The History of Video Games: 1980
106The 70’s are over and the 80’s are here. Like the Kool-Aid Man on crack, Pac-Man has arrived in a dramatic fashion, selling over 300,000 Pac-Man machines in less than 2 years. In this video, i’ll be going over the events that transpired in 1980 in the history of video games. This is… The History of Video Games: 1980.
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The History of Video Games: 1980 (in text form)
Well, here we are. The 70’s are officially over. It’s been quite a journey so far. Video games have gone from being nonexistent, to simple programs shared amongst computer science students, to arcade games played by thousands, to home console games that could be played on your own television screen. But our adventure through time isn’t even close to being over yet, we’ve still got 36 years to go.
We’re gonna start 1980 off with a big fucking bang. This game needs no flashy introduction. Pac-Man is here. Pac-man was developed by Namco and first released in Japan in late May 1980. The player takes the role of the titular character and must collect all the dots on-screen, while navigating a maze and avoiding ghosts. When Pac-man was released, the video game market was dominated by space shooters like Galaxian and Asteroids. Pac-Man was developed by Toru Iwatani, with help from other Namco employees. Pac-Man is actually called Puck-man in Japan. When it was being manufactured for North American releases, Midway changed the name from Puck-Man to Pac-man in order to stop nefarious youngsters from vandalizing the name to say Fuck-Man. When the game launched in North America, it was immediately an entertainment juggernaut. Combined with Japan, over 300,000 arcade machines had been sold within a year and a half of the games release. To put that in perspective, Space Invaders had been considered a ridiculous success selling over 100,000 units. Speaking of Space Invaders, a console port of Space Invaders was released on the Atari 2600 in 1980. It was the first console game to sell over 1,000,000 units.
Nintendo released their first Game & Watch handheld in 1980, the Game & Watch Silver series. 4 Game & Watch’s were actually released this year. Ball (video from William Ng), Flagman, Vermin, Fire, and Judge. The games are all incredibly simple, and resemble something you’d find in a Happy Meal today. Still, they were incredibly popular for many years. The Game & Watch’s are from the mind of Gunpei Yokoi, who would go on the create the gameboy years later.
Another popular console was released in 1980, too. Well, it was technically first released in 1979, but in a test market. It was first released to the general public in 1980. I’m talking of course about the Intellivision, by Mattel. It launched for $300 and included Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack. Within a year, 175,000 consoles would be sold, and the library of games available was up to over 30.
In February 1980, HAL Laboratory was founded. They are most well known for their work on all sorts of Kirby games, the Super Smash Bros series, and Earthbound. According to former Nintendo President, Saturo Iwata, HAL Laboratory’s name was a way to put them ahead of IBM. His exact quote is “We were exactly the same in that sense. Ubisoft was named after Ubiquity because you wanted to be everywhere in the world and HAL was named as such because each letter put us one step ahead of IBM.”.
Lastly, Space Panic, developed by Universal Entertainment Corporation, was released in November 1980. While the game itself wasn’t very popular, and didn’t sell all that well, it’s worth mentioning as it’s one of, if not the first, platform game. Video game designer Chris Crawford calls it the “grandaddy of platform games”.
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