Was Dominos the first "light cycle" type game?

Gremlin's CoMotion was the first with that style of gameplay. The flyer identifies it as the 1976 MOA "Best of Show" by Replay Magazine.

http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=1709

After that came Gremlin's Blockade, and Hustle (essentially CoMotion in two-player upright cabinets), then Atari's Dominoes, Cinematronics' Embargo, Meadows' Bigfoot Bonkers, Ramtek's Barricade, and Midway's Checkmate, which were all variants on the same theme.

Kyle :cool:




Can anyone tell me if Atari's 1977 Dominos game was the first one to do the "light cycle" concept? I think Surround was based on it, am I right? Or was there a known predecessor?

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7604
http://www.atariage.com/manual_thumbs.html?SoftwareLabelID=537
 
Excellent! Thanks Kyle!
So Comotion was the first of these snake style games? Did any early computers ever run them or was its origins in coinop? I'd never heard of the company Gremlin before.
 
I wasn't sure about the earliest console/home computer version, so I consulted Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_(video_game)

"The first known personal computer version of Snake, titled Worm, was programmed in 1978 by Peter Trefonas of the US on the TRS-80 computer,[1] and published by CLOAD magazine in the same year. This was followed shortly afterwards with versions from the same author for the Commodore PET and Apple II computers. A microcomputer port of Hustle was first written by Peter Trefonas in 1979 and published by CLOAD magazine.[5] This was later released by Milton Bradley for the TI-99/4A in 1980."

Of course, we all know that Wikipedia sometimes has errors. For instance, it mentioned that the first coin-op game with "snake-like" gameplay with Gremlin's Blockade, when it was actually Co-Motion. Co-Motion (the 4 player cocktail) was popular enough that they made the two player upright version and retitled it Blockade.

So take Wikipedia's info with a grain of salt. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is a similar game on early computers (prior to 1976) just waiting to be rediscovered.

Kyle :cool:
 
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