1970s and Earlier

Syzygy Engineering · 1971 · Arcade

Built by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney and sold through Nutting Associates, it was the first commercially sold coin oper...

Taito · 1978 · Arcade

Tomohiro Nishikado alien march introduced the persistent high score and pulled billions of quarters worldwide, spreading...

Atari · 1979 · Arcade

Vector line asteroids and Ed Logg physics drift turned a simple premise hypnotic. It became the best selling Atari coin ...

Will Crowther · 1976 · Mainframe

A caver and programmer mapped Kentucky cave passages into a text world of twisty little mazes, all alike. Don Woods expa...

Atari · 1972 · Arcade

Allan Alcorn two paddles and a bouncing square launched Atari and the commercial video game industry. Bar installations ...

Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle · 1978 · Mainframe

The first shared text world, built at Essex University, where players coined the term MUD. Avatars, clans and grinding a...

Atari · 1976 · Arcade

Nolan Bushnell wanted a one player Pong and Steve Wozniak delivered a famously compact prototype board before Apple took...

Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger · 1971 · Mainframe

Three student teachers coded a covered wagon simulation for a history class in 1971, and MECC later spread it to classro...