1969 in video gaming

Notable events

 * Space Travel is written by Ken Thompson for a Multics system.


 * Hamurabi, one of the first strategy video games, is released.


 * SEGA produced light gun video games which resemble first-person shooter video games, but were in fact electro-mechanical games that used rear image projection in a manner similar to the ancient zoetrope to produce moving animations on a screen. The first of these was the light gun game Duck Hunt, which featured animated moving targets on a screen, printed out the player's score on a ticket, and had sound effects that were volume controllable.


 * SEGA released an early electro-mechanical arcade racing game Grand Prix, which had a first-person view, electronic sound, a dashboard with a racing wheel and accelerator, and a forward-scrolling road projected on a screen.


 * SEGA's Missile was an electro-mechanical shooter and vehicle combat simulation that featured electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen. It was also the earliest known arcade game to feature a joystick with a fire button, which was used as part of an early dual-control scheme, where two directional buttons are used to move the player's tank and a two-way joystick is used to shoot and steer the missile onto oncoming planes displayed on the screen; when a plane is hit, an explosion is animated on screen along with an explosion sound.