1976

**NeoZeedeater** · 31 Aug 2006, 05:41 PM

On the subject of video games the 1970s decade has mostly become forgotten over the years, partly due to the age of gamers and partly due to the early 1980s improving upon its types of games. Still, I find it quite a fascinating era. This thread will focus on the gaming scene of 30 years ago. There was actually quite a lot going on.

There were several consoles released in 1976. Atari launched a few versions of Home Pong allowing gamers to play the hit arcade game at home(technically the system debuted in 1975 with the Sears Tele-games version). Video tennis had been around in the home market since the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972 but it was never a huge success and by 1976 that console was no longer on the market. Home Pong sold for much less as well.

Other Pong clones appeared that year too, the most successful being Coleco's Telstar. It included three game variations(tennis, hockey, and handball).

Far more interesting though was the arrival of programmable consoles. Home Pongs and earlier systems were "dedicated" which means they had their games either built inside. They couldn't just program and release new games for them like with consoles as we know them today.

The first programmable true cartridge-based consoles arrived in 1976 and a new era in home gaming had begun.

Fairchild Camera & Instrument released their Video Entertainment System(VES) in North America in August. Hockey and Tennis were built into the system and various cartridges were sold separately. The VES was later remodeled and renamed the Channel F. The controller was a sort of paddle/joystick combo; it could be moved in four directions and the top portion rotated.

RCA's programmable Studio II console was released in January 1977 just missing the 1976 Christmas season.

A German company called Radofin released their 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System in 1976. It and its follow ups were licensed to other manufacturers throughout Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The controller consisted of a two direction analog joystick and a keypad.

I haven't played the 1292 unfortunately. With so little information on the internet and the US-centric focus of most gaming history books it's difficult to determine the exact years of release for its games. I suspect most of its games came out post-'76 and so I will leave them out of the thread until I know for sure.

Japan was behind the West in console gaming. From what I gather the only console over there at this point was the original Magnavox Odyssey which was released in Japan by Nintendo the previous year. I'm not totally sure of the year though. Nintendo doesn't mention the Odyssey in the company history on their website.

Anyway, onto some of the games of 1976.

--Sports and Fighting Games--

While people were playing Pong and its variants at home, the arcade sports scene had evolved by this time with characters that somewhat resembled people instead of just moving squares.

Tornado Baseball(Bally Midway)

Fly Ball(Atari)

Deluxe Baseball(Ramtek)

Fighting games emerged in the arcades too. Sega had Heavyweight Champ which had boxing glove shaped controllers and cartoony characters.

Project Support Engineering had the jousting game Knights in Armor.

--Shooters--

Kee Games/Atari's Tank 8 was an eight player colour sequel to their popular 1974 arcade game. I love Tank and I imagine it would be pretty awesome 8-player.

*Note - In this era numbers after games' names usually refer to the number of players as opposed to later generations where they usually refer to sequels.

On the VES, Videocart-2 consisted of Desert Fox and Shooting Gallery. Given that the tank game Desert Fox predates Atari's VCS game Combat I imagine it would have been impressive at the time. I like it.

In Shooting Gallery you controlled a turret on the screen and had to shoot moving targets. You could adjust the speed and add a timer.

Airplane duels were another popular type of shooter in the arcades that year.

Ace(Allied Leisure)

Biplane(Fun Games Inc.)

Wings(Electra)

Skywars(Micro Amusements)

Taito's Avenger looks like some kind of vertical shooter.

Squadron(Sega)

I have been trying to trace the origins of the rail shooter genre. It's possible Meadows' coin op Cobra Gunship is one but it's hard to tell from pictures and descriptions.

Atari's arcade game Starship 1 is the earliest rail shooter I have played. It might have been a 1977 release though. Klov.com lists it as 1976 but MAME has it as 1977.

Midway's arcade game Sea Wolf had a periscope and involved moving around a crosshair to shoot enemies.

Atari's Cops'n Robbers was a two-player scrolling shooter where you had to take out your opponent on the opposite side of the screen.

--Gun Games--

Light gun games had been around commercially in the early '70s with the Odyssey rifle but by 1976 they had faded from the console scene. However, the genre was alive in the arcades. I really wish I had access to playing these as I think the gun game genre tends to age well.

Outlaw(Atari)

Rock'n Bark(Sega)

Attack(Taito)

Claybuster(Model Racing)

And although it's not technically considered a video game, Nintendo's projector-based game Wild Gunman deserves a mention as it got a video game version 8 years later.

