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Dominos (video game)

1977 video game

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 4, 2025
Entity authorityQ5291231 ↗
Source-derived summary

Dominos is a 1977 snake video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for arcades. The game comes in two versions: the first, packaged in its own distinctive, upright cabinet, is designed for one or two players, while the other version (titled as Dominos/4), with its own dedicated arcade cabinet, is designed for either one, two, three, or four players.

Gameplay

Gameplay is a variation of the snake genre, in which players compete by surrounding each other with lines of dominos. Players change direction via a set of four buttons representing up, down, right, and left respectively. A player loses when they hit a wall, their own dominos, or their opponent's, at which point all the dominos in their line "fall" down. A point is awarded to the winner of each round until the end point goal is reached. The point goal can be 3, 4, 5, or 6 points.

Development

Dominos was programmed by Dennis Koble. He had joined Atari in 1976 and was only the fourth programmer at the company.

Editorial summary

“Dominos (video game)” enters the record as 1977 video game. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dominos, video and game can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1977, 1976—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1977. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Dominos, video and game.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Dominos (video game)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dominos, video and game provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 4, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5291231. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977 and 1976.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Dominos (video game)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Dominos (video game) primary sources, Dominos (video game) archive and Dominos research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Dominos (video game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.