Space Race (video game)
Development of "Space Race" began soon after the founding of Atari in Summer 1972 under the name "Asteroid". Co-founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney had the initial idea for the game while developing the 1971 "Computer Space", the first arcade video game, but felt the more complicated "Computer Space" was a better first game. After leaving Nutting Associates and founding Atari in May 1972, Bushnell spent a few days designing "Asteroid", but soon had to drop the project to focus on running the company. After the release of "Pong", Atari's first game, development resumed on the title in Spring 1973. Dabney has claimed credit for the game's final design, though "Pong" designer Allan Alcorn has stated that he and Bushnell may have been involved as well. "Asteroid", codenamed VP-2, was designed to be a racing game that would be simple to create to fulfill an earlier contract with Bally Midway; Atari had initially offered "Pong" during its development to fulfill the contract, but had been rejected. The company was also interested in producing a very different game from their previous success, as they felt that innovative design was what would separate them from their competitors, which they saw as flooding the market with "Pong" clones rather than making new video games.
Sports game
In 1975, Universal Research Laboratories (URL) released an early four-player multiple-sports game, "Video Action", which featured several different sporting minigames, including "Pong"-style variants of tennis, hockey, and association football, as well as an early volleyball game and a unique four-court tennis game. "Video Action" was also an early example of cooperative gameplay, as each sport could be played in teams of two. That same year, Nintendo released "EVR-Race", an early horse racing simulation game with support for up to six players. In 1976, Sega released an early combat sport game, "Heavyweight Champ", based on boxing and now considered the first fighting game. In 1978 Atari released "Atari Football", which is considered to be the first video game to accurately emulate American football; it also popularized the use of the trackball, having been inspired by an earlier Taito soccer game that used a trackball. Taito also released an early bowling game in 1978, "Top Bowler", followed by an early baseball game in 1979, "Ball Park".