A t first glance, Atari Football (1978) appeared to be a no-thrills gaming experience. The monochrome screen displayed simple field lines and a few statistics in a rudimentary sans-serif font. The single-channel rarely beeped, and when it did, it was a muffled sound of a kick or a garbled whistle. There were only seven players on each team and were represented simply as X’s and O’s, as if ripped from a coach’s playbook. The tech of the time could not even handle two eleven player teams. However, the game stood out handsomely with its large rolling black trackballs sunken into the unique cocktail table design, a feature unique to most arcade aficionados at the time.

ELIGIBLE RECEIVER

While renowned engineer Jerry Lichac is often recognized as having designed the first video game trackball for Atari Football, that claim to fame actually belongs to Tomohiro Nishikado who designed Soccer for Taito five years earlier in 1973. In fact, Atari Football barely beat Midway’s trackball game Shuffle B Goingoard to the market. However, it is miscredited as the premier trackball game for a reason; it was Atari Football that introduced the control peripheral to the masses.

Read the rest of this article on page 20 by clicking here!

 

 

 

Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here!

 

 

Michael Thomasson Michael Thomasson (63 Posts)

Michael Thomasson is one of the most widely respected videogame historians in the field today. He currently teaches college level videogame history, design, and graphics courses. For television, Michael conducted research for MTV's videogame related program Video MODS. In print, he authored Downright Bizarre Games, and has contributed to nearly a dozen gaming texts. Michael’s historical columns have been distributed in newspapers and magazines worldwide. He has written business plans for several vendors and managed a dozen game-related retail stores spanning three decades. Michael consults for multiple video game and computer museums and has worked on nearly a hundred game titles on Atari, Coleco, Sega and other console platforms. In 2014, The Guinness Book of World Records declared that Thomasson had “The Largest Videogame Collection” in the world. His businesses sponsor gaming tradeshows and expos across the US and Canada.  Visit www.GoodDealGames.com.