1970 in video games explained

At the beginning of the 1970s, video games existed almost entirely as novelties passed around by programmers and technicians with access to computers, primarily at research institutions and large companies. 1970 marked a crucial year in the transition of electronic games from academic to mainstream, with developments in chess artificial intelligence and in the concept of commercialized video games.

While the technology that later became the Odyssey by Magnavox was stalled in development, the game which would become Computer Space began development in this period. In computer games, BASIC games written by high school and college students circulated among different time-sharing computer networks via user’s societies. Some of these programs would later be distributed as type-in listings via books and magazines. The first national competition of chess programs was held, drawing attention to advances in artificial intelligence across various fields.

Events

• April – Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Arlazov, Bitman, Zhivotovskii and Uskov publish their paper Programming a computer to play chess in Russian Mathematical Surveys. In addition to discussion of the mathematical problems involved, the paper includes examples of humans playing against the computer, presented using chess notation.^[1]
• Summer – Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney begin work on an adaptation of the Spacewar! mainframe game. Originally the game is intended to run off a Data General Nova 1200 computer with support hardware. This would eventually lead to the development of Computer Space (1971).^[2]
• September 1-3 – The first U.S. Computer Chess Championship is held by the Association for Computing Machinery. The contestants played via telephone using mainframe computers located at various universities. The victor is the Chess 3.0 program running off of a CDC 6400 created by David Slate, Keith Gorlen, and Larry Atkin of Northwestern University.^[3] The other competitors are The Daly CP (Chris Daly & Kenneth King), J. Biit (Columbia University), COKO III (University of California & Bell Telephone Laboratories),^[4] SCHACH (Texas A&M University) and Marsland CP (Tony Marsland).^{[5] [6]}
• December 24 – A computer racing game programmed in for the IBM System/360 is played on a Christmas Eve special of BBC's Tomorrow’s World. Commentator Raymond Baxter and racing driver Graham Hill play the game while coordinators Anne Norie and Margaret Watson operate the terminals.^[7]

Notable releases

Publications

• The newsletter EDU is first published by Digital Equipment Corporation. Edited by David Ahl, the newsletter became one of the first commercial outlets of type-in listings for games. Ahl later published 101 BASIC Computer Games based on listings he collected for publication in EDU.

Games

Computer

• September 12 – Christopher Gaylo, a student at Syosset High School in Syosset, New York, completes a finalized version of the BASIC game Highnoon. It was distributed on the Huntington Project time-sharing network. The code was later posted by Gaylo online.^[8]

Business

• April 3 – Gremlin Industries is founded in San Diego, California as a contract manufacturer of electronics. The company enters coin-operated games in 1972 and in 1978 is purchased by Sega Enterprises Inc.
• October - Game operator Nihon Bussan is established in Japan. They later create games under the Nichibutsu label.

See also

• Early history of video games
• 1970 in games

Notes and References

1. Adel'son-Vel'skii . Aralazarov . Bitman . Uskov . Programming a computer to play chess . Russian Mathematical Surveys . 1970 . 25 . 2 . 221–262.
2. Book: Smith, Alexander . They create worlds: the story of the people and companies that shaped the video game industry . 2020 . CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group . 978-0-429-42364-2 . Boca Raton.
3. News: 1970-09-03 . Computer Chess Is 'Like Playing Tennis Without a Ball' . The Journal News . 8.
4. Kozdrowicki . Edward . Cooper . Dennis . COKO III: The Cooper-Koz Chess Program . Communications of the ACM . July 1973 . 16 . 7 . 411–427.
5. Web site: Awit Wita Readme.
6. Web site: ACM COMPUTER CHESS by Bill Wall . ed-thelen.org.
7. News: 1970 . Ex-champion rallies, loses on points . Data Processing News . IBM.
8. Web site: 2008-12-16 . Highnoon . myBitBox.