Dungeons & Dragons, the first role-playing game, had released early in 1974, and quickly spread to popularity. It’s a tabletop game, not a video game, but it doesn’t take long for fans of the game to experiment with making computerized versions.

  One of these is built on the PLATO system, called dnd after the abbreviation of the game’s name. It contains a single dungeon, named “Whisenwood” after the names of the game’s creators, Ray Wood and Gary Whisenhunt. A surprisingly sophisticated program, it uses rudimentary visuals of the dungeon’s levels, and even contains a boss- the first known occurrence of one in a video game. A very similar game on PLATO, created by Rusty Rutherford and variously called pedit5, orthanc, and The Dungeon, would spring from dnd in its early development stages.

dnd played on an emulator, with the game’s sprites shown on PLATO’s orange display.

  Around the same time, Don Daglow codes his own conversion of Dungeons & Dragons using Claremont College’s PDP-10, where he started Baseball some years prior. Called simply Dungeon, the game has complexities like artificially intelligent NPCs, lines of sight, and full-fledged melee combat, although it’s played entirely through text.

  Along with dnd, the PLATO system has a second Dungeons & Dragons conversion running on it in 1975, also called Dungeon. This one is created by several people, including John Daleske, the programmer behind the original version of Empire. Although it’s not clear which came first, dnd and the two Dungeons are the first RPGs to run on computers.

The title screen of an emulated version of Dungeon on PLATO.

  However, back in the arcades, video games are on the decline. The Pong craze is at its tail end, and there isn’t much in the way of innovation. Arcade video games are completely saturated with Pong clones, and most of the games deviating from that formula are simply conversions of other sports.

Many of the large arcade game manufacturers can simply go back to games like pinball, but video games are Atari’s whole deal. Their lawsuit with Magnavox is still going on, and things are starting to look more and more in favor of Magnavox, who bring in a Pong arcade cabinet, open it up, and dissect its circuitry for the court. Their conclusion, that it uses effectively the same technology as that of the Magnavox Odyssey, is a fairly convincing case that Atari is the infringing party.

  But as this is going on, Atari are working on a home console of their own. Several competitors have been working on Pong machines, sticking the arcade game into a dedicated machine which plays the singular game on a home TV screen. Despite how it will look in court, Atari moves ahead to create a Pong machine of their own.

July

  Over in Japan, Magnavox had continued their business relationship with their light gun partner, Nintendo, licensing the company to distribute the Odyssey in Japan. This has emboldened Nintendo to enter the world of video arcade games, which they do with EVR RACE, their first title. Created by Genyo Takeda, it is a competitive horse racing game which uses a convoluted videotape method to display a high-definition image on the video screen.

EVR race in action.

  Sega, meanwhile, is doing very well after putting out a string of several hockey video games. With wide success in Japan, they decide to expand into the US, opening a sales and manufacturing branch with the name Sega of America.

September

  Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado and released by Taito, Western Gun is released in Japan. A multiplayer Wild West-themed game, it is the first game to depict guns and murder. It is renamed Gun Fight in the US, where it is distributed by Dave Nutting Associates, a company started by the brother of Bill Nutting, who’d distributed Computer Space four years before.

The American release of Western Gun. For directions or more info, please check the original source here. Press 5 to insert a coin, and use the arrow keys and left CTRL key for player 1.

A Japanese retrospective of Western Gun.

October

  In the US, Atari begins selling "Home Pong," converting the game into a home console format. However, they are not the first to do so- there are dozens of imitators with Pong machines on the market already who far surpass the prevalence of Atari’s version. It becomes clear to Atari that they came with too little, too late- if they want success in the home console business, they’ll have to have something more than just Pong.

Home Pong, released under the TeleGames brand.

Nolan Bushnell discusses Home Pong and its setbacks. Note that what he attributes to the Magnavox Odyssey is better attributed to Pong clones as a whole.