1976 in video games

1976 had new titles such as Road Race, Night Driver, Heavyweight Champ, Sea Wolf and Breakout. The year's highest-grossing arcade games were Namco's F-1 in Japan and Midway's Sea Wolf in the United States.

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Highest-grossing arcade games

Japan

In Japan, Game Machine magazine published the first annual arcade game earnings chart for 1976 in their February 1977 issue, listing both arcade video games and electro-mechanical games (EM games) on the same arcade chart. Namco's EM racing game F-1 was the highest-grossing overall arcade game of the year, followed by Taito's video game Ball Park (originally released as Tornado Baseball by Midway Manufacturing in North America). The following titles were the highest-grossing arcade games of 1976, according to the first annual Game Machine chart.^[1][2]

Arcade electro-mechanical games (EM games)			Arcade video games
Rank	Title	Points	Rank	Title	Points	Genre
1	F-1	64	1	Ball Park (Tornado Baseball)	34	Sports
2	Mogura Taiji (Whac-A-Mole)	18	2	Speed Race DX	26	Racing
3	Group Skill Diga	12	3	Heavyweight Champ	20	Boxing
4	Sky Hawk	11	4	Breakout	14	Block kuzushi
5	Mini Laser Clay	6	5	Sea Wolf	10	Shooter
	Wild Gunman	6	6	LeMans	5	Racing
7	400 Miles	4	7	Kamikaze (Zero Fighter Kamikaze)	4	Shooter
	Flipper (Pinball)[lower-alpha 1]	4	8	Sparkling Corner	3	Racing
9	Un­known	1		Speed Race Twin	3
	Un­known	1	10	Indy 800	2	Racing
	Un­known	1		Night Driver	2
—	—	—		Rock n' Bark	2	Shooter
				Western Gun (Gun Fight)	2

Note: Medal games are listed on a separate chart, with Nintendo's EVR Race being the highest-grossing medal game of the year.^[1][2]

United States

In the United States, RePlay magazine began publishing annual lists of top-grossing arcade games in 1976, covering both arcade video games and pinball machines. The following titles were the top ten arcade video games of the year, in terms of coin drop earnings.^[3] Lifetime arcade cabinet sales are also given in a separate column.

Rank[3]	Title	Developer	Manufacturer	Genre	Lifetime cabinet sales
1	Sea Wolf	Dave Nutting Associates	Midway Manufacturing	Shooter	10,000[4]
2	Gun Fight (Western Gun)	Taito	Midway Manufacturing	Shooter	8,600[5]
3	Wheels (Speed Race)	Taito	Midway Manufacturing	Racing	7,000[6]
4	Indy 800	Atari, Inc.	Atari, Inc.	Racing
5	Breakout	Atari, Inc.	Atari, Inc.	Block breaker	11,000[7]
6	Indy 4	Atari, Inc.	Atari, Inc.	Racing	Un­known
7	Bi-Plane	Fun Games	Fun Games	Shooter
8	Death Race	Exidy	Exidy	Racing
	Demolition Derby	Exidy	Chicago Coin
	Trivia	Ramtek		Quiz

Events

• October – Warner Communications acquires Atari for $28 million USD. Nolan Bushnell stays on as chairman.^[8]
• 3.5 million video games are sold, earning the retail video game industry $242 million in revenue.^[9]
• 54,000 video game arcade cabinets and 310,000 home video game cartridges are sold in the United States.^[10]

Business

• New companies: Apple Computer, Data East

Notable releases

Games

• January – Sega releases Heavyweight Champ,^[11] the first video game to feature hand-to-hand fighting.^[12][13][14] It uses controls that simulate throwing actual punches.^[12]
• February – Sega releases Road Race.^[15]
• April 1 – Exidy releases Death Race to video arcades. News of the game's existence breaks nationally in newspapers in the first week of July after a quiet nationwide rollout.^[16] The game sparks a public outcry over violence in video games, and is banned in many areas.^[17]
• April – Taito releases Speed Race Twin,^[18] a sequel to Speed Race that allows simultaneous two-player competitive gameplay^[19]
• May 13^[20] – Atari releases Breakout, whose prototype was designed by Apple Computer cofounders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, to video arcades.^[8]
• August – Sega releases Man T.T.,^[21] also known as Moto-Cross, an early motorbike racing game, using a pseudo-3D, forward-scrolling, third-person perspective,^[22] similar to Road Race.^[23] It also introduces haptic feedback, causing the handlebars to vibrate during collisions.^[24] In the U.S., Sega re-brands it as Fonz.^[25]
• October – Atari releases Night Driver,^[26] a first-person perspective racing video game.
• October – Gremlin releases Blockade, the first of what become known as snake games.
• While working at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, Don Woods discovers and expands Will Crowther's Adventure. Later in the year, James Gillogly ports Woods's version of the interactive fiction title from Fortran to the C programming language for Unix-based computers.^[27]

