Golden age of arcade video games

The golden age of video arcade games was a peak era of video arcade game popularity, innovation, and earnings. Although there is no consensus as to its exact time period, most sources place it around the early 1980s.

Overview

During the late 1970s, video arcade game technology had become sophisticated enough to offer good-quality graphics and sounds, but it was still fairly basic (realistic images and full motion video were not yet available, and only a few games used spoken voice) and so the success of a game had to rely on simple and fun gameplay. This emphasis on the gameplay is why many of these games continue to be enjoyed today despite their technology being vastly outdated by modern computing technology.

Relevant time period

Walter Day of Twin Galaxies places it as lasting from January 18, 1982 to January 5, 1986.

Video game journalist Steven L. Kent, in his book The Ultimate History of Video Games, places it at 1979 to 1983. The book pointed out that 1979 was the advent of vector graphics technology, which in turn spawned many of the popular early arcade games. However, 1983 was the period that began "a fairly steady decline" in the coin-operated video game business and when many arcades started disappearing.

The History of Computing Project defines the Golden Age as 1971-1983, covering the “mainsteam appearance of video games as a consumer market” and “the rise of dedicated hardware systems and the origin of multi-game cartridge based systems”. 1971 was chosen as an earlier start date by the project for two reasons: the creator of Pong filed a pivotal patent regarding video game technology, and it was the release of the first arcade video game machine, Computer Space.

Other opinions place this period's beginning in the late 1970s, when color arcade games became more prevalent and video arcades themselves started appearing outside of their traditional bowling alley and bar locales, through to its ending in the mid-1980s.

Business

The Golden Age was a time of great technical and design creativity in arcade games. Games were designed in a wide variety of genres while developers had to work within strict limits of available processor power and memory. The era also saw the rapid spread of video arcades across North America, Europe and Japan.

At this time, video arcade games started to appear in supermarkets, restaurants, liquor stores, gas stations and many other retail establishments looking for extra income.

The two most successful arcade game companies of this era were Namco (the Japanese company that created Pac-Man, Pole Position and Dig Dug) and Atari (the company that introduced video games into arcades). These two companies wrestled for the number one and two slots in American arcades for several years. Other companies such as Sega (who later entered the home console market against its former arch rival, Nintendo), Nintendo (whose mascot, Mario, was introduced in 1981's Donkey Kong), Bally Midway Manufacturing Company (which was later purchased by Williams), Capcom, Cinematronics, Konami, Centuri, Taito, Williams, and SNK entered around this era.

Technology

Arcades catering to video games began to gain momentum in the late 1970s with games such as Gee Bee (1978) and Galaxian (1979) and became widespread in 1980 with Pac-Man, Missile Command, Defender, and others. The central processing unit in these games allowed for more complexity than earlier discrete circuitry games such as Atari's Pong (1972).

The Golden Age saw developers experimenting with vector displays, which produced crisp lines that couldn't be duplicated by raster displays. A few of these games became great hits, such as 1980's Battlezone and Tempest and 1983's Star Wars, all from Atari, but vector technology fell out of favor with arcade game companies due to the high cost of repairing vector displays.

Developers also experimented with laserdisc players for delivering movie-quality animation. The first game to exploit this technology, 1983's Dragon's Lair from Cinematronics, was three years in the making. It was a sensation when it was released (and, in fact, the laserdisc players in many machines broke due to overuse), but the genre dwindled in popularity because the games were fairly linear and depended less on reflexes than on memorizing sequences of moves.

New controls cropped up in a few games, though, arguably, joysticks and buttons remained the favorites for most manufacturers. Atari introduced the trackball with 1978's Football. Night Driver included a life-like steering wheel, Paperboy used a bicycle handlebar and Hogan's Alley introduced tethered light guns to the arcade market. Other specialty controls, such as pedals in racing games and a crossbow-shaped light gun in Crossbow, also debuted in this era.

Gameplay

Galaga, a successful game of the Golden Age, borrows its theme from Galaxian and adds twists of its own.

With the enormous success of the early games, dozens of developers jumped into the development and manufacturing of video arcade games. Some simply copied the "invading alien hordes" idea of Space Invaders and turned out successful imitators like Galaxian, Galaga, and Gaplus, while others tried new concepts and defined new genres. Rapidly evolving hardware allowed new kinds of games which surpassed the shoot-em-up gameplay of the earliest games.

Games such as Donkey Kong and Qix introduced new types of games where skill and timing are more important than shooting as fast as possible. Other examples of innovative games are Atari Games' Paperboy where the goal is to successfully deliver newspapers to customers, and Namco's Phozon where the object is to duplicate a shape shown in the middle of the screen. The theme of Exidy's Venture is dungeon exploration and treasure-gathering. One innovative game, Q*Bert, played upon the user's sense of depth perception to deliver a novel experience.

