Lemonade Stand is a business simulation game created in 1973 by Bob Jamison of the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. Charlie Kellner ported the game to the Apple II platform in February 1979. Throughout the 1980s Apple Computer included Lemonade Stand (along with other software) with the purchase of their systems.
The game simulates a child's lemonade stand, where choices made by the player regarding prices, advertising, etc. will determine the success or failure of the enterprise. The game owed its success to offering just enough variables to make a complex challenge for users, but still providing a simply-grasped addictive introduction to the offsetting priorities facing a business. The choice of the right prices and quantities on the day of a heat-wave could instill the satisfaction unique to a greatly profitable private enterprise.
The player is first given a weather report for the day (sunny, cloudy or hot and dry, each accompanied by a color drawing) and is prompted for three values: the number of
Maze originated or disseminated a number of concepts used in thousands of games to follow, and is considered one of the earliest examples of, or progenitor of, a first-person shooter. Uncertainty exists over its exact release date, with some accounts placing it before Spasim, the earliest first-person shooter with a known time of publication. Gameplay is simple by later standards. Players wander around a maze, being capable of moving backward or forwards, turning right or left in 90-degree increments, and peeking through doorways. The game also uses simple tile-based movement, where the player moves from square to square. Other players are seen as eyeballs. When a player sees another player, they can shoot or otherwise negatively affect them. Players gain points for shooting other players, and lose them for being shot. Some versions (like the X11 port) had a cheat mode where the player running the server could see the other players' positions on the map. Occasionally in some versions, a duck also appears in the pas
Taito's fifth game and the second developed in house. The game is another ball-and-paddle variation, like three of Taito's previous four releases, but with the added functionality of four players being able to play doubles. This was an important innovation during the 1973-1974 Pong craze first introduced in Allied Leisure's Tennis Tourney.
Asteroid was originally developed by Atari for Midway in fulfillment of a contract to supply one video game and one pinball machine. Atari had initially offered Pong during its development to fulfill the contract, but had been rejected. After finishing Asteroid Atari developed a near identical version of the game and released it themselves under the title "Space Race".
Soccer is Taito's third ever video game release and the first developed internally. The game was designed by the highly influential Tomohiro Nishikado, who would later go on to create Space Invaders.
Soccer is a ball-and-paddle game like Pong, but with a green background to simulate a playfield, allowing each player to control both a forward and a goalkeeper. The players can adjust the size of the players, who are represented as paddles on screen. It also has a goal on each side.
Soccer is likely to be Japan's first original domestically produced video game, in comparison to Japanese Pong clones released earlier, including Sega's Pong Tron and Taito's Elepong. Since it was exported to Europe in 1973 it may also be the first Japanese video game to be released on the European continent.
Hockey was a PONG-clone by RamTeK featuring a somewhat different gameplay by introducing "forward" paddles which were moved simultaneously with the "goalie" paddles. Just like PONG ot got ported to various 1st generation consoles and was also one of the two build-in games for the Fairchild Channel F - the world's first 2nd generation console.
Gotcha is a two-player maze game where the objective is to catch the other player.
A maze is displayed on the screen. The first player controls the Pursuer which is represented by a square and the second player controls the Pursued which is represented by a plus sign. As the Pursuer moves closer and closer to the Pursued, an electronic beep sound increases in frequency to a feverish pitch until the Pursuer catches the Pursued. Each time, the Pursuer catches the Pursued, a point is scored and the chase starts over again.
Trek73 is a computer game based on the original Star Trek television series. It was created in 1973 by William K. Char, Perry Lee, and Dan Gee. The game simulates battles between space ships of the Star Trek franchise. Through text commands, a player may order the ship to perform certain tasks in battle against an opposing vessel.
Sega's first "video" arcade game. Unlike their earlier amusement games, it uses discrete logic as opposed to being electro-mechanical. The game used boards imported from the United States mounted in a Sega-produced cabinet.
Space Race is the second arcade game created by Atari and was released in July, 1973. The two players each control a rocket ship; the object of the game is to make it from the bottom of the screen to the top, while avoiding obstacles such as asteroids. Score is kept electronically and the background consists of a simple starfield.
Allied Leisure's second game was a four-player version of Paddle Battle. It was the first four-player Pong-style game, predating Atari's own Quadrapong by two months.
Taito's attempt at the arcade ping-pong game genre, and likely their first ever arcade game release. It uses imported Pong PC Boards in a Taito-produced cabinet.