Discover

Contents

Events

Notable releases

Hardware

Business

Events

Notable releases

★ Alley Cat is released for IBM PC compatibles

★ '' (Sierra, IBM PC), the first animated adventure game, the first in the ''King's Quest'' series, and the first to use the AGI engine.

★ Namco releases ''Gaplus'', ''Tower of Druaga'', ''Pac-Land'', which is the first side-scrolling platformer, ''Grobda'', which is a ''Xevious'' spin-off, ''Super Xevious'' and ''Dragon Buster'', which is the first game to use a life bar.

★ Nintendo releases ''Balloon Fight''.

★ ''The Ancient Art of War'' by Dave Murry and Barry Murry, the first major real-time strategy game, is released by Brøderbund.

★ ''Paperboy'' by David Ralston Atari, arcade game), later ported to many platforms, featured innovative bike handle steering controller.

★ ''Elite'' by David Braben and Ian Bell is published by Acornsoft, an early and very influential wireframe 3d space trading game offering full six degrees of freedom and a then unique open ended design.

★ ''Knight Lore'' by Ultimate Play The Game is released for the ZX Spectrum (and later ported to the BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, MSX and Famicom Disk System). ''Knight Lore'' is the third title in the Sabreman series but the first to use the innovative isometric Filmation engine.

★ ''The Lords of Midnight'', a groundbreaking strategy adventure game by Mike Singleton is released.

Hardware

★ RDI Systems releases the Halcyon laserdisc home console.

Business

★ New companies: Kemco, Accolade, New World Computing

★ Defunct companies: Astrocade Inc., FTL Games (developer and publisher)

★ Hasbro, Inc. acquires Milton Bradley Company

★ Management Sciences America acquires Edu-Ware Services

★ Warner Communications Inc. sells the Consumer Division of Atari, Inc. and creates an entirely new company (Atari Games Corp) out of the retained arcade division.

★ Sega and CSK merge to form Sega Enterprises Ltd.