The 1970s were really big in the gaming business. The biggest year is 1972. Ralph Baer's console for a television finally comes out. The Odyssey. The Odyssey was pretty basic tech wise. It did, however, have a large variety of games, such a tennis, hockey, cat and mouse, and even riolette. This was the must have console at the time. At this time, arcade gaming decided to take it big jump with its ever-so-popular game, Pong. Pong was a tennis arcade game that was one or two player. It was a big favorite at arcades and quickly spread. Players would spend ton of money and many hours playing this game. Soon, they didn't have to go the arcade to play Pong. That's right. In 1977, the big one came: The Atari. The Atari VCS as it's known brought Pong to your living room, so you didn't have to go to the arcade. Unfortunately, the Odyssey was still dominant(well, not unfortunately for the Odyssey) but for the Atari. It didn't start selling well till the 80s. In 1978 the Atari 2600 came out, and it was a lot better than the Atari. By the 80s, the Atari 2600 was everyone's home console, but more on that later. Lets move on to some games from the 1970s.
Also in 1978, Space Invaders, a very popular arcade game, came out. It consisted of shooting aliens with your spaceship. The first RPG (role-playing game) came out as well in 1976. The game was called Adventure, and in the game you had to journey through a cave full of monsters. Maze Wars, the first first-person shooting game, came out in 1974. It consisted of shooting monsters in a maze and your goal was to get to the end. The fact the the game even could be 3-D was laughed at, because the worlds most popular game, Pong, was just a line and a couple of dots. It was a big step in gaming.