1982 in video gaming

1982 was the year that marked the peak of the golden age of arcade video games, and is the year before the Video Game Crash of 1983. Also, it marked the first year of Atari's unpopularity (it produced two unpopular games, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man).

Business

 * The US market for arcade games peak in revenue, worth $11.8 billion ($7.3 billion from coins, $4.5 billion from machine sales), equivalent to $ in 2024.
 * The European market for home video games is estimated to reach $800 million, equivalent to $ in 2024.

Games

 * Arcade
 * January: SEGA Zaxxon arcade system board debuts with Zaxxon, introducing isometric graphics and diagonal scrolling.
 * June: Moon Patrol was created by Irem and released in the U.S. by Williams. It is the first game to use parallax scrolling.
 * July: Namco releases Pole Position, and it becomes one of the most popular racing games of all time. It used full-color landscapes with scaling sprites, and a pseudo-3D third-person view of the track, with its vanishing point swaying side to side as the player approaches corners, simulating forward movement into the distance. Its Namco Pole Position hardware was the first to use 16-bit microprocessors, with two Zilog Z8002 processors, and displayed up to 3840 colors.
 * November: Konami releases Time Pilot, which features a time travel theme and a free-roaming style of gameplay where the player's plane could freely move across open air space that scrolls indefinitely in all directions.
 * Donkey Kong Jr. (Arcade)
 * SEGA releases Star Trek, a space combat sim featuring five different controls, six different enemies, and 40 different simulation levels. One of the most elaborate vector games ever released.
 * December: Atari releases Quantum, an early arcade game to use a 16-bit Motorola 68000 CPU, for more detailed and smoother vector graphics.


 * Console
 * Donkey Kong Jr. (Atari 2600 and Game & Watch ports)
 * E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
 * Pac-Man (Atari 2600 port)


 * Computer
 * The earliest Japanese RPG, Koei's The Dragon and Princess, released for NEC's PC-8001 home computer platform, as an early tactical role-playing game featuring tactical turn-based combat.

Console Hardware

 * ColecoVision
 * Atari 5200