Video games have a very interesting history behind them, including scary coincidences, market crashes, and sales that are mind-blowing in size. This running series attempts to document most of these in an interesting way. In this article: The Arcade.
Nowadays, the arcade isn’t really a big thing anymore. They do exist, but not in the same form as their glorious, 1970-1980 counterparts. Arcades today are typically in a spot that is public, such as a shopping mall or occasionally places such as a Central Business District. Modern arcades have little in common with their predecessors: the modern arcade has games with a tangible element to them, such as a ball, or a stick, whereas the earlier arcades didn’t. But what exactly started this whole craze?
Well, the arcade officially started in 1909, with the invention of Skee Ball. Yes, the video game arcade started with a game that barely resembles any today, save for its mobile touch-screen version. Skee Ball was invented by J.D. Estes in Philadelphia in 1909, and involves rolling a ball down an alley with enough force so that it flies off a short ramp at the end, and goes into a series of holes, each worth a certain amount of points, the lowest being 10, and the highest being either 50 or 100, depending on the version. The first of these alleys were sold to the “outdoor amusement industry”, and were 36 feet long (about 11 meters). In 1928, this distance was reduced to 14 feet (4.3 meters), to allow for a more diverse crowd of players, as the original game, with such a long alley, required a lot of strength to play. Nowadays, the Skee Ball alley is either 10 or 13 feet (exactly 4 meters). After these changes, Skee Ball became a hit, but was considered gambling in some states of the USA, which became a huge problem for the next games, over a decade later.
The arcade game Skee Ball
I am, of course, talking about Baffle Ball! Never heard of it? Well, me neither. Baffle Ball was the first coin-operated machine, and was designed and created in Chicago. Baffle Ball led the way to the next big game, which everyone has heard of: Pinball.
Pinball was invented in 1933, and was designed without flippers, and as such the games were classified as “games of chance”, and considered gambling. In some places, the machines were synonymous with organized crime, and banned: famously, New York City, where the mayor stripped 2000 Pinball machines down and sent them away to be melted down and used in the war effort. Pinball machines began to be designed with flippers from 1947 onwards, and from that point they were no longer a game of chance, but of skill, and were also more family friendly.
The game of Baffle Ball. Note the lack of flippers.
At this point, we need to fast forward to 1971, because that’s where things really started to kick off. In that year, a game that cost $20.000 ($115.000 today) to build, using a DEC PDP-11 computer and a vector display terminal. That game was Galaxy Game, and it was the first coin-operated computer game, installed at Stanford University in September 1971. The game cost 10 cents (59 cents today) for one game, or if you wanted to save 5 cents, 25 cents ($1,47 today) for 3 games. 1972 saw the release of the hugely popular Pong (which was also a clone), which sold more than 35.000 units. The game was so successful that it started the video game arcade revolution, as pinball machines faded into obscurity. 15 different companies began to develop video games for the arcade in between 1972 and 1984.
The first coin-operated game, Galaxy Game
Throughout the 1970’s, several innovative games were made. Gun Fight, in 1975, was the first game to use a microprocessor, and 1978 saw the release of Taito Corp’s Space Invaders, which took a year for its developer, Tomohiro Nishikado, to develop. Space Invaders became one of the most popular arcade games of all time, and even ended the first video game market crash. And in 1980, Atari’s Tempest was the first game to utilize high-resolution, color, vector graphics. Between 1978 and 1982, the video game arcade grew exponentially, with 13.000 of them spreading around America, and the machines generating $400 (about $1200 today).
The high resolution, colour, vector graphics of Tempest
This increase in revenue was probably helped along by the release of Pac-Man in 1980, which has the honor of being the most successful video game of all time, as it sold 350.000 arcade cabinets, generated $2 billion in revenue ($3.4 adjusted for inflation), and caused a shortage of yen in Japan. The game became a popular culture phenomenon. 1981 saw the release of yet another amazing game, Donkey Kong, which was one of the first platform games and the second to feature more than one level. Donkey Kong also had a better storyline, and had sold 60.000 units by the end of its first year: earning $180 million (about $470 million today).
Da na na na na na na na PAC-MAN!
Other famous games released during the “decade turnover” era include Asteroids, Atari’s highest selling game with over 70.000 cabinets sold, as well as Frogger, Galaxian, Centipede, Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong Jr., and Tron.
However, the industry all but crashed in 1983, due to an overcrowded market of similar games, and a fight against video games by concerned parents. The industry’s worth had gone from $12 billion in 1982 to $100 million in 1985.
Nintendo saved the day with the release of their home consoles, followed by Sega, causing a renewed interest in the home console industry, but the arcade looked like it was doomed. Or was there a slight chance that they could be saved?
In 1991, Capcom release Street Fighter II, which was exactly the thing the arcade needed, although it also caused a shift of focus. The arcade became a place dedicated to fighting games such as Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, and Street Fighter, and fighting games became a huge success, until the mid-1990’s, when the arcade began to appear doomed. Until the turn of the century rolled around.
Gameplay of Street Fighter II
Konami had a big plan, with a big game: Dance Dance Revolution. Arcade owners were worried that the dancing game, which involved physically moving your feet on a series of arrows in time to what appeared on-screen, would be unwelcomed by the American audience, as it was very quirky and weird compared to the fighter games earlier in the decade. The game ended up being a gargantuan success, reaching $6.5 million in sales by 2003 and giving Konami a 260% increase in net income. Along with other games, such as the popular Guitar Hero, revitalized the industry in the early 2000s.
The Dance Dance Revolution Arcade Machine. Note the arrows on the floor, which acted as the game’s control scheme.
The last decade saw the transition from video game arcades to just game arcades. Needless to say, modern arcade games had to keep up with the rapidly increasing technology trend: Mario Kart Arcade GP had built-in cameras to the device that were used in-game, Dead Heat Street Racing, released in 2010, was surprisingly the first game that allowed the sharing of scores through social media, and Deal or No Deal was a tie-in game that used clips from the show. Perhaps one great leap forward was the release of Big Buck Hunter HD in 2012, which featured the ability to compete for a cash prize (for an additional fee).
The Mario Kart Arcade GP Game, famous for its use of a camera
Nowadays, although arcades are no longer like their predecessors in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, they can still be a lot of fun – especially with friends. Some people still crave the nostalgia of the good old arcades though, which led to the rise in emulators and the release of collections of great arcade games on modern consoles, as well as mobile platforms for a nostalgia hit on the go. Some people insist on having an actual arcade cabinet, leading them to custom build their own, and placing either a computer with emulation capabilities or buying a chip from resellers with many games on them: giving rise to the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, or MAME as it is more fondly called.
In the next article: a question answered. Are video games basically gambling?
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