Rebound (video game)
Development of "Rebound" began in late 1973, as one of several variations they produced in 1974 on the gameplay of the successful "Pong" (1972), Atari's first game and the fourth-ever arcade game. Around the same time, Atari launched Kee Games, a subsidiary meant to produce clone games of Atari's products and act as a competitor in order to expand into more distribution channels in the same region than the industry typically supported. Kee's first game, released in March 1974, was "Spike", a clone of "Rebound", which added a "spike" button to the game that made the paddle jump up and attempt to bounce the ball downwards instead of up. In addition to the base game, Atari sold a conversion kit to convert any Atari two-player "Pong" variant into "Rebound", and in 1977 "Rebound" was included in "Video Olympics" for the Atari 2600, a collection of "Pong" variants.
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".