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1970 in video games
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1970 video games
At the beginning of the 1970s, video games existed almost entirely as novelties passed around by programmers with access to computers, primarily those housed at research institutions and large companies. 1970 marked a crucial year in the transition of electronic games from academic circles to the mainstream public, with developments in chess artificial intelligence and the concept of commercialized video games which would come to fruition in the following years.
While the technology that later became the Odyssey was stalled in development, the game which would become Computer Space began development. In computer games, multiple games written in the BASIC programming language by high school and college students circulated among different computer networks via time-sharing and computer user’s societies. Some of these programs were later distributed as type-in listings via books and magazines. The first national competition of chess programs was held in the United States, drawing attention to advances in artificial intelligence development through the medium of games.
Events
thumb|The special events for ACM 1970 included the first computer chess championship.
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.Adel'son-Vel'skii Aralazarov Bitman Uskov Programming a computer to play chess Russian Mathematical Surveys 1970 25 2 221–262
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) using a custom transistor-transistor logic design.Smith Alexander They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry November 27, 2019 CRC Press 978-1-138-38990-8 1: 1971 – 1982 68–73
September 1–3 – The first U.S. Computer Chess Championship is held by the Association for Computing Machinery. The contestants play via telephone, using moves generated by 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.1970-09-03 Computer Chess Is 'Like Playing Tennis Without a Ball' The Journal News 8 The other competitors are The Daly CP (Chris Daly & Kenneth King), J. Biit (Columbia University), COKO III (University of California & Bell Telephone Laboratories),Kozdrowicki Edward Cooper Dennis COKO III: The Cooper-Koz Chess Program Communications of the ACM July 1973 16 7 411–427 SCHACH (Texas A&M University) and Marsland CP (Tony Marsland).Awit Wita Readme https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/%7Etony/Public/Awit-Wita-ComputerChess/Awit-Wita-ReadMe/wita-history-readme.txtACM COMPUTER CHESS by Bill Wall https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/ACM-ComputerChessWall.html ed-thelen.org
December 24 – A computer racing game programmed in CALL/360:BASIC 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. 1970 Ex-champion rallies, loses on points https://archive.org/details/tomorrows-world-racing-game Data Processing News IBM
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 game type-in listings. Ahl later publishes 101 BASIC Computer Games based, in part, on listings he collected for publication in EDU.Smith 2019 242–244
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.2008-12-16 Highnoon https://mybitbox.com/highnoon-1970/ myBitBox
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.Smith 2019 306
October - Game operator Nihon Bussan is established in Japan. They later release games under the trade name Nichibutsu.
See also
Early history of video games
1970 in games
References
Category:Video games by year