as the first European coin-op video game. [19] July – Sega releases Pong-Tron and Taito releases Elepong, the first two video games produced for the coin-operated games market in Japan. [20] Atari Inc. releases Space Race, a combination of a racing game and obstacle avoidance. [21]
By this time, Atari controlled 75 percent of the lucrative home video-game market and VCS sales were nearing $2 billion per year. The percent of a bonus pool that Bushnell and Keenan received represented a substantial income. The case went to court. Warner settled and Alcorn, Atari's first full-time engineer, retired "to the beach." [5]