Fueled by the previous year's release of the colorful and appealing Pac-Man, the audience for arcade games in 1981 became much wider. Pac-Man influenced maze games began appearing in arcades and on home systems. Nintendo broke from their mediocre early releases with Donkey Kong which defined the platform genre.
Events
Magazines
January – Atari computer magazine ANALOG Computing begins 9 years of publication. Most issues include at least one BASIC game and one machine language game.
Winter – Arnie Katz and Bill Kunkel found Electronic Games, the first magazine on video games and generally recognized as the beginning of video game journalism.
July 9 – Nintendo releases Donkey Kong, which introduces the characters of Donkey Kong and Mario, and sets the template for the platformer genre. It is also one of the first video games with an integral storyline.[5]
September – Namco releases Galaga, the sequel to Galaxian which becomes more popular than the original.
October – Atari Inc. releases Tempest, one of the first games to use Atari's Color-QuadraScanvector display technology. It was also the first game to allow the player to choose their starting level (a system Atari dubbed "SkillStep").
November – Namco releases Bosconian, a multidirectional shooter with voice.
