Racquetball (video game)
1981 video game
Racquetball is 1982 sports video game created by Ed Salvo for the Atari 2600 as a simulation of the sport of racquetball. It was published by Games by Apollo with music composed by sound engineer Byron Parks. One or two players complete to keep a ball in play inside an indoor court where the ball is free to move in three dimension and bounce off walls and ceilings. The ball casts shadows which are used to help players understand the game's three dimensional perspective. Contemporary critics were highly critical of the game, considering it to be too difficult to complete volleys and finding the perspective and shadows to be confusing and disorientating.
Gameplay
Each game begins with a brief animation of two players entering the court and shaking hands before engaging in a game of racquetball. Players can move both left and right and up and down the court to attempt to hit the ball. The action button is used to serve the ball but only body contact is necessary to keep a volley going. The ball moves around in three-dimensional space and will bounce off of the walls and ceiling of the court. Shadows appear on the walls, ceilings and floors that help players orient the exact position of the ball in 3D space.
“Racquetball (video game)” enters the record as 1981 video game. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Racquetball, video and game can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6096045. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Racquetball (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.