Galaxy Game, The First Coin-Operated Game

"Spacewar," created by three MIT students in 1961, had great success amongst the engineering students.  However in the 1960's computers were very expensive; thus not allowing enthusiasts to freely work on the creation of games.  Only universities and the wealthy were able to afford computers at that time.  The situation changed however, in 1970 with the launch of the minicomputer PDP-11 by DEC.  Its price was about $14000, which means that computers became available for purchase by a wider range of consumers.  Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck did not fail to seize this opportunity.

Pitts and Tuck had an idea in which they would create a game that required money to play.  Meaning that they are the founders of the video arcade game concept. They wanted to create the analog version of "Spacewar" for a wider audience.  Their work resulted in the creation of "Galaxy Game."

"Galaxy Game" was installed in a cafeteria at Stanford.  To play this game, you had to insert coins, one game cost 10 cents.  If player inserted a quarter however, he could play three times.  Thus, the "Galaxy Game," became the first coin-operated game.

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 4 - Arcades and Personal Computers

Even though arcades had survived the rapid increase of video game technologies, their time had seemingly passed.  Every year game technologies become more and more advanced, allowing games to become more complex and realistic.  Video arcade games, with their poor graphics and low capabilities could not hold peoples interest any more.

One thing that became possible with the rise of video game technologies, was the ability for one to play different games on a single platform, this occurred when the personal computer (PC) appeared.


Back then computers had very few capabilities, and the installation of arcade games required a great deal of time; as did running the games on early PCs.  Despite these disadvantages, computers became the number one choice of many gamers.

Early video arcade games could be played only on arcade cabinets, which were specially designed for them.  Personal computers quickly became the universal platform.  In result, there was no longer a need for arcade cabinets, and arcade establishments started to lose popularity.

Regardless however, of all of the disadvantages of video arcade games,  as well as the capabilities of modern video game technologies, when arcades were introduced online, it became obvious that arcade games  were and are still very popular.

Arcade Games in 20th Century: Part 3 - Arcades vs. Simulators

The rise of video game technologies did not only improve video arcade games; the exaggerated use of realistic elements led to the appearance of a totally new game genre, simulator games (sim games.)


From the moment that simulators appeared, their popularity began to rise rapidly and the interest in arcades began to fall.  This resulted in decreasing sales in the video arcade game industry.  Simulators definitely had benefits in terms of video game technologies much more than arcades.  They became popular thanks to their atmosphere and realism.

Obviously, it was not the best of times for video arcade games, however, this game genre did not disappear.  Why so, you might ask, after all the main characteristics of arcades are:

• low reality imitation
• low planning of the levels
• low planning of the task issues

In terms of the first point of view, these characteristics leave no chances for the genre.  Arcades do however have one benefit that allows them to exist along with simulator games, the simple game play.  Simplicity is both the advantage and disadvantage of video arcade games.

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.

Arcade Games in the 20th Century: Part 1 - Introduction

Arcade games have come a long and bright way.  They have left an indelible mark on history, arcades are known as one of the logos of the twentieth century, its legendary phenomenon.  When we talk about the legacy of the twentieth century, we are reminded of the arcades.

It is hard to find person who did not play video arcade games, or at the very least did not hear about them.  Though everyone is familiar with the arcades, not everyone knows that the combination of the words: arcade, games, has several meanings.

The first meaning comes from the Italian understanding of arcatta, and represents the amusement tools which are kept in an arch way enclosure.

The second meaning of arcade games is the game genre.  It is the operating machine with coin control that has different ways of entertaining of people, games such as ping-pong, pinball, car races, etc.

The last meaning is that of the combination of the two words, arcade, games, this combination became well known in the world.

In terms of the structure, video arcade games are the example of what can be made by joining together entertainment and electronics, two totally different domains of human life.

Golden Age of Video Arcade Games (1980-x)

The 1980's were the most prosperous years for the Arcade industry.  Games such as Asteroids, Atari and, Namco's favorite Pac-Man, appeared during that time.  The arcade Industry in the United States went on a total boom, as most of the games were extremely popular (specifically games like Pac-Man.)  The industry, consequently, has made plenty money and "[its] financial success is what invented the thought of Video Games going better than Movie's Box Office Grosses."

During this time, the console industry was far from its success; the beginning of 1980's was evidently the ''Golden Age'' for the Arcade Industry.

It goes without saying that the incontestable beauty of the industry's popularity lies in love of the people, regardless of age and social levels, a lot of people played arcade games no matter who they were, young kids or adults.

