Golden age of arcade video games

The release of Space Invaders in 1978 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.

Arcade video games switched from black-and-white to color, with titles such as Frogger and Centipede taking advantage of the visual opportunities of bright palettes.

Technology journalist Jason Whittaker, in The Cyberspace Handbook, places the beginning of the golden age in 1978, with the release of Space Invaders.

[1] Video game journalist Steven L. Kent argues in his book The Ultimate History of Video Games that it began the following year, when Space Invaders gained popularity in the United States[2] and when vector display technology, first seen in arcades in 1977's Space Wars, rose to prominence via Atari's Asteroids.

[7] 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.

Qix was briefly very popular but, Taito's Keith Egging later said, "too mystifying for gamers...impossible to master and when the novelty wore off, the game faded".

Other companies such as Sega (who later entered the home console market against its former arch rival, Nintendo), Nintendo (whose mascot, Mario, was introduced in 1981's Donkey Kong as "Jumpman"), Bally Midway Manufacturing Company (which was later purchased by Williams), Cinematronics, Konami, Centuri, Williams and SNK also gained popularity around this era.

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.

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 Beamrider in 1983.

[47] In 1981, Sega's Turbo was the first racing game to feature a third-person rear view format,[48] and use sprite scaling with full-colour graphics.

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.

[66] Star Rider, introduced by Williams Electronics at the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) in October 1983,[67] also demonstrated pre-rendered 3D graphics.

[72] Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado at Taito, he drew inspiration from Atari's block-breaker game Breakout (1976) and several science fiction works.

[76] 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.

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.

[84] 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.

[83] 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" gameplay 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 (1981)[83] and Robotron: 2084 (1982)[87] as well as Atari's Asteroids (1979).

A widely believed, yet false, urban legend held that its popularity caused a national shortage of 100 yen coins in Japan.

[90][91][92][93] Its release in North America led to hundreds of favorable articles and stories about the emerging medium of video games printed in newspapers and magazines and aired on television.

Released by Namco, the game featured a yellow, circle-shaped creature trying to eat dots through a maze while avoiding pursuing enemies.

The game spawned an animated television series, numerous clones, Pac-Man-branded foods, toys, and a hit pop song, "Pac-Man Fever".

[97] Pac-Man was also responsible for expanding the arcade game market to involve large numbers of female audiences across all age groups.

Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese were founded specifically as restaurants focused on featuring the latest arcade titles.

[104] The game was also the basis for Player One's "Space Invaders" (1979), which in turn provided the baseline for Jesse Saunders's "On and On" (1984),[105][106] the first Chicago house music track.

Arcades also appeared in many other films at the time, such as Dawn of the Dead (where they play Gun Fight and F-1) in 1978,[121] and Midnight Madness in 1980, Take This Job and Shove It and Puberty Blues in 1981, the 1982 releases Rocky III, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Koyaanisqatsi and The Toy, the 1983 releases Psycho II, Spring Break, Strange Brew, Terms of Endearment and Never Say Never Again, the 1984 releases Footloose, The Karate Kid (where Elisabeth Shue plays Pac-Man), The Terminator, Night of the Comet and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, the 1985 releases The Goonies, The Heavenly Kid, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, The Boys Next Door[122] and Ferris Bueller's Day Off[120] as well as the 1986 films Something Wild, The Color of Money, River's Edge and Psycho III (where Norman Bates stands next to a Berzerk cabinet).

Coin-operated games (both video and mechanical) are central to the plots of the 1988 films Big and Kung-Fu Master and also appear in Miracle Mile.

Since 2010, many arcade-related features or films incorporating 1980's nostalgia have been released including Tron: Legacy (2010), Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Ping Pong Summer (2014), Pixels (2015), Everybody Wants Some!!

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.

Pac-Man and Dragon's Lair joined Pong for permanent display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. for their cultural impact in the United States.

[196] Emulators such as the Internet Archive Virtual Arcade are able to run these classic games inside a web browser window on a modern computer.