Events
* March 19 –
Kagemasa Kōzuki establishes
Konami Industry Co., Ltd. Formerly the owner of a
jukebox
A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media. The classic jukebox has buttons, with letters and numbers on them, which are used to sele ...
repair/rental business in
Osaka, Japan
is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 ...
, Kozuki launches Konami to manufacture amusement machines for video arcades.
* May – Hudson Soft, Hudson Soft Ltd. is established in Sapporo, Japan for the purpose of marketing telecommunications devices and art photographs.
* Taito Corporation, Taito, an electro-mechanical arcade game manufacturer, enters the video game industry and opens a North American branch.
* Sega, an electro-mechanical arcade game manufacturer, enters the video game industry with ''Pong'' clones.
* ''Computer Space'' makes appearances in the films ''Soylent Green'' and ''Sleeper''.
* Empire (PLATO), Empire versions I, II and III are developed for the PLATO system by John Daleske. Possibly the first team game ever, the first fifty-player game ever, and numerous other innovations.
* Silas Warner takes over PLATO Empire version I and renames it Civilization.
* Lemonade Stand is developed for the first time.
* ''Maze War'', an ancestor of the first-person shooter genre and an early network game, begins development for the Imlac PDS-1 computer.
Best-selling arcade video games in the United States
The following titles were the best-selling arcade video games of 1973 in the United States, according to annual arcade cabinet sales estimates provided by Ralph H. Baer.
Notable releases
* Midway Games, Midway Manufacturing Co. licenses ''Pong'' from Atari to produce ''Winner'',
their first video game arcade game.
* Atari releases ''Gotcha (arcade game), Gotcha'', the first commercial List of maze video games, maze game, to video arcades.
* Atari releases ''Pong Doubles'' to video arcades. A variation on the wildly successful ''Pong'', ''Pong Doubles'' is the first video arcade game to include Multiplayer video game, four-player gameplay.
* Atari releases ''Space Race (video game), Space Race'', the first Arcade Racing game ever.
* Williams Electronics releases ''Paddle Ball (arcade game), Paddle Ball'', an unlicensed duplicate of ''Pong'', as their first arcade game.
* BASIC Computer Games was first published. It included 101 games written in BASIC.
See also
*1973 in games
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:1973 In Video games
Video games by year
1973, Video games