Sky Hawk and Shooting Trainer were other 1976 projector games by Nintendo.

--Adventure and Roleplaying Games--

These genres were still quite underground at this time. Consoles weren't advanced enough to handle them, arcades didn't suit them, and there wasn't really a personal computer market yet. Instead, they existed on mainframe computers such as those on university campuses.

The text adventure genre is considered to have originated with Will Crowther's mainframe game Adventure/Colossal Cave/ADVENT(usually dated 1972 although some dispute that). In 1976, Don Woods overhauled the game adding in many new elements. This is considered the complete version and why both men get listed as authors.

Similarly for RPGs in 1976, it seems the big thing was adding enhancements to the dungeon crawlers such as Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood's dnd/Avatar. The game originated in 1974 and was expanded on by Dirk and Flint Pellett in 1976 with new monsters and items added.

There were at least a couple RPG-ish games prior to dnd such as pedit5 and m119h but they were deleted soon after creation. Dnd was also likely the first game to feature a boss enemy with its Golden Dragon. More info on dnd - http://www.armory.com/~dlp/dnd1.html

I'm not sure what year this PLATO version of dnd is.

--Maze Games and First-person Shooters--

Maze games been around since the early days of mainframe gaming as well.

Arguably the original first-person shooter, Maze War/Maze/The Maze Game not only networked several players for multiplayer action, it had a map you could toggle to. Talk about ahead of its time. While it didn't originate in 1976(I have seen it listed as 1973 and 1974) it was being improved and ported to other computer formats that year. This website has lots on info and videos - http://www.digibarn.com/history/04-V...War/index.html

There were 2d maze games as well such as Bally's arcade release The Amazing Maze Game where the object was to exit the maze quicker than your opponent.

Meadows' arcade game Lazer Command was a more maze-like approach on Tank.

--Driving Games--

It was big year for arcade racing games. Atari had Sprint 2, Le Mans and Indy 4.

Indy 4

Sega's Fonz was likely the first game based on a TV character.

Stunt Cycle(Atari)

Speed Race Twin(Taito)

Moto-Cross(Sega)

Mattel released their first of their line of handheld electronic games in 1976 with Auto Race. The car was just a red blip but I thought these old Mattel games were neat.

First-person view racers appeared such as Atari's Night Driver and Bally Midway's 280 Zzzap.

--Miscellaneous Games--

Another type of game that originated in 1976 as far as I can tell is those multiplayer battles where players control snake-like things and the object is to outlive your opponents and get them to smash into walls.

Gremlin's arcade game Blockade is usually credited as the first one although Bally Midway's Bigfoot Bonkers and Ramtek's Barricade date from the same year. This sub-genre was the inspiration for the light cycles in the 1982 movie TRON.

Blockade

Bigfoot Bonkers

Videocart-1 for the VES had Tic Tac Toe, Shooting Gallery the drawing program Doodle and random drawing generator Quadradoodle.

There were also video trivia and card games in 1976 arcades.

Quiz Show(Kee Games)

Trivia(Ramtek)

Hit Me(Ramtek)

Videocart-3 for the VES was Blackjack.

Exidy released the first controversial video game, Death Race. This arcade game(inspired by the movie Death Race 2000) had the player running over "gremlins". It outraged some people who thought the game promoted violence and killing people with cars(sound familiar?). The game was mentioned on 60 Minutes and other news shows.

One of the most influential games of the year was Atari's Breakout which breathed some fresh air into ball and paddle games with its single-player focus of eliminating blocks at the top of the screen.

Cinematronics' arcade game Flipper Ball was similar.

Also worth mentioning is that Breakout creators Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer in 1976 and Atari was bought out by Warner Communications.

All in all, it was a pretty eventful year given how new and small the industry still was. It recapped the work of the early '70s and added new innovations. The shift to programmable consoles was significant and most of the genres we play today existed back then in some form.

What are your thoughts on 1976 in gaming? Please add any other information or corrections. I wasn't born until late 1975 and didn't experience this time as a gamer first-hand. There's still plenty for me to learn about it.

**Dolemite** · 31 Aug 2006, 05:48 PM

Wow. That was a great look back at gaming's Dark Age. Good job, Neo.

They have that Death Race game at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, along with a bunch of different arcade and console games in a video game exhibit there. It covers gaming's earliest days all they way through today. You can just hang out and play everything.