Brief History of the Arcades

We are back with Classic Fries! Every Saturday, we will pull something from The Museum and reprint it for those to enjoy! This gives those a chance who never got a chance to read it the first time a second chance, since the Museum itself is so large and its hard for anyone to decide where to begin.

Today, we will be digging from the archives of 2D Gaming Central! Today, we are randomly taking a look at a another piece in video game history... The Arcades. This brief, a little biased, and doesn't really cover the history all that much, but you still get an interesting read!

Enjoy!

What started the Arcade games as we know it was with Computer Space. Computer Space was the commercial version of a game created by Steve Russell called Spacewar in 1962. Nolan Bushnell had played the game, and ended up creating the first Arcade game titled Computer Space in 1970. It had set a standard for Arcade games in that now they had their own dedicated board that was made to specifically run that game. Although Computer Space was the first game to ever hit commercial Arcades. Although it was the first video game, it wasn't exactly successful, as many people claim that there were only 1,500 Computer Space units distributed. However, it opened up the door for bigger things to come in the Arcades.

The main problem, at the time with Computer Space was that it was very complicated to the public who had never played a video game before in their life, and there was no one who could show them how either. So the person behind Computer Space, Nolan Bushnell, took what profits there were from the game, and formed Atari. Nolan Bushnell teamed up with Alan Alcorn and created the first big thing to hit Video Gaming, Pong.

Unlike Computer Space, Pong was a simple game that anyone could easily play. It was similar to Ping Pong. Each player controlled a paddle and blocked the white ball from going past their paddle. The first player who was to score a certain amount of points would win. Pong had caught on and ended up selling around 38,000 units of the original Pong to Arcades everywhere. Video Games had their first big hit.

For years, Arcade games kept on coming from several different companies. So what was next for the Arcades to hit it big? Many experts point to the next big Arcade game since Pong to be none other than the infamous Space Invaders. Space Invaders was released by Taito in 1978. It is the first "Space Shooter." The object of Space Invaders is to shoot all of the aliens that are on the screen before they destroy your ship. This was a unique experience, and till this day, is still quite an addictive game. The game became popular to the point that the machines were not only in Arcades, but also restaurants, bars, and even laundry mats, which was unheard of at the time.

There were several "Next Big Things" in the Arcades following into late 70s to the mid 80s. Some great examples would be: Asteroids, Defender, Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Pole Position, Gauntlet, and many other classic games.

After awhile, the Arcade market was saturated with too many games. Since there were too many games to choose from, Arcade owners did not get a big profit off of these expensive machines. Although there were some games that carried the Arcade industry on its shoulders, most notably Yu Suzuki's games such as Space Harrier & Hang-On, the Arcade scene was dying a slow death.

There was one game that literally breathed life back into the Arcades. That game was none other than Street Fighter II - The World Warrior. Street Fighter II was the first fighting game of its kind. Players had the option of selecting one of 8 characters. Each of these characters had their pros and cons, and were significantly different from each other. Once they had selected the character, then they would fight each other using their unique set of moves.

Players had to learn how to master their favorite character's moves by experimenting with different button combinations. This style of deep gameplay was something gamers had never seen before. However, this also had signaled the end of the era of simple games that anyone could pick-up and play. Street Fighter II was for the experienced gamer. Unlike older Arcade games, Street Fighter II introduced a game that spawned millions of games to take those basic mechanics, and make it their own unique game. Some examples would be Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, Virtua Fighter, Tekken, and even other games involving the characters from Street Fighter.

To this day, Arcades aren't as big as they used to be. This is a good and bad thing when you look at it from different angles.. When Arcades were big, and every company was rushing to put out their next big hit, a lot of bad games were produced. However, now going to the Arcades, one can expect only the highest quality of game that they get for their dollar. 2-D Gaming Central suggests that everyone should go to their local Arcade, and experience what the Arcade is all about, intense addictive games whether that be Pinball, Pac-Man, or Mortal Kombat.