The History of Video Games: 1975

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Published on June 27, 2016 6:00:01 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RfqCOXii_M

Game:

Gun Fight (1975)

Duration: 3:51

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It wasn’t the craziest time of the 70’s for video games, but some noteworthy games were released this year. Home Pong brought Pong into thousands of household across the country. Gun Fight introduced human-on-human combat. And Shark Jaws, a game based on the Jaws movie, was a complete flop. In this video, i’ll be going over the events that transpired in 1975 in the history of video games. This is… The History of Video Games: 1975.

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The History of Video Games: 1974 (in text form)
It’s finally over. The Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console, has been discontinued. As you may have guessed, it’s 1975. Another relatively slow year for video games.

While the original Magnavox Odyssey may have been discontinued, two other Odyssey consoles were released, the Odyssey 100 and Odyssey 200. The Odyssey 100 perhaps could best be described as the first plug-and-play game, in a sense. It was the simplest of the other dedicated Odyssey consoles that Magnavox would make. The Odyssey 100 had two games, Tennis & Hockey. The Odyssey 200 was released a little while after the 100, and improved on it in a few ways. In addition to Tennis and Hockey, it included a game called Smash, a video game version of the racket sport, Squash. Due to the nature of Squash, being played by either 2 or 4 players, Smash had to have those options as well, so it did, making it the first home console to feature 2 and 4 player options. Magnavox will end up making quite a few more dedicated consoles, but we’ll discuss those in the years to come.

As if you haven’t heard enough about Pong yet, Atari partnered up with a division of Sears to release a home console version of Pong called Home Pong. Home Pong originally used hundreds of wires inside of a rather large wooden box. Al Alcorn, who you should be familiar with by now, enlisted Atari engineers Bob Brown and Harold Lee to help him create a single chip, that would end up being designed by Brown and Lee, to replace the wires. At the time, it was the highest performing computer chip used for a consumer-grade product. Nolan Bushnell and then Vice President of Sales at Atari Gene Lipkin reached out to many retailers to try and get them to sell Home Pong, but they all declined saying it would not interest consumers and would be too expensive. They would eventually contact Sears Sporting Goods and their representative Tom Quinn. Quinn offered a deal, but they left thinking they could find a better deal elsewhere.

In February of 1975, Nolan Bushnell’s recently founded company Horror Games, released it’s first and only video game, Shark Jaws. Bushnell wanted it to be a licensed game based on Jaws, but Universal Pictures wasn’t having it. The gameplay is simple, the player tries to collect fish while avoiding a great white shark. Shark Jaws sold less than 2000 units.

Towards the end of 1975, another video game first took place. Midway Games released Gun Fight, known as Western Gun in Europe and Japan, and was the first video game to feature human-on-human combat. Gun Fight “simulated” an old western gunfight where two men attempt to kill each other. If a player gets hit with a bullet, they’ll fall to the ground and say “GOT ME”. Each player has 6 bullets and the round ends if each player runs out of ammo. The game also featured some obstacles like cactuses and stagecoaches.

To round out 1975, there was yet another first in the winter of 1975 with the game pedit5, released for the PLATO Network. Pedit5 is one of the first dungeon crawl games, with only m199h coming before it. Though m199h is a mystery. We know it existed, but very few other details about it are known. In pedit5, the player is tasked with guiding a player through a dungeon while killing monsters and collecting various treasures.

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