Hardware

Fairchild Channel F

• November – Fairchild Camera and Instrument releases the Video Entertainment System (later known as the VES or Channel F), the first video game console to use a microprocessor and cartridges.^[28]
• Coleco releases the Telstar, a console clone of Pong based on General Instrument's AY-3-8500 microchip.^[29]

See also

• 1976 in games

Notes

1. フリッパー, Furippā

References

1. "本紙アンケー 〜 ト調査の結果" [Paper Questionnaire: Results of the Survey] (PDF). Game Machine (in Japanese). No. 65. Amusement Press, Inc. February 1, 1977. pp. 2–3. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 14, 2021. Retrieved May 14, 2021.
2. "調査対象5年間のベスト1" [Best 1 of the 5 Years Surveyed] (PDF). Game Machine (in Japanese). No. 159. Amusement Press, Inc. February 15, 1981. p. 1. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 1, 2020. Retrieved May 14, 2021.
3. "Profit Chart". RePlay. October 1976.
4. Steven L. Kent (2000), The first quarter: a 25-year history of video games, BWD Press, p. 83, ISBN 0-9704755-0-0, archived from the original on January 17, 2023, retrieved April 9, 2011, Sea Wolf, which was another creation of Dave Nutting, did solid business, selling more than 10,000 machines. (A later color version sold an additional 4000 units.)
5. Smith, Alexander (November 19, 2019). They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. I: 1971-1982. CRC Press. p. 262. ISBN 978-0-429-75261-2. Archived from the original on February 9, 2023. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
6. Baer, Ralph H. (2005). Videogames: In the Beginning. Rolenta Press. pp. 10–3. ISBN 978-0-9643848-1-1.
7. Product: Total Build (PDF). Atari Games. 1999. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 10, 2013. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
8. Thomas, Donald A. Jr (2005). "–1976–". ICWhen.com. Archived from the original (shtml) on March 17, 2006. Retrieved February 18, 2006.
9. TV Games Probed Archived March 6, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Reading Eagle (December 21, 1976)
10. "The Replay Years: Enter 1976". RePlay. Vol. 11, no. 2. November 1985. p. 150.
11. "Heavyweight Champ (1976) Release Information for Arcade Games - GameFAQs". Archived from the original on October 8, 2017. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
12. Spencer, Spanner, The Tao of Beat-'em-ups Archived February 5, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, EuroGamer, February 6, 2008, Accessed February 23, 2009
13. Ashcraft, Brian, (2008) Arcade Mania! The Turbo-Charged World of Japan's Game Centers, (Kodansha International), p. 94
14. Nadia Oxford, 20 Years of Street Fighter, 1UP.com, November 12, 2007
15. "Road Race, Arcade Video game by SEGA Enterprises (1976)". Archived from the original on August 28, 2020. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
16. AP (July 2, 1976). "It Offers That Run-Down Feeling". The Minneapolis Star. p. 3A. Archived from the original on April 16, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
17. Gonzalez, Lauren. "When Two Tribes Go to War: A History of Video Game Controversy / The Major Offenders". GameSpot. Archived from the original on July 18, 2007. Retrieved February 18, 2006.
18. "Speed Race Twin, Arcade Video game by Taito (1976)". Archived from the original on November 28, 2020. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
19. Speed Race Twin at the Killer List of Videogames
20. "Atari - 1972 - 1984". www.atari.com. Archived from the original on June 11, 2016. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
21. "Ryu ga Gotoku Zero: Chikai no Basho, Sony PlayStation 3 disc by SEGA Holdings(2016)". Archived from the original on August 28, 2020. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
22. Moto-Cross at the Killer List of Videogames
23. Road Race at the Killer List of Videogames
24. Mark J. P. Wolf (2008), The video game explosion: a history from PONG to PlayStation and beyond, p. 39, ABC-CLIO, ISBN 0-313-33868-X
25. Fonz at the Killer List of Videogames
26. "Night Driver, Arcade Video game by Atari, Inc. (1976)". Archived from the original on August 28, 2020. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
27. Adams, Rick. "A history of 'Adventure'". The Colossal Cave Adventure page. Archived from the original on May 17, 2011. Retrieved February 17, 2006.
28. "Fairchild Video Entertainment System/Channel F". ClassicGaming.com. Archived from the original on June 10, 2007. Retrieved February 18, 2006.
29. Winter, David (2006). "Coleco Telstar". PONG-Story. Archived from the original on March 2, 2006. Retrieved February 18, 2006.