On November 30, 1982, Jerry Parker, the Mayor of Ottumwa, Iowa, declared his city the "Video Game Capital of the World". This boom came to an end in the mid-1980s, in what has been referred to as " the great coin-op video crash of 1983". Beginning with Space Invaders, video arcade games also started to appear in supermarkets, restaurants, liquor stores, gas stations and many other retail establishments looking for extra income. The number of video-game arcades in North America, for example, more than doubled between 19, reaching a peak of 13,000 video game arcades across the region (compared to 4,000 today ). The era saw the rapid spread of video arcades across North America, Western Europe and Japan. Designers experimented with a wide variety of game genres, while developers still had to work within strict limits of available processor-power and memory. Color arcade games became more prevalent and video arcades themselves started appearing outside their traditional bowling-alley and bar locales. The golden age of arcade video games in the 1980s became a peak era of video arcade game popularity, innovation, and earnings.
This emphasis on the gameplay explains why many of these games continue to be enjoyed today, despite the progress made by modern computing technology.
The central processing unit in these games allowed for more complexity than earlier discrete-circuitry games such as Atari's Pong ( 1972).ĭuring the late 1970s video-arcade game technology had become sophisticated enough to offer good-quality graphics and sounds, but it remained 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. Video game arcades began to gain momentum in the late 1970s with games such as Space Invaders ( 1978) and Galaxian ( 1979) and became widespread in 1980 with Pac-Man, Centipede and others. See also: Golden age of arcade video games Penny arcades later led to the creation of video arcades in the 1970s. Popular examples of EM games in the 1960s included shooters such as Sega's Periscope (1965) and Rifleman (1967), and racing games such as Kasco's Indy 500 (1968) and Chicago Coin's Speedway (1969). coin-operated shooter games and gun gamesīetween the 1940s and 1960s, mechanical arcade games evolved into electro-mechanical games (EM games).peep show machines (in the original, non-pornographic, usage of the term), which allowed the viewer to see various objects and pictures.early forms of non-electrical pinball machines,.
bagatelles, a game with elements of billiards and non-electrical pinball,.The name derives from the penny, once a staple coin for the machines. Arcades became popular with children and particularly adolescents, which led parents to be concerned that video game playing might cause them to skip school.Ī penny arcade can be any type of venue for coin-operated devices, usually for entertainment. Video games were introduced in amusement arcades in the late 1970s and were most popular during the golden age of arcade video games, the early 1980s. The term used for ancestors of these venues in the beginning of the 20th century was penny arcades. In some countries, some types of arcades are also legally permitted to provide gambling machines such as slot machines or pachinko machines. GiGO, a large 6 floor Sega game center on Chuo Dori, in front of the LAOX Aso-Bit-City in Akihabara, Tokyo, JapanĪn amusement arcade (often referred to as a video arcade, amusements or simply arcade) is a venue where people play arcade games, including arcade video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers (such as claw cranes), or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables.