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1974 saw the expansion of technology and public awareness of video games in all sectors. A proliferation of companies creating commercial video games in the coin-operated sector attracted attention from mainstream press and prompted the diversification of games beyond strict Pong derivatives. The first three-dimensional games were developed for linked graphical terminals which would not be widely commercialized. Some of the first efforts to create video game consoles after the release of Magnavox's Odyssey became available in the United States and Europe.
- January 31 – A fire destroys the factory of Allied Leisure in Hialeah, Florida.[1] The company is forced to exit the video game industry temporarily.
- April 15 – Magnavox and Sanders Associates file suit against Atari Inc, Bally Mfg, Chicago Dynamic Industries, Allied Leisure, and Empire Distributing for infringement of the patents related to the Odyssey by Ralph Baer and Bill Rusch.[2] Magnavox’s wave of litigation would be highly consequential to the video game industry.
- June 21–23 – The program Ribbit from the University of Waterloo earns victory at the First Canadian Computer Chess Championship, running off of a Honeywell 6050.[3][4] It later wins at the fifth U.S. American Computer Chess Championship, displacing the four time champion Chess 4.0.[5]
- July – Nakamura Seisakusho (later Namco) purchases Atari Japan for 296 million yen. The company becomes the exclusive distributor of Atari video games in Japan for several years – solidifying a long-term relationship between Atari and Namco.[6]
- August 5–8 – The first World Computer Chess Championship is held in Stockholm, Sweden. Kaissa, a program developed in the Soviet Union, earns first prize.[7][8]
- August 27 – Sega sponsors a national tournament of competitive video games, the “All Japan TV Game Championships,” at three hundred locations throughout Japan.[9]
- September – Atari Inc. purchases Kee Games and makes Joseph Keenan the President of Atari.[10] Atari continues to release games under the Kee Games label until 1978.[11]
- September 15 – The New York Times runs an article covering the Pong boom titled “The Space Age Pinball Machine.”[12]
- November 1–3 – The Music Operators of America show is held in Chicago, IL. Video games at the show include Qwak!, Tank, and Baseball.[13]
United States
Arcade
Total Cabinet Unit Sales: 40,000 units.[14][Note 1]
Total Revenue (machine sales): $40.5 million.[14][Note 2]
Home consoles
Total unit sales: 145,000–150,000 consoles.[21][22]
Total Revenue (retail): $9–11.3 million.[21][22]
| Title | Game console units (1974) | Manufacturer | Developer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Odyssey | 129,000[23] | Magnavox | Sanders Associates/Magnavox |
- Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib/Dream Machines discusses numerous games, including variants of Spacewar! and those on the PLATO network.
- August – Masumi Akagi founds the Japanese coin-operated amusement publication Game Machine. The magazine runs for 28 years.
- December – The American publication Play Meter, devoted to coin-operated amusements, publishes its first issue. Founding editor is Ralph Lally II.
- January – Dungeons & Dragons is released by Tactical Studies Rules. The pen-and-paper board game is the origin of the role-playing game and would exert a major influence on video games, through the genres of RPGs and adventure games.
Arcade games
- February – Taito’s Basketball by pioneering game designer Tomohiro Nishikado features the first human-shaped characters in a coin-operated video game. Midway licenses the game for release in North America as TV Basketball, making it the first Japanese video arcade game to appear in the U.S.[24]
- March – Atari releases Gran Trak 10, a video driving game featuring advanced technology such as using a ROM to store graphics and course data.[25] After initial manufacturing foibles, the game becomes a massive success.[6]
- Meadows Games releases the enhanced ball-and-paddle game Flim Flam. It becomes among the most successful Pong clones, released in both upright and cocktail cabinet form.[26]
- May – Clean Sweep is released by Ramtek, a ball-and-paddle game featuring screen-clearing gameplay. It serves as one of the inspirations for Breakout.[6]
- August – Sega ships Balloon Gun, the first coin-operated video game utilizing a light gun. The method used is different from the Odyssey light gun, able to identify individual parts of the screen being shot.
- October – Baseball by Ramtek is released.[27] In addition to being the first coin-operated sports video game to authentically depict aspects of its play, it is the first video game to represent several characters with animation frames on screen at once.[6]
- November – Kee Games releases Tank. The game is a reinterpretation of Computer Space featuring custom controls and competitive gameplay.[11] It becomes the best selling arcade video game of 1974 in all and is seen as a defining moment for video arcade games.[6] The game is later adapted on the Atari Video Computer System as Combat.
- December – TV Pinball by Exidy introduces eliminating targets to ball-and-paddle games, preceding Breakout.[6]
Computer games
- Maze War is completed by three students at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California for the Imlac PDS-1 terminal. The game is seen as the progenitor of the first-person shooter.[28]
- January – The science fiction economic strategy game Star Trader is first distributed by the People’s Computer Company via paper tape.[29] It has a long-lasting legacy with subsequent iterations expanding its design.
- March – Jim Bowery develops Spasim for the PLATO IV system, a graphical space flight simulator.[30] It is the first computer game to implement true 3D gameplay. It in turn inspires a number of PLATO flight games including Airace and Airfight.
- The first version of the game Wander is developed by Peter Langston. It is the earliest example of a parser-based storytelling game; an early example of interactive fiction.[31]
Console
- Magnavox releases the Odyssey in markets outside of North America.
- July - Control Sales (a sales arm of Universal Research Laboratories) offers the game console Video Action. It is a repurposing of Tennis Tourney by Allied Leisure, including a television and four potentiometer controls for $499.[32] It is the second unique video game console available to consumers.
- August – Schraeder Electronics offers Dixi Ping Pong in the Netherlands, utilizing a custom transistor-to-transistor logic console design.
- October – Italian home appliance company Zanussi advertises the Ping-O-Tronic console. It features one-handed controllers.[33]
- Videomaster Ltd. of the UK offers Home T.V. Game, the first in a line of systems from the company.[34]
- January 21 – Meadows Games is founded in Sunnyvale, California.
- June – David Nutting and Jefferey Fredericksen found Dave Nutting Associates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the facilities of the coin-operated games company Milwaukee Coin Industries. Dave Nutting Associates would create several important video games published by Midway Mfg.[6]
- July 10 – Kenzo Tsujimoto founds the coin-operated machine operator IPM Co. Ltd. The company later changes its name to Irem Corporation.[6]
- July 23 – Sega Enterprises Inc. is incorporated. This is made the parent company of the Japanese Sega Enterprises Ltd. which continues to operate.[6]
- October 25 – North American Philips purchases a majority share in Magnavox.[35]
- The Frost & Sullivan estimate totals 30,000 games with traditional arcade cabinets and 10,000 for those under the new cocktail table presentation.
- The Frost & Sullivan estimate totals $33 million in games with traditional arcade cabinets and $7.5 million for those under the new cocktail table presentation.
- Ralph Baer's numbers compiled in April 1976 are mostly estimates without direct access to sales figures.
- Kee Games version of Gran Trak 10.
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