Popular culture

Some games of this era were so popular that they entered the popular culture. The release of Pac-Man in 1980 caused such a sensation that it initiated what is now referred to as "Pac-Mania" (which later became the title of the last coin-operated game in the series, released in 1987). Released by Namco, the game featured a yellow, circle-shaped creature trying to eat dots through a maze while avoiding pursuing enemies. Though no one could agree what the "hero" or enemies represented (They were variously referred to as ghosts, goblins or monsters), the game was extremely popular; there are anecdotes to the effect that some game owners had to empty the game's coin bucket every hour in order to prevent the game's coin mechanism from jamming from having too many coins in the receptacle. The game spawned an animated television series, numerous clones, Pac-Man-branded foods, toys, and a hit pop song, Pac-Man Fever. Though many popular games quickly entered the lexicon of popular culture, most have since left, and Pac-Man is unusual in remaining a recognized term in pop culture, along with Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., and Frogger.

Strategy guides

The enormous popularity of video arcade games also led to the very first video game strategy guides; these guides (rare to find today) discussed in detail the patterns and strategies of each game, including variations, to a degree that few guides seen since can match. "Turning the machine over"—making the score counter overflow and reset to zero—was often the final challenge of a game for those who mastered it, and the last obstacle to getting the highest score.

List of notable games

Donkey Kong

The games below are some of the most popular and/or influential games of the era.

Legend

Vector display

Raster display

Name	Year	Manufacturer	Notes
Space Invaders	1978	Taito (Japan) / Midway (U.S.)	Considered the game that revolutionized the video game industry. The first blockbuster video game, it established the shoot 'em up genre, and has influenced most shooter games since.
Secret Base	1978	Sega	An early side-scrolling shooter, allowing two-player cooperative gameplay.
Space Ship	1978	Sega	An early vector graphics space combat multi-directional shooter game.
Asteroids	1979	Atari	Atari's most successful coin-operated game.
Galaxian	1979	Namco (Japan) / Midway (U.S.)	Created to compete with Space Invaders. Featured a color screen and had aliens attack in swooping formation. It also featured levels and boss encounters.
Lunar Lander	1979	Atari	First Atari game to use vector graphics
Battlezone	1980	Atari	Custom cabinet with novel dual-joystick controls and periscope-like viewer.
Berzerk	1980	Stern Electronics	Early use of speech synthesis was also translated into other languages in Europe.
Centipede	1980	Atari	One of the first games to use trackball control, vertical monitor orientation.
Defender	1980	Williams Electronics	Was predicted to be outsold by Rally-X, but Defender trounced it, going on to sell 60,000 units
Missile Command	1980	Atari	One of the first games to use trackball control. Originally to have a localities-option that named the cities, but was determined too complicated.
Pac-Man	1980	Namco (Japan) / Midway (U.S.)	Widely held as one of the most popular and influential video games ever.
Phoenix	1980	Amstar Electronics / Centuri (U.S.) / Taito (Japan)	Notable for its haunting melody accompaniment.
Rally-X	1980	Namco	First game to feature a "bonus" round, background music, multi-directional scrolling, and a radar. When released, was predicted to outsell two other new releases: Pac-Man and Defender.
Star Castle	1980	Cinematronics	The colors of the rings and screen are provided by a transparent plastic screen overlay
Tempest	1980	Atari	One of the first games to use a color vector display
Wizard of Wor	1980	Midway	Game featured maze-like dungeons infested with monsters.
Donkey Kong	1981	Nintendo	Introduced Mario, the character who would become Nintendo's mascot
Frogger	1981	Konami	Novel gameplay free of fighting and shooting
Scramble	1981	Konami / Stern (North America)	Horizontal scrolling shooter game
Galaga	1981	Namco (Japan) / Midway (North America)	Leapfrogged its predecessor, Galaxian, in popularity
Ms. Pac-Man	1981	Midway (North America) / Namco	Created from a bootlegged hack of Pac-Man
Qix	1981	Taito	The objective is to fence off a supermajority of the play area
Gorf	1981	Midway	Consisted of several levels, all clones of other popular games. Featured synthesized speech.
BurgerTime	1982	Data East (Japan) / Bally Midway (US)	Original title changed from Hamburger when brought to the U.S. from Japan
Dig Dug	1982	Namco (Japan) / Atari (North America)	Rated the sixth most popular coin-operated video game of all time
Donkey Kong Junior	1982	Nintendo	The last time Nintendo's mascot, Mario, was featured as an antagonist in a Nintendo game
Joust	1982	Williams Electronics	Contained a design flaw so popular it was intentionally touted by producers as a "hidden feature"
Moon Patrol	1982	Irem (Japan) / Williams Electronics (U.S.)	The first arcade game to feature parallax scrolling.
Pole Position	1982	Namco (Japan) / Atari (U.S.)	Popularized the "rear-view racer format" player perspective
Q*bert	1982	Gottlieb	Became one of the most merchandised arcade games behind Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.
Robotron 2084	1982	Williams Electronics	Featured novel dual joystick gameplay
Time Pilot	1982	Konami (Japan) / Centuri (U.S.)	Background moves in the opposite direction to the player's plane, which always remains in the center.
Tron	1982	Bally Midway	Earned more than the film it was based on
Xevious	1982	Namco (Japan) / Atari (U.S.)	The first arcade video game to have a TV commercial
Zaxxon	1982	Sega	First game to employ isometric axonometric projection, which the game was named after
Astron Belt	1983	Sega (Japan) / Midway (U.S.)	The first laserdisc video game.
Dragon's Lair	1983	Cinematronics (U.S.) / Taito (Japan)	An early laserdisc video game, which allowed film-quality animation in the game
Elevator Action	1983	Taito	Protagonist must traverse the building's numerous levels via a series of elevators and escalators while acquiring documents
Gyruss	1983	Konami (Japan) / Centuri (U.S.)	Often remembered for its musical score that plays throughout the game, Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor"
Mappy	1983	Namco (Japan) / Bally Midway (U.S.)	One of the first to feature side-scrolling platforming action
Mario Bros.	1983	Nintendo	The first game featuring Nintendo's mascot, Mario, along with his brother, Luigi
Spy Hunter	1983	Bally Midway	Memorable for its music, "The Peter Gunn Theme", that plays throughout the game
Star Wars	1983	Atari	Features several digitized samples of actor's voices from the movie
Tapper	1983	Bally Midway	Originally aligned with American beer Budweiser, was revamped as Root Beer Tapper, so as not to be construed as attempting to peddle alcohol to minors
1942	1984	Capcom	Capcom's first hit game
Paperboy	1984	Atari	Novel controls and high resolution display
Punch-Out!!	1984	Nintendo	Digitized voice and dual monitors

