This is a review reference guide to 16 videogame systems, released from 1972-1984, and tries to describe each game that was commercially released for that system. Despite it's title it doesn't only cover games released between those years, it reviews the systems that were released between those years, and the games that were released for it in the United States, some games for these systems were released after the dates in the books title, such as "BMX Airmaster" released in 1989 for the Atari 2600. Each entry tells the games title, the publisher, and developer, the type of game it is, the number of players that can use it, and the year it was released. The review tells the story of each game, the games objectives, and what is usually the games best and weakest points. There are black and white photographs of most of the game systems, and occasional pictures of the box art, cartridges, and instruction booklets. This is the first volume of of the Brett Weiss' "Classic Home Video Games" series, the second volume "1985-1988" looks at three other game systems and the games released for those. In that volume the 'Atari 7800', section is completely reused with the exception of the games "Klax", and "Sentinel", being removed from that book, and the 7800's games "Fatal Run" and "F-18 Hornet", being switched around. There are the following number of entries for each system; Adventure Vision 4, APF MPF1000 13, Arcadia 2001 22, Astrocade 41, Atari 2600 490, Atari 5200 73, Atari 7800 57, ColecoVision 145, Fairchild Channel F 28, Intellivision 135, Microvision 12, Odyssey 27, Odyssey2 49, RCA Studio II 15, Telstar Arcade 4, Vectrex 29.