The Golden Age of Video Games

The Golden Age of Video Games

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the golden age of arcade video games was the period of rapid growth technological development and cultural influence of arcade video games from the late 1970s to the early 1980s the period began with the release of space invaders in 1978 which led to a wave of shoot-'em-up games such as galaxian and the vector graphics based asteroids in 1979 made possible by new computing technology that had greater power and lower costs this led to the rise of video game arcades where popular video game genres included space shooters such as space invaders asteroids defender galaga and centipede and character action games such as pac-man donkey kong and frogger there was also a rise in the appearance of video games in other media including songs cartoons and movies most notably the 1982 film tron although the exact years differ most sources agree the period was from about the late 1970s to early 1980s technology journalist jason whitaker in the cyberspace handbook places the beginning of the golden age in 1978 with the release of space invaders video game journalist stephen l kent in his book the ultimate history of video games places it at 1979-1983 the book pointed out that 1979 was the year that space invaders which he credits for ushering in the golden age was gaining considerable popularity in the united states and the year that saw vector display technology first seen in arcades in 1977 with space wars rise to prominence via atari's asteroids however 1983 was the period that began a fairly steady decline in the coin-operated video game business and when many arcades started disappearing the history of computing project places the golden age of video games between 1971 and 1983 covering the mainstream appearance of video games as a consumer market and the rise of dedicated hardware systems and the origin of multi-game cartridge based systems 1971 was chosen as an earlier start date by the project for two reasons the creator of pong filed a pivotal patent regarding video game technology and it was the release of the first arcade video game machine computer space sean newton 3d arcade model builder and author of the book bits sticks and buttons states that the defining transitional point which finally ended the first era of arcade gaming known as the black and white age and subsequently ushered in the golden age was with the north american release of space invaders the game brought forth with it the power of the microprocessor as well as a cult phenomenon impact which had only been felt up to that point by atari's pawn following space invaders asteroids and pac-man further solidified the strength of the golden age other opinions placed this period's beginning in the late 1970s when color arcade games became more prevalent and video arcades themselves started appearing outside of their traditional bowling alley and bar locales through to its ending in the mid 1980s the golden age of arcade games largely coincided with and partly fueled the second generation of game consoles in the microcomputer revolution the golden age was a time of great technical and design creativity in arcade games the era saw the rapid spread of video arcades across north america europe and asia the number of video game arcades in north america was doubled between 1980 and 1982 reaching a peak of 10 000 video game arcades across the region compared to four thousand as of nineteen ninety eight 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 video game arcades at the time became as common as convenience stores while arcade games like pac-man and space invaders appeared in most locations across the united states including even funeral homes the sales of arcade video game machines increased significantly during this period from 50 million dollars in 1978 to 900 million dollars in 1981 with 500 000 arcade machines sold in the united states but prices ranging as high as three thousand dollars in 1982 alone by 1982 there were 24 000 full arcades 400 000 arcade street locations and 1.5 million arcade machines active in north america the market was very competitive the average lifespan of an arcade game was four to six months some games like robbie roto failed because they were too complex to learn quickly and others like star fire because they were too unfamiliar to the audience kix was briefly very popular but tito's keith egging later said too mystifying for gamers impossible to master and when the novelty wore off the game faded at around this time the home video game industry second generation video game consoles and early home computer games emerged as an outgrowth of the widespread success of video arcades at the time in 1980 the us arcade video game industries revenue generated from quarters tripled to 2.8 billion dollars by 1981 the arcade video game industry in the united states was generating an annual revenue of over five billion dollars with some estimates as high as 10.5 billion dollars for all video games arcade and home in the us that year which was three times the amount spent on movie tickets in nineteen eighty one the total revenue for the u s arcade video game industry in 1981 was estimated at more than seven billion dollars though some analysts estimated the real amount may have been much higher by 1982 video games accounted for 87 of the 8.9 billion dollars in commercial

