1984 in video gaming

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Events

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Notable releases

Games

• May 10 - King's Quest (Sierra, IBM PC), the first animated adventure game, the first in the King's Quest series, and the first to use the AGI engine.
• June 4 - Nintendo releases Donkey Kong 3
• June 6 - Alexey Pajitnov creates the Tetris video game in the USSR. Nintendo released its most popular versions (for the NES and Game Boy) in 1989.
• September 20 - 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.
• December - Capcom releases 1942.
• Alley Cat is released for IBM PC compatibles.
• Namco releases Gaplus, Tower of Druaga, Pac-Land, Grobda, which is a Xevious spin-off, Super Xevious and Dragon Buster, which is the first game to use a life bar.
• Nintendo releases Ice Climber, and 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.
• Gauntlet by Donald R. Lebeau is released for the Atari 8-bit computers.
• 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: Gremlin Graphics, 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.