Online Gaming - Arcade Gaming

Arcade Gaming

Arcade Gaming first became popular in the 1970’s with Atari’s introduction of the game Pong.  Pong was a game that was based on the table tennis sport and was first released in November 1972.  Pong was one of the first video arcade games to really achieve widespread popularity and created an interest in the arcade games field.  There was so much interest in this particular video game that there were many imitations made.  Atari wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about dominating the market at that time and as such, many variations of Pong appeared in entertainment venues and shopping arcades of the time.

After the invention of Pong, many other designers and developers were working on trying to find the next hit for this potentially massive market.  One designer, Toshiro Nishikado designed the Space Invaders game which was to become one of the most influential games of its generation.  He designed a game that was a combination of his earlier space monsters game and his vision of aliens in War of the Worlds.  The idea was very simple, with players able to move a laser cannon that would move across the bottom of the screen.  The idea of the game was to shoot all the aliens before they advanced to the bottom of the screen which would cause the game to end.  There had of course been many arcade games introduced between the first game of Pong and Space Invaders, however, none had really caught any major public attention.  It may have been that the Space Invaders game really connected to people at a time when Star Wars was released which was creating a vast amount of science fiction interest.

As the interest and popularity of Space Invaders increased, designers were quick to realise that this was the way forward.  Galaxian was the next major arcade game to be released by NAMCO and was loosely based on Space Invaders.  Galaxian featured attacking alien armies that allowed shots to be exchanged with the player.  Like Space Invaders, the game was quite simple, with alien armies attacking the player’s ship whilst it was moving at the bottom of the screen.  Once each army was defeated, the next one would attack but at a much faster and more aggressive pace.  Galaxian was seen as a game that was challenging technology of the time as its graphics was of a much higher quality than previous arcade games.  The games popularity was so high that a sequel to the game was released and Galaga introduced bonus rounds and alien attacks in specialist formations.  A third game in the series was released in 1984; however, Gaplus didn’t prove to be as popular due to arcade games losing their appeal to an ever increasing games market.

Probably the most popular and classic arcade game of all is Pac-Man.  It was first released in Japan in 1979 and then in the United States in 1980.  Pac-Man was universally popular with men and women alike and deviated from the traditional arcade games of the time.  It is fundamentally a maze like game with players having to move the yellow Pac-man around a maze whilst eating various small dots and other items which would reward the player with bonuses.  There are various levels within the game and the game incorporates four different ghosts to try and interrupt play by trying to catch Pac-man.  Points are awarded by collecting the small dots through the maze on each of the 256 levels.  Bonus points are accumulated by eating fruit scores. 

By the late 1980’s arcade games were losing their appeal and home video games consoles were becoming much more popular.  However, lots of players of recent times have realised how great arcade games were during the 70’s and 80’s and a revival of these games is currently occurring and many games are now available to play on home video consoles.