games sales in the united states in 1982 the arcade video game industry's revenue in quarters was estimated at eight billion dollars surpassing the annual gross revenue of both pop music four billion dollars and hollywood films three billion dollars combined that year it also exceeded the revenues of all major sports combined at the time earning three times the combined ticket and television revenues of major league baseball basketball and american football as well as earning twice as much as all the casinos in nevada combined this was also more than twice as much revenue as the 3.8 billion dollars generated by the home video game industry during the second generation of consoles that same year both the arcade and home markets combined added up to a total revenue between 11.8 billion dollars and 12.8 billion dollars for the u s video game industry in nineteen eighty two in comparison the u s video game industry in twenty eleven generated total revenues between sixteen point three billion dollars and sixteen point six billion dollars prior to the golden age pinball machines were more popular than video games the pinball industry reached a peak of 200 000 machine sales and 2.3 billion dollars revenue in 1979 which had declined to 33 000 machines and 464 million dollars in 1982. in comparison the best-selling arcade games of the golden age space invaders and pac-man had each sold over three hundred sixty thousand and four hundred thousand cabinets respectively with each machine costing between two thousand dollars and three thousand dollars specifically two thousand four hundred dollars in pacman's case in addition space invaders had grossed two billion dollars in quarters by nineteen eighty two while pacman had grossed over one billion dollars by 1981 and 2.5 billion dollars by the late 1990s in 1982 space invaders was considered the highest grossing entertainment product of its time with comparisons made to the then highest grossing film star wars which had grossed 486 million dollars while pac-man is today considered the highest grossing arcade game of all time many other arcade games during the golden age also had hardware unit sales at least in the tens of thousands including ms pac-man with over one hundred fifteen thousand units asteroids with seventy thousand donkey kong with over sixty thousand defender with fifty five thousand galaxian with forty thousand donkey kong junior with thirty five thousand mr do with thirty thousand and tempest with twenty nine thousand units a number of arcade games also generated revenues from quarters in the hundreds of millions including defender with more than one hundred million dollars in addition to many more with revenues in the tens of millions including dragon's lair with 48 million dollars in space ace with 13 million dollars the most successful arcade game companies of this era included taito which ushered in the golden age with the shooter game space invaders and produced other successful arcade action games such as gunfight and jungle king namco the japanese company that created galaxian pac-man pole position and dig dug and atari the company that introduced video games into arcades with computer space and pong and later produced asteroids other companies such as sega nintendo whose mascot mario was introduced in 1981's donkey kong as jumpman valley midway manufacturing company which was later purchased by williams cinematronics konami century williams and snk also gained popularity around this era arcades catering to video games began to gain momentum in the late 1970s with space invaders followed by games such as asteroids and galaxian arcades became more widespread in 1980 with pac-man missile command and berserk and in 1981 with defender donkey kong frogger and others the central processing unit cpu microprocessors in these games allowed for more complexity than earlier transistor transistor logic ttl discrete circuitry games such as atari's pong the arcade boom that began in the late 1970s is credited with establishing the basic techniques of interactive entertainment and for driving down hardware prices to the extent of allowing the personal computer pc to become a technological and economic reality while color monitors had been used by several racing video games before such as indy 800 and speed race twin it was during this period that rgb color graphics became widespread following the release of galaxian in 1979 galaxian introduced a tile-based video game graphic system which reduced processing and memory requirements by up to 64 times compared to the previous frama buffer system used by space invaders this allowed galaxian to render multi-color sprites which were animated atop a scrolling star field backdrop providing the basis for the hardware developed by nintendo for arcade games such as radar scope and donkey kong followed by the nintendo entertainment system console the golden age also saw developers experimenting with vector displays which produced crisp lines that couldn't be duplicated by eraser displays a few of these vector games became great hits such as 1979's asteroids 1980's battle zone and tempest and 1983's star wars from atari however vector technology fell out of favor with arcade game companies due to the high cost of repairing vector displays several developers at the time were also experimenting with pseudo3dn stereoscopic 3d using 2d sprites on racer displays in 1979 nintendo's radar scope introduced a three-dimensional third-person perspective to the shoot-em-up genre later imitated by shooters such as konami's juno first and activision's beam writer in 1983 in 1981 sega's turbo was the first racing game to feature a third person rear view format and use sprite scaling with full color graphics namco's pole position featured an improved rear view racer format in 1982 that remained the standard for the genre the game provided a perspective view of the track with its vanishing point swaying side to side as the player approaches corners accurately simulating forward movement into the distance that same year sega released saxon which introduced the use of isometric graphics and shadows and sub rock 3d which introduced the use of stereoscopic 3d through a special eyepiece this period also saw significant advances in digital audio technology space invaders in 1978 was the first game to use a continuous background soundtrack with four simple chromatic descending bass notes repeating in a loop though it was dynamic and changed tempo during stages rally x in 1980 was the first game to feature continuous background music which was generated using a dedicated sound chip an amco 3 channel psg that same year saw the introduction of speech synthesis which was first used in stratovox released by sun electronics in 1980 followed soon after by namco's king and balloon developers also experimented with lacerdis players for delivering full motion video based games with movie quality animation the first laserdisc video game to exploit this technology was 1983's a strong belt from sega soon followed by dragon's lair from cinematronics the latter was a sensation when it was released and in fact the laserdisc players in many machines broke due to overuse while lazardus games were usually either shooter games with full motion video backdrops like a strong belt or interactive movies like dragon's lair data east's 1983 game vegas battle introduced a new form of video game storytelling using brief full motion video cut scenes to develop a story between the game's shooting stages which years later became the standard approach to video game storytelling by the mid 1980s the genre dwindled in popularity as lazardists were losing out to the vhs format and the lazardus games themselves were losing their novelty 16-bit processors began appearing in several arcade games during this era universal's get away was a sit-down racing game that used a 16-bit cpu for which it was advertised as the first game to use a 16-bit microcomputer another racing game namco's pole position use the 16-bit zillow z8000 processor atari's food fight was one of the earliest games to use the motorola 68000 processor 3d computer graphics began appearing in several arcade games towards the end of the golden age funai's interstellar a laceradis game introduced at tokyo's amusement machine show um show in september 1983 demonstrated pre-rendered 3d computer graphics signatrex cube quest another lazarus game introduced at the same tokyo show in september 1983 combined lacer disc animation with 3d real-time computer graphics star writer introduced by williams electronics at the amusement and music operators association in october 1983 also demonstrated pre-rendered 3d graphics atari's eye robot developed and released in 1984 was the first arcade game to be rendered entirely with real-time 3d computer graphics space invaders established a multiple life progressively difficult level paradigm used by many classic arcade games designed by tamahiro nishikado at taito he drew inspiration from atari's block breaker game breakout and several science fiction works nishikado added several interactive elements to space invaders that he found lacking in earlier video games such as the ability for enemies to react to the player's movement and fire back with the game over triggered by enemies killing the player either by getting hit or enemies reaching the bottom of the screen rather than a timer running out in contrast to earlier arcade games which often had a timer space invaders introduced the concept of going round after round it also gave the player multiple lives before the game ends and saved the high score it also had a basic story with animated characters along with a crescendo of action and climax which laid the groundwork for later video games according to eugene jarvis with the enormous success of space invaders dozens of developers jumped into the development and manufacturing of arcade video games some simply copied the invading alien horde's idea of space invaders and turned out successful imitators like namco's galaxian and galaga which extended the fixed shooter genre with new gameplay mechanics more complex enemy patterns and richer graphics galaxian introduced a risk-reward concept while galaga was one of the first games with a bonus stage sega's 1980 release space tactics was an early first person space combat game with multi-directional scrolling as the player moved the cross hairs on the screen others tried new concepts and defined new genres rapidly evolving hardware allowed new kinds of games which allowed for different styles of gamma play the term action games began being used in the early 1980s in reference to a new genre of character action games that emerged from japanese arcade developers drawing inspiration from manga and anime culture according to eugene jarvis these new character driven japanese action games emphasized character development hand-drawn animation and backgrounds and a more deterministic scripted pattern type of play terms such as action games or character games began being used to distinguish these new character driven action games from the space shooters that had previously dominated the video game industry the emphasis on character-driven gameplay in turn enabled a wider variety of sub-genres in 1980 namco released pac-man which popularized the maze chase genre and rally x which featured a radar tracking the player position on the map games such as the pioneering 1981 games donkey kong and kicks in 1981 introduced new types of games where skill and timing are more important than shooting as fast as possible with nintendo's donkey kong in particular setting the template for the platform game genre the two most popular genres during the golden age were space shooters and character action games while japanese developers were creating a character-driven action game genre in the early 1980s american developers largely adopted a different approach to game design at the time according to eugene jarvis american arcade developers focused mainly on space shooters during the late 1970s to early 1980s greatly influenced by japanese space shooters but taking the genre in a different direction from the more deterministic scripted pattern type gamma play of japanese games towards a more programmer-centric design culture emphasizing algorithmic generation of backgrounds and enemy dispatch and an emphasis on random event generation particle effect explosions and physics as seen in arcade games such as his own defender in robotron 2084 as well as atari's asteroids namco's bisconian in 1981 introduced a free roaming style of gamma play where the player's ship freely moves across open space while also including a radar tracking player and enemy positions beta's battle in 1983 introduced a new form of video game storytelling using brief full motion video cut scenes to develop a story between the game's shooting stages other examples of innovative games are atari games paperboy in 1984 where the goal is to successfully deliver newspapers to customers and namco's foes in where the object is to duplicate a shape shown in the middle of the screen the theme of exedy's venture is dungeon exploration and treasure gathering q burke plays upon the user's sense of depth perception to deliver a novel experience some games of this era were so popular that they entered popular culture the first to do so was space invaders the game was so popular upon its release in 1978 that an urban legend blamed it for a national shortage of 100 yen coins in japan leading to a production increase of coins to meet demand for the game although 100 yen coin production was lower in 1978 and 1979 than in previous or subsequent years and the claim does not withstand logical scrutiny arcade operators would have emptied out their machines and taken the money to the bank thus keeping the coins in circulation it soon had a similar impact in north america where it has appeared or is referenced in numerous facets of popular culture soon after the release of space invaders hundreds of favorable articles and stories about the emerging video game media married on television and were printed in newspapers and magazines the space invaders tournament held by atari in 1980 was the first video game competition and attracted more than ten thousand participants establishing video gaming as a mainstream hobby by nineteen eighty eighty six percent of the 1320 population in the united states had played arcade video games and by 1981 there were more than 35 million gamers visiting video game arcades in the united states the game that most affected popular culture in north america was pac-man its release in 1980 caused such a sensation that it initiated what is now referred to as pac mania which later became the title of the last coin operated game in the series released in 1987 released by namco the game featured a yellow circle-shaped creature trying to eat dots through a maze while avoiding pursuing enemies though no one could agree what the hero or enemies represented they were variously referred to as ghosts goblins or monsters the game was extremely popular the game spawned an animated television series numerous clones pac-man branded foods toys and a hip-hop song pac-man fever the game's popularity was such that president ronald reagan congratulated a player for setting a record score in pac-man pac-man was also responsible for expanding the arcade game market to involve large numbers of female audiences across all age groups though many popular games quickly entered the lexicon of popular culture most have since left and pac-man is unusual in remaining a recognized term in popular culture along with space invaders donkey kong mario and q bert in 1983 an animated television series produced for saturday mornings called saturday super kate featured video game characters from the era such as frogger donkey kong q bert donkey kong jr kangaroo space ace and pitfall harry arcade games at the time affected on the music industry revenues for which it declined by 400 million dollars between 1978 and 1981 from 4.1 billion dollars to 3.7 billion

dollars a decrease that was directly credited to the rise of arcade games at the time successful songs based on video games also began appearing the pioneering electronic music band yellow magic orchestra emo sampled space invaders sounds in their 1978 self-titled album and the hit single computer game from the same album the latter selling over 400 000 copies in the united states in turn emo had a major influence on much of the video game music produced during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras other pop songs based on space invaders soon followed including disco space invaders by funny stuff space invaders by player 1 known as playback in the us and the hit songs space invader by the pretenders and space invaders by uncle vic the game was also the basis for player one space invaders which in turn provided the baseline for jesse saunders on and on the first chicago house music track the song pac-man fever reached number nine on the billboard hot 100 and sold over a million singles in 1982 while the album pacman fever sold over a million records with both receiving gold certifications that same year arcade and the video victims also produced an arcade inspired album get victimized featuring songs such as donkey kong in 1984 former emo member heromi hizono produced an album entirely from namco arcade game samples entitled video game music an early example of a chiptune record and the first video game music album arcade game sounds also had a strong influence on the hip hop pop music particularly synth pop and electro music genres during the early 1980s the booming successive video