1980 in video gaming

Events

Notable releases

• Namco releases Navalone, Kaitei Takara Sagashi, SOS, Pac-Man, which is their biggest selling game of all time, King and Balloon, which is the first game to feature synthesized voices, Tank Battalion and Rally-X, which is the first game to feature a bonus round.
• Rogue is written by Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold, spawning the category of roguelike games.
• Nintendo releases the Radar Scope arcade game and the Game & Watch handheld LCD game by Gunpei Yokoi.
• Stern Electronics (a subsidiary of Universal Research Laboratories) releases the Berzerk arcade game.
• Warner Communications' Atari releases the Missile Command arcade game, and the Battlezone arcade game (it was later enhanced for the US Army for military training) – albeit relying on specialized vector graphics hardware.
• Williams Electronics releases the Defender arcade game.
• Warner Communications' Atari releases the Centipede (by Ed Logg & Dona Bailey) and Warlords arcade games and also the Tempest color vector arcade game.
• Universal release the arcade game Space Panic, often cited as the first platform game.
• Edu-Ware releases The Prisoner, loosely based upon the 1960s TV series of the same name. Programmed by David Mullich, it became a classic of the Apple II platform.
• Infocom releases Zork I, the first Zork game and the first Infocom game.

Hardware

• Mattel releases the Intellivision video game console.
• Sinclair Research releases the ZX80 home computer and Acorn Computers release the Atom, the first 'domestic' computers to play games in the UK.

Business

• New companies: Mindscape, Inc., Sierra On-Line.
• Mattel creates the original five-programmer Intellivision game design team, nicknamed the Blue Sky Rangers by a magazine writer when the company keeps their names secret in a TV Guide interview.