January
The Syzygy Company is established by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Bushnell is handling the business end, while Dabney is engineering their prototype. Bushnell has an idea to take advantage of the TV screen’s vertical hold adjustment- which is entirely analog- and asks Dabney if it can be manipulated intentionally. Dabney works in his daughter’s bedroom to get it working, and comes up with a prototype able to move a dot around the screen.
Bushnell and Dabney discuss their breakthrough.
March
Magnavox and Sanders Associates complete their deal, licensing Ralph Baer and Bill Rusch’s patents to Magnavox to turn the Brown Box prototype into a widely distributed product.
Nolan Bushnell leaves his job at Ampex to go to the unfortunately-named Nutting Associates, where he’s contracted to create a coin-operated arcade version of Spacewar!, which they soon give the name Computer Space. Ted Dabney leaves Ampex to join him shortly after.
June
Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck form Mini-Computer Applications. After hearing about the new PDP-11, released the previous year, Pitts realized his idea of getting Spacewar! to run in a coin-operated arcade cabinet might actually be feasible. Although the PDP-11 is still extremely expensive compared to the average arcade cabinet, it's a fraction of the cost of earlier models, and Pitts and Tuck consider the cost reasonable enough to at least try making a prototype. This makes two different groups- Mini-Computer Applications and Syzygy- both working on making a coin-operated version of Spacewar! at the same time- and they're both within about ten miles of each other.
July
Magnavox sets up the Brown Box prototype at its first test market. The demo is a hit, encouraging Magnavox to go ahead to other test markets.
August
Syzygy come up with a prototype of Computer Space, and sign an agreement with Nutting Associates, giving them the manufacturing and distribution rights for the game. The prototype is installed at Dutch Goose bar, near Stanford, for market research.
Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck are nearly finished with their Spacewar! prototype, which they've renamed to Galaxy Game in response to the climate around the Vietnam War. They get permission to set up the machine at Stanford's student union building once it’s completed.
When Nolan Bushnell finds out, he's concerned that the pair may get a version of the game to the market before Syzygy. So, Bushnell calls up Tuck and Pitts to ask how they figured out a way to make the game cheap enough to be mass-produced, and is disappointed to find out that they hadn't figured it out yet at all- the game's charge of 10 cents per play is nowhere near enough to cover the costs of the PDP-11 hardware.
When Tuck and Pitts see Computer Space, however, they're impressed with its hardware, although they feel that their conversion of the game is the superior one. With Computer Space lacking the gravity mechanics and the ability to play with multiple players, Galaxy Game is mechanically much closer to the original.
September
Tuck and Pitts complete the first version of Galaxy Game, and gear up to have it set up in the following months.
October
The Brown Box is opened up to a second test market, now with the working title “Skill-O-Vision.” This test is very successful as well.
At the Music & Amusement Machines Exposition in Chicago, a convention dedicated to things like jukeboxes and pinball machines, Nutting Associates reveal Computer Space to the public for the first time.
November
Don Daglow, an English major studying playwriting at Pomona College, walks into his dorm's computer room. By pure chance, he finds that undergraduates are permitted to use the PDP-10, a very lucky situation when most universities only allow graduate students or researchers to use the hardware. Daglow starts making a tribute to the digital psychologist simulation program ELIZA, which he calls ECALA.
Galaxy Game is displayed for the first time at Stanford University's student union building. Set up on the second floor, a huge cable goes up into the attic to connect to the PDP-11 running the game. It is extremely popular on campus, attracting crowds of people to play the game.
Press the 5 key to insert a coin in the Galaxy Game emulator. For directions or more info, please check the original source here.
A paper advertisement for Galaxy Game, taken out in the campus newspaper.
Mere days apart, Nutting Associates ships Computer Space. It is the first mass-produced, coin-operated video game.
Computer Space fails to take the world by storm. It’s not a complete failure, but its success is not enough to match the expectations of Nutting Associates. This is usually attributed to its complexity- where the design of Spacewar! appealed to its audience of computer engineers in top universities with extra spare time, the average person walking past an arcade cabinet does not want to invest the time and effort to engage with this type of game, especially considering much of its intended audience had never even seen a computer before.
Nolan Bushnell discusses Computer Space and its shortcomings.
December
The original version of Oregon Trail is presented to an eighth-grade history class by Don Rawitsch, using the Minneapolis school district's minicomputer connected to a teleprinter. Its format is similar to the Sumerian Game, presenting a fully text-based simulation intended for educational purposes. However, students in the class are so interested in the game that they stay after school and line up outside the door to play the game. After the semester ends, the source code is printed out and deleted from the computer, not to be copied into a computer again for several years.
Don Rawitsch speaks about Oregon Trail at the 2017 Game Developers Conference.
Shortly before Christmas break, Don Daglow realizes that much of the same code he's using for ECALA could be used to create a baseball game instead. As a result, he codes his first game, Baseball, which he would steadily add to over the next nine years. Although it only uses text, it is the first interactive baseball game on a computer.
Don Daglow discusses the circumstances leading to his creation of Baseball.