Modern home video game systems have their roots in the classic arcades and the home video games that became widely available largely in the 1970s and 1980s.
Here are 11 interesting and fun facts regarding a bygone era of arcade and home video gaming.
How was Donkey Kong named?
The name Donkey Kong came about when the Japanese creator Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo wanted to name it after the antagonist gorilla in the game and used English words that he thought would describe a stubborn ape. The name “donkey” was chosen and since the game was inspired by King Kong, the name Donkey Kong was used. It introduced gamers to the Mario character who as the protagonist, was trying to rescue his girlfriend from Donkey Kong.
The success of the game inspired the sequel Donkey Kong Jr which flipped the tables and saw Donkey Kong Jr try to rescue his father Donkey Kong from Mario and also spawned numerous related follow ups for both home and arcade play. A Donkey Kong port was the included cartridge when Coleco launched its home console Colecovision in 1982.
What does the name Pac-Man mean?
Pac-Man was originally called Puckman in Japan to denote the fact that the main character in the game resembles a yellow puck that was actually designed to look like a pizza. Yellow was chosen as the color since it’s perceived as being bright and neutral. The game was targeted at women as up until then, early arcade games had been largely designed for men.
But because the word “puck” is close to a certain four letter word in English, it was feared that the game would be associated with that word and that kids might scratch the first letter of Puckman into an F on the game consoles so Pac was instead chosen and the game Pac-Man was born.
Pac-Man is widely to be considered the most successful arcade video game of all time in terms of game revenue generated by the machines in arcades.
Did Space Invaders cause a coin shortage in japan?
An urban legend says that upon its release in 1978, Space Invaders was so popular in its native Japan that it caused a shortage of 100 yen coins but this is in fact incorrect and just a myth. Sales of Space Invaders consoles started slowly after release but quickly became a crowd favorite among early arcade goers. Drawing inspiration from the game Breakout, Japanese game designer Tomohiro Nishikado created one of the most influential video games of all time and one that to this day is recognized as helping usher in the golden age of video games which followed.
Early video games often didn’t keep score and had very basic graphics and game play. Space Invaders was the first arcade game to keep track of and record high scores which became a huge part of video games moving forward as many soon allowed you to enter your initials as proof of your achievement.
How many unsold E.T. games were buried in a landfill?
For decades it was rumored that millions of unsold Atari E.T. The Extra Terrestrial video game cartridges were buried in a New Mexico landfill and sealed with concrete after the company produced a very inferior game and vastly over produced it resulting in poor sales and nowhere to store the unsold games. It was rumored that Atari produced enough cartridges that everyone who owned an Atari console could purchase an E.T. game.
In 1982 when E.T. was released in the movie theatres, it quickly became a phenomenon and ended up becoming the biggest grossing movie of all time. A home video game was quickly rushed to market by Atari to take advantage of the success of the film. While video games of the time took months to design and create, Atari had just over 5 weeks to create a game from scratch and release it in time for the lucrative Christmas sales season. The result was a poorly reviewed disaster with subpar graphics and low sales.
In April 2014, a film crew put a documentary together that revealed that the rumor was true: E.T. and other unsold Atari cartridges had been secretly buried in a landfill decades earlier. Atari has since revealed that around 700,000 cartridges were discarded and buried. A small number of the buried cartridges were recovered in good enough shape that they could be displayed in a museum.
What was the first arcade game invented?
The first arcade game invented was Atari’s Computer Space released in 1971. It’s a very basic version of Asteroids and was built with no RAM or ROM with a black and white screen. The highest score you can get is 15 and the game resets at that point.
One year later, Atari released its classic Pong game which became much more successful and helped to launch the video game industry. Given that Pong was a very basic tennis or electronic table hockey game, it caught on quicker and seemed to have much wider appeal even with a very basic gameplay and graphics.
Both games cost 25 cents to play in the arcade.
Why was Pong so popular?
The concept of Pong is simple: A white blip moves across the screen left to right and 2 players each use a paddle that moves up and down to knock the blip back to their opponent. When one person fails to return the blip, their opponent gets 1 point.
When Atari released its Pong video game in 1972, it came at a time when video game systems and options were in their infancy with very little to choose from. The home computer market didn’t exist, no one owned a cellphone and the Internet wasn’t even a thought for the average person.
Pong had a basic concept that was easy to master, didn’t require instructions per se and given that the video game industry was at the very beginning of its existence, there was nothing else to compare to. And at the time, the only place you could play it was at an arcade.
What is the oldest home video game console?