games at the time led to music magazine billboard listing the 15 top selling video games alongside their record charts by 1982 more than a decade later the first electro clash record iaf space invaders are smoking grass has been described as burbling electro in a vocodered homage to atari era high jinx particularly space invaders which it was named after arcade games also influenced the film industry beginning with space invaders arcade games began appearing at many movie theaters while early films based on video games were also produced most notably tron which grossed over 33 million dollars in 1982 which began the tron franchise which included a video game adaptation that grossed more than the film other films based on video games included the 1983 films war games where matthew broderick plays gala god in arcade nightmares and joysticks the 1984 films the last starfighter as well as cloak and dagger in which an atari 5200 cartridge implausibly containing the eponymous arcade game becomes the film's mcguffin arcades also appeared in many other films at the time such as dawn of the dead where they play gunfight and f1 in 1978 and midnight madness in 1980 take this job and shove it and puberty blues in 1981 the 1982 releases rocky three fast times at ridgemont high koyanascatsi and the toy the 1983 releases psycho 2 spring break and never say never again the 1984 releases footloose the karate kid where elizabeth's shoe plays pac-man the terminator knight of the comet and the adventures of buckaroo banzai across the eighth dimension the 1985 releases the goonies the boys next door and ferris bueller's day off as well as the 1986 film something wild the color of money in psycho 3 where norman bates stands next to a berserk cabinet over the top and can't buy me love showcase several arcade game cabinets as well in more recent years there have been critically acclaimed documentaries based on the golden age of arcade games such as the king of kong a fistful of quarters 2007 and chasing ghosts beyond the arcade 2007 since 2010 many arcade related features or films incorporating 1980s nostalgia have been released including tron legacy 2010 wreck-it ralph 2012 pixels 2015 everybody wants some 2016 summer of 84 2018 and ready player 1 2018 which is based upon the novel by ernest cline and directed by steven spielberg television shows and streaming series have exhibited arcade games including the goldbergs and the netflix series stranger things both of which feature dragon's lair among other games the period saw the emergence of a gaming media publications dedicated to video games in the form of video game journalism and strategy guides the enormous popularity of video arcade games led to the very first video game strategy guides these guides rare to find today discussed and detailed the patterns and strategies of each game including variations to a degree that few guides seen since can match turning the machine over making the score counter overflow and reset to zero was often the final challenge of a game for those who mastered it and the last obstacle to getting the highest score some of these strategy guides sold hundreds of thousands of copies at prices ranging from one dollar and ninety five cents to three dollars and ninety five cents in 1982 equivalent to between five dollars and eleven dollars and twenty twenty one that year ken austin's mastering pacman sold 750 000 copies reaching number five on b dalton's mass market bestseller list while bantam's how to master the video games sold 600 000 copies appearing on the new york times mass market paperback list by 1983 1.7 million copies of mastering pacman had been printed the golden age cooled around the mid-1980s as copies of popular games began to saturate the arcades arcade video game revenues in the united states had declined from eight billion dollars in 1981 and seven billion dollars in 1982 to 5 billion dollars in 1983 reaching a low of 4 billion dollars in 1986 despite this arcades remained commonplace through to the early 1990s as there were still new genres being explored in 1987 arcades experienced a short resurgence with double dragon which started the golden age of beat em up games a genre that peaked in popularity with final fight two years later in 1988 arcade game revenues in the united states rose back to 6.4 billion dollars largely due to the rising popularity of violent action games in the beat em up and run and gun shooter genres after yet another relative decline u s arcade video game revenues had fallen to 2.1 billion dollars by 1991 by which time the sales of arcade machines had declined with four thousand unit sales being considered a hit at the time one of the causes of decline was new generations of personal computers and video game consoles that sapped interest from arcades in the early 1990s the genesis mega drive outside most of north america and superness super famicom in japan greatly improved home play and some of their technology was even integrated into a few video arcade machines the golden age of video arcade games spawned numerous cultural icons and even gave some companies their identity elements from games such as space invaders pac-man donkey kong frogger and centipede are still recognized in today's popular culture and new entries in the franchises for some golden age games continued to be released decades later pac-man and dragons lair joint pong for permanent display at the smithsonian in washington dc for their cultural impact in the united states no other video game has been inducted since you can download various arcade remakes for android devices from the link in the video description thanks for watching this video if you liked it subscribe to the channel

2021-08-06 14:04

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