1975 in video games

Events

• In Fall, Magnavox discontinues the original Odyssey video game console.
• On April 21, Zanussi obtained the license to implement Pong from Sanders Associates.

  Business

• New companies: Cinematronics, Enix

  Notable releases

Video game consoles

• September 12 – Epoch releases Japan's first home video game console, the TV Tennis Electrotennis dedicated home video game console. Its most unusual feature is that the console is wireless, functioning through a UHF antenna.
• December – Atari and Tele-Games release the first official home version of Pong through Sears department stores.
• Magnavox releases two new models of their Odyssey console: the Odyssey 100 and the Odyssey 200.
• Philips released the Philips Tele-Game ES 2201 dedicated home video game console, the first system of the Philips Tele-Game series.

  Games

• February – Midway releases Taito's 1974 arcade racing video game Speed Race, the first video game in the Speed Race series designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, in North America as Wheels and Racer.
• February – Horror Games, founded by Nolan Bushnell, publishes its only game, Shark Jaws, intended to cash-in on the popularity of Steven Spielberg's film Jaws.
• Taito releases Western Gun, the first video game to depict human-to-human combat. Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, the game had two distinct joystick controls per player, with one eight-way joystick for moving the computerized cowboy around on the screen and the other for changing the shooting direction.
• November – Midway releases Gun Fight, an adaptation of Taito's Western Gun and the first microprocessor-based video game. Taito's Western Gun used TTL-based hardware, which Dave Nutting Associates ported to the Intel 8080 microprocessor for its North American release.
• Don Daglow develops Dungeon, an early role-playing video game, for the PDP-10.
• William Crowther develops Adventure, the first interactive fiction game, for the PDP-10.
• Rusty Rutherford develops pedit5, the first dungeon crawl game, for the PLATO system.
• dnd, the first video game to include a boss, and arguably the first computer role-playing game, wrapped up initial development. Some sources list the game as 1974; it is unclear exactly when it became playable.
• Nürburgring 1, the first first-person racing game, was developed in Germany by Dr. Reiner Foerst.