1973 in video games

List of years in video games
… 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 …
Art Archaeology Architecture Literature Music Philosophy Science +...

Events

• March 19 – Kagemasa Kōzuki establishes Konami Industry Co., Ltd. Formerly the owner of a jukebox repair/rental business in Osaka, Japan, Kozuki launches Konami to manufacture amusement machines for video arcades.
• May – Hudson Soft Ltd. is established in Sapporo, Japan for the purpose of marketing telecommunications devices and art photographs.
• Taito, an electro-mechanical arcade game manufacturer, enters the video game industry and opens a North American branch.
• 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 Civilization.
• 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.

Notable releases

• Midway Manufacturing Co. licenses Pong from Atari to produce Winner, their first video game arcade game.
• Atari releases Gotcha, the first commercial maze game, to video arcades.
• 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.
• 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.
• BASIC Computer Games was first published. It included 101 games written in BASIC.