The end of the era

The Golden Age cooled as copies of popular games began to saturate the arcades. Arcades remained commonplace through the early 1990s and there were still new genres being explored, but most new games were fighting games, shooters, maze games, and other variations on old familiar themes.

New generations of home computers and home video game consoles also sapped interest from arcades. Earlier consoles, such as the Atari 2600 and Mattel's Intellivision, were general-purpose and were meant to play a variety of games, and often could not measure up to video arcade game hardware, which was built for the singular purpose of providing a single game well. In fact, the glut of poor-quality home video game systems contributed in no small way to the video game crash of 1983.

But the debut of the Nintendo Entertainment System (1985) began to level the playing field by providing a reasonably good video arcade experience at home. In the early to mid 1990s, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis in North America) greatly improved home play and some of the technology was even integrated into a few video arcade machines. By the time of the PlayStation (1995) and the Nintendo 64 (1996), both of which boasted true 3D graphics, many video game arcades across the country had gone out of business.

The video arcade game industry still exists today, but in a greatly reduced form. Video arcade game hardware is often based on home game consoles to facilitate porting a video arcade game to a home system; there are video arcade versions of Dreamcast (NAOMI, Atomiswave), PlayStation 2 (System 246), Nintendo GameCube (Triforce), and Microsoft Xbox (Chihiro) home consoles. Some arcades have survived by expanding into ticket-based prize redemption and more physical games with no home console equivalent, such as skee ball and whack-a-mole. Some genres, such as dancing and rhythm games (such as Dance Dance Revolution) continue to be popular in arcades.

The relative simplicity yet solid gameplay of many of these early games has inspired a new generation of fans who can play them on mobile phones or with emulators such as MAME. Some classic arcade games are reappearing in commercial settings, such as Namco's Ms. Pac-Man 20 Year Reunion / Galaga Class of 1981 two-in-one game, or integrated directly into controller hardware (joysticks) with replaceable flash drives storing game ROMs.

Legacy

The Golden Age of Video Arcade Games spawned numerous cultural icons and even gave some companies their identity. Elements from games such as Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Centipede are still recognized in today's popular culture.

The success of these early video games has led many hobbyists who were teenagers during the Golden Age to collect some of these classic games. Since few have any commercial value any longer, they can be acquired for US$200 to US$750 (though fully restored games can cost much more).

Some fans of these games have companies devoted to restoring the classic games, and others, such as Arcade Renovations, which produces reproduction art for classic arcade games, focus solely on one facet of the restoration activity. Many of these restorers have set up websites full of tips and advice on restoring games to mint condition. There are also several newsgroups devoted to discussion around these games, and a few conventions, such as California Extreme, dedicated to classic arcade gaming.

See also

• Arcade cabinet
• Arcade game
• List of video arcade games
• List of video game consoles
• Video arcade
• Timeline of video arcade game history

References

• The Official Price Guide to Classic Video Games by David Ellis (2004), ISBN 0-375-72038-3

External links

• The KLOV Top Video Games Lists by Greg McLemore and friends
• Reference to the term 'Golden Age'
• The Dot Eaters, Videogame History 101