Spacewar – First Shooting Game

The first shooting game was created by three students from MIT on a DEC PDP-1 mini-computer in 1961.  Those students included Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen.  The game was called "Spacewar."  This early game was not a video game, because it did not use a video display, the PDP-1 computer used a vector display system.

Spacewar consisted of two spaceships which shot at each other.  To bring some sense of reality to the game, the students made a special background which simulated a real constellation.  The students also wanted to add some complexity to Spacewar, so they added a new element to the game, the gravity star; which attracts the spaceship(s.)  This star is usually called sun.

Later, Stephen Russell admitted that the best thing about Spacewar was that the game has set an example for numerous arcade game developers of future, this early game inspired them in the creation of their own games.

The interesting thing is that the game of Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen was used as a test on new PDP-1 systems, because there was not any other program which allowed DEC technicians to do a complete check of all aspects of the system except Spacewar.

Arcade Games in 20th Century: Part 2 - Evolution of Arcades

The appearance of arcades took place during the interwar period.  That was the time when the coin operated machines were developed.  However, not everyone was able to use arcade games; the person had to be in a certain age range.  In addition, only certain categories of people were allowed to use arcade games.

Then the video game technologies started to improve arcades with electronic features.  This led to the improvement of automatic gaming tools.  Modifications in there structure resulted in the simplification and enrichment of game play.

After some more time had passed, modifications have been moved from external area of arcade games to internal, the games themselves started to be improved.  This improvement led to more realistic imitations in games.

In the late 1970s-1980s, arcade games became an industrial environment based on electronic work.  This period of time is also known as the golden age of video arcade games.

Present Situation of Video Arcade Games: Part 1

Video arcade games have a great history, in the 1980s they were very popular. They even created popular video game cultures, so to speak, and cultural icons. What is the present situation of video arcade games? Did the arcades become extinct? No, of course they didn’t. It is true that the time of arcades has passed, but the video arcade game industry does still exist today. Just on a significantly reduced level.

In order to facilitate porting a video arcade game to a home system, the modern video arcade game hardware is often based on home game consoles. Some home consoles have the video arcade versions:

PlayStation 2 – System 246

Microsoft Xbox – Chihiro

Dreamcast – NAOMI, Atomiswave

Nintendo GameCube – Triforce

The survival of some video arcade games is caused by their expanding into ticket-based prize redemption. Others have survived by expanding into more physical games which haven’t equivalents among home game consoles. Some examples of the latter would be skee-ball and whack-a-mole.

End of Golden Age of Video Arcade Games: Copies of Popular Games

During the late 1970's technology made it possible to create video games with much better quality graphics and sound in comparison to previous years. It was still  a very far cry from what future technologies would have to offer, with realistic images and full motion video. This is why arcade game developers had to compensate for the lack of quality, by making the game play even more fun or entertaining. Many consider the late 1970's the golden age of the video arcade games. A lot of wonderful video arcade games were created then.

Unfortunately, this wonderful time didn’t last to terribly long, arcade games continued to be popular till the beginning of 1990's, but then there time had passed.  So, what happened, there are several reasons for it, and one of them is that the arcade market started to be filled with the numerous copies of these popular arcade games. These copies killed the interest to video arcade games, the development of something new became a rarity. Even though there were still new genres being explored by arcade game developers, the overwhelming majority of created games were maze type games, shooting games, and other such variations of these well-known themes.

Immense Popularity of Pac-Man

The period of the beginning of 1880-ies was the great time when a lot of wonderful video arcade games were released. Some of these arcade games gained the immense popularity. In result, they entered the popular culture.

One of the representatives of such video arcade games is the legendary Pac-Man, which was made by Namco in 1980. Its release caused such a sensation that it initiated what is now referred to as Pac-Mania.

This video arcade game spawned numerous clones, Pac-Man-branded foods, animated television series, and a hit pop song, Pac-Man Fever. There are anecdotes about the Pac-Man that there is a need to empty the game's coin bucket every hour by some game owner in order to prevent the game's coin mechanism from jamming of having too many coins in the receptacle.

The word Pac-Mania was later used as the title to the last coin-operated game of the series. Final part of this arcade game was released in 1987.

World of Pac-Man

The world of Pac-Man is pretty simple, but its gameplay is very exciting. The “hero” of this video arcade game is yellow creature in the form of circle, which is called Pac-Man. The game area represents a maze. There are also other creatures which patrols the area.

The goal of the game is to eat dots which are placed all over the maze. Other creatures are the enemies which pursuit a gamer and which should be avoided.

No one can tell for sure what the game creatures represented. The “hero” represents a mouth or something like this. The enemies are sometimes referred to as ghosts, monsters or goblins.

This video arcade game gained a huge popularity. It is impossible to describe all the excitement of playing this wonderful arcade game. It isn’t surprising that it became a legend. Even now, more than thirty years after the release of Pac-Man, it is still popular and is still played by a lot of fans and ordinary gamers.