The Magnavox Odyssey was released in August 1972 and was the first commercially available home video game console. Originally retailing for just under $100, the game was black and white, had no other color or sound and the images on the screen were just small blips. Rather than simply sitting and watching their tv, people could now play a game and control the activity on the screen from the comfort of their home.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell noticed the Odyssey tennis game around the time he was trying to build his company and was inspired in part to create Pong.
The Odyssey was quickly usurped by other home video game systems of the day most notably the Atari VCS/2600 which was released in 1977. Part of the problem for the Odyssey was that it had no competition to compete with and to create a buzz among the general public because the concept was so new. In fact, the release of Pong in the arcades seemed to give the Odyssey a sales boost as video games started to get more attention.
What is an Atari heavy sixer?
Atari first produced their home Video Computer System (VCS) and released it in September 1977 under that name. Later on, the console became known as the Atari 2600 beginning in 1982 so you’ll commonly now hear it referred to as the 2600 and not VCS.
The first consoles were manufactured by Atari in their Sunnyvale, California factory. The consoles had 6 vertical switches on them and were heavier than consoles that came later, hence the nickname Heavy Sixer. Atari also produced lighter models that also have 6 switches that became affectionately known as Light Sixers.
The Heavy Sixers weigh 4.5 lbs (2 kg) whereas the newer lighter models weigh 3.35 lbs (1.52 kg). The extra weight is in the bottom casing of the Heavy Sixer consoles.
Future lighter consoles were generally manufactured in Hong Kong and other places outside the USA with four switches instead of six with the corresponding lighter weight. These mass-produced versions are the ones most widely available to this day.
The Heavy Sixers can be spotted with a few characteristics over the Light Sixer models. The trim around the front of the console is thicker and rounder than lighter units. The wood effect paneling also stops short of the front lower trim of the Heavy Sixer but runs behind it on the lighter models.
Atari Heavy Sixers fetch more money than other Atari 2600 models due to their scarcity.
What was the first video game subscription service?
The PlayCable was the first video game subscription service launched in 1979 for Mattel’s Intellivision home video game console. The PlayCable was a matching box that fit into the Intellivision cartridge slot that was designed to look exactly like the console itself. Rather than buying cartridges, you rented the PlayCable service from your cable tv provider and each month you would have access to 20 Intellivision games on demand.
Upon turning the Intellivision master component console on, the system would power up and play one of several musical numbers while you picked the game you wanted to play. After selecting the game, it would take several or more seconds to load onto your PlayCable’s memory and you would play the game as you would a regular cartridge. On the 1st of every month, several games would be removed from the library and new ones would replace them.
The PlayCable was a revolutionary idea for the time which required a large up front cost by the cable companies that offered it. The PlayCable itself was also limited in terms of what games could be offered as within several years of launch, newer video games required more memory for newer features, better graphics and sound that the PlayCable couldn’t support. The PlayCable was discontinued in 1983, the same year that the video game industry crashed.
What killed arcades?
Arcades died for a number of reasons. Video arcades began by offering games that you could only play in an arcade and nowhere else. As home video games became more popular, arcades needed to become more compelling to attract people to spend their money in a crowded, loud arcade rather than on a console used in the comfort of their own home. Over time, arcades lost that advantage: You could buy a home console and play video games at home whenever you liked.
From the arcade owners’ perspective, they had concerns, too. By the early 1980s, the arcade industry had been somewhat exposed as not making games that were nearly as profitable as many game manufacturers had claimed. When people tired of a new video game quickly and stopped spending their quarters, arcades were stuck with machines that they’d paid thousands of dollars for only months earlier. If they bought a dud game, they lost money and weren’t getting it back.
At the time, arcades were largely the domain of kids and teenagers and predominantly boys. The media often portrayed arcades as a waste of time and money and a place for teens to loiter which led to many malls and other venues being hesitant to house them.
The Video Game Crash of 1983 didn’t help and it wiped out many video game manufacturers and arcades and set remaining ones back for years. A combination of an over saturated market and many low quality inferior games sunk the industry until it was able to begin to recover several years later.
When was the first pinball machine invented?
Bally Hoo was the first automatic pinball machine and was released in 1931 by Richard Maloney who was also the founder of the Bally Corporation. Bally is best known for their arcade and slot machines, casinos, fitness centers and other lines of business. The term pinball machine wasn’t used until several years later in 1936.
Pinball machines didn’t get much time to become established as a game form as they were quickly banned in certain jurisdictions and most notably in New York City by then mayor Fiorello La Guardia who shut down gaming locations and confiscated machines, alleging their corrupting influence on kids. This was at a time when coin-operated machines were really just starting to become available.
To date, the best-selling arcade pinball machine is The Addams Family game. Once video games took hold, pinball machines took a back seat and in the average arcade, were vastly outnumbered by the more popular video game consoles of the day.