1973 in video games

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Events[edit]

March 19 – Kagemasa Kōzuki establishes Konami Industry Co., Ltd.^[1] Formerly the owner of a jukebox repair/rental business in Osaka, Japan, Kozuki launches Konami to manufacture amusement machines for video arcades.^[2]
May – Hudson Soft Ltd. is established in Sapporo, Japan for the purpose of marketing telecommunications devices and art photographs.^[3]
Taito, an electro-mechanical arcade game manufacturer, enters the video game industry and opens a North American branch.^[4]
Sega, an electro-mechanical arcade game manufacturer, enters the video game industry with Pong clones.
Computer Space makes appearances in the films Soylent Green and Sleeper.
Empire versions I, II and III are developed for the PLATO system by John Daleske. Possibly the first team game ever, the first fifty-player game ever, and numerous other innovations.
Silas Warner takes over PLATO Empire version I and renames it Conquest.
Lemonade Stand is developed for the first time.
Maze War, an ancestor of the first-person shooter genre and an early network game, begins development for the Imlac PDS-1 computer.

The following titles were the best-selling arcade video games of 1973 in the United States, according to annual arcade cabinet sales estimates provided by Ralph H. Baer.^[5]

Rank	Title	Arcade cabinet sales	Manufacturer	Genre
1	Pong	8,000	Atari, Inc.	Pong
2	Pro Tennis	7,000	Williams Electronics
2	Winner	7,000	Midway Manufacturing
4	Super Soccer	5,000	Allied Leisure
	Tennis Tourney	5,000	Allied Leisure
	TV Tennis	5,000	Chicago Coin
7	Gotcha	3,000	Atari, Inc.	Maze
8	Asteroid (Space Race)	2,000	Midway Manufacturing	Racing
9	Space Race	1,500	Atari, Inc.	Racing
10	Hockey	1,000	Ramtek	Pong
	TV Hockey	1,000	Chicago Coin
	Volley	1,000	Ramtek

Midway Manufacturing Co. licenses Pong from Atari to produce Winner,^[6] their first video game arcade game.^[1]
Atari releases Gotcha, the first commercial maze game, to video arcades.^[1]
Atari releases Pong Doubles to video arcades. A variation on the wildly successful Pong, Pong Doubles is the first video arcade game to include four-player gameplay.^[7]
Atari releases Space Race, the first Arcade Racing game ever.
Williams Electronics releases Paddle Ball, an unlicensed duplicate of Pong, as their first arcade game.^[8]

Steve Colley, Howard Palmer, and Greg Johnson develop Maze War on the Imlac PDS-1 at the NASA Ames Research Center in California.^[9] It is recognized as an ancestor of the first-person shooter genre.
BASIC Computer Games was first published. It included 101 games written in BASIC.

^ ^a ^b ^c Thomas, Donald A. Jr (2005). "-1973-". ICWhen.com. Archived from the original on October 26, 2002. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
^ "Corporate Info / Corporate History". Konami. Archived from the original on February 10, 2006. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
^ "Corporate Info. / History". Hudson. Archived from the original on November 24, 2005. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
^ "The Golden Age Arcade Historian: Video Game Firsts??". November 22, 2013. Archived from the original on November 5, 2017. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
^ Baer, Ralph H. (2005). Videogames: In the Beginning. Rolenta Press. pp. 10–3. ISBN 978-0-9643848-1-1.
^ "WINNER from Midway" (PDF). The International Arcade Museum. 1973. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved April 17, 2015.
^ Winters, David. "Atari PONG –The first steps–". PONG-Story. Archived from the original on February 13, 2006. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
^ Kurtz, Bill (1997). Slot Machines and Coin-Op Games. New Jersey: Chartwell Books. p. 125. ISBN 978-1-55521-731-0.
^ "The Maze War 30 Year Retrospective". DigiBarn Games. 2004. Archived from the original on July 17, 2017. Retrieved February 25, 2012.