5/8/2023 0 Comments Frogger porting kit![]() 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. Rapidly evolving hardware allowed new kinds of games which surpassed the shoot-em-up gameplay of the earliest 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. With the enormous success of the early games, dozens of developers jumped into the development and manufacturing of arcade video games. Other specialty controls, such as pedals in racing games and a crossbow-shaped light gun in Crossbow, also debuted in this era. Spy Hunter included a lifelike steering wheel and Hogan's Alley introduced tethered light guns to the arcade market. Atari introduced the trackball with 1978's Football. New controls cropped up in a few games, though, arguably, joysticks and buttons remained the favorites for most manufacturers. 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. The first game to exploit this technology, 1983's Dragon's Lair from Cinematronics, was three years in the making. ( Vectrex, a home video game system with a built-in vector display, was released in 1982.)ĭevelopers also experimented with laserdisc players for delivering movie-quality animation. ![]() 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. ![]() The Golden Age saw developers experimenting with new hardware, creating games which used the crisp lines of vector displays as opposed to standard raster displays. The central processing unit in these games allowed for more complexity than earlier discrete circuitry games such as Atari's PONG (1972). Other notables include Nintendo (whose mascot, Mario, was introduced in 1981's Donkey Kong), Bally Midway Manufacturing Company (who later was purchased by Williams), Capcom, Cinematronics, Konami, Sega, Taito, Williams, and SNK.Īrcades 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, King and Balloon, Tank Battalion, and others. Probably the most successful arcade game companies of this era were Namco (especially in Japan) and Atari (especially in the United States). Popular games occasionally caused a crush of teenagers, eager to try the latest entertainment entry. The era also saw the rapid spread of video arcades across North America and Japan.Īt this time, arcade games started to appear in supermarkets, liquor stores, gas stations and many other retail establishments looking for extra income. Games were designed in a wide variety of genres while developers had to work within strict limits of available processor power and memory. The Golden Age was a time of great technical and design creativity in arcade games. The Killer List of Videogames (KLOV) web site has compiled a list of the "Top 100 (arcade) Video Games." Fifty of them (including all the games on its Top 10 list) were introduced during the period from 1979 to 1984. This emphasis on the gameplay is why many of these games continue to be enjoyed today despite having been vastly outdated by modern computing technology. ![]() During the late 1970s, 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.
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