Present Situation of Video Arcade Games: Part 2

On the other hand, there are also some arcades games that do not need to fight for survival. This is because some genres of video games are still very popular in arcades. Among these are dancing and rhythm types of games. Some famous video arcade games of this genre would include "Dance, Dance Revolution," and part of the "Bemani," series.

When the modern video arcade games cannot find a place under the sun, the early video games find new life.

Thanks to the simple, and purely exciting game play of many of the early video games, many of these games have found a lot of new fans amongst the modern generation. The modern generation however, play these arcade games on mobile phones, or with the help of special emulators such as MAME.

In addition, nowadays some of the classic video arcade games are reappearing in commercial settings. Such as the way the "Ms. Pac-Man 20 Year Reunion." was released, as well as "Galaga Class of 1981," (two-in-one game.) Other classic arcades are integrated directly into controller hardware (joysticks) with replaceable flash drives storing game ROMs.

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.

Classic Video Arcade Games Are Still in Demand

Nowadays, we can notice a good many people who collect the classic video arcade games. Classic arcades were the games of their childhood – they were created in the late 1970s – 1980s. Of course, people will not collect these games if they don’t have warm, nostalgic feelings toward the games.  It is easy to understand how even now there is still a desire to play these old but wonderful games

During the 70's & 80's,  a lot of wonderful video arcade games started to be created, and arcades became very popular.  Because of the huge popularity of some of the games, Pac-Man, for example, even entered the popular culture. For decades there wasn’t anything else that could be matched to the early video games, or enjoyed in quite the same way.

Due to the fact that today, only few of these games have any commercial value, the cost of their acquisition can range from 200 to 750 dollars.  However, when we talk about arcade games that have been fully restored, there value can be significantly higher than this.

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.

Original Video Arcade Games of the Beginning of 1980-ies

Below you can see the list of some original video arcade games of the beginning of 1980-ies, which became the new word in arcade game industry. These games were created by arcade game developers that didn’t want to create clones of existed games, but wanted to define new genres and work with new concepts. In result, the video arcade games with original and interesting gameplay were created.


Donkey Kong from Nintendo, 1981

Earlier games had a gameplay where you just had to shoot as fast as possible. In the case of this video arcade game, skill and timing are the point.



Qix from Taito, 1981

The same as Donkey Kong, it is a representative of new type of arcade games where skill and timing are on the first place.




Venture from Exidy, 1981

Gameplay of this game represented an exploration of dungeon and treasure-gathering, which is, again, more interesting than simple shooting.

Q*Bert from Gottlieb, 1982

This game played upon the gamers’ sense of depth perception to deliver a novel experience.



Phozon from Namco, 1983

The gameplay of this video arcade game represented the duplication of the shape that is shown on the screen.



Paperboy from Atari, 1984

The goal of this video arcade game is in the successful delivering of newspapers to the customers.

Trends in Development of Video Arcade Games at the End of 1970-1980-ies

The very first arcade games were very successful. That is why a lot of arcade game developers appeared at the end of 1970-ies. There were two trends in development of video arcade games:

• some developers created the ideas of their games by simply copying the ideas of successful ones;
• other developers worked under creation of something totally new.

The examples of the first trend are such video arcade games as Galaxian (1979) and Gaplus (1984). Both of them are imitators of Space Invaders (1978) – they have the same idea about the alien invasion. But, even without original idea, these games were successful.

The same way, another representative of successful video arcade games Galaga (1981) borrowed its theme from Galaxian and adds twists of its own.

The result of the second trend was the creation of new concepts and new arcade game genres.

Thanks to the rapid evolving of hardware, new kinds of arcade games were created. In result, these games surpassed the very first arcade games with their shoot-em-up gameplay.

Experiments of Arcade Game Developers

At the end of 70-ies – 80-ies arcade game developers were experimenting with new hardware. For example, they were creating video arcade games with non-video technology such as vector displays. Vector displays, unlike the raster displays, produced crisp lines.

Some of these arcade games gained a big popularity. Among them are created by Atari in 1980 Battlezone and Tempest and 1983’s Star Wars, also from Atari.

But vector technology fell out of favor with arcade game companies. This happened because the vector displays are very expensive in repairing.

In order to provide games with movie-quality animation, arcade game developers were also experimented with laserdisc players. The very first video arcade game that used this technology is Dragon's Lair. It was released in 1983. The whole process of creation of this game took three years.

The release of Dragon's Lair was true sensation. But, in result, the popularity of the genre was dwindled. The reasons for this were the following:

• these arcade games were fairly linear;
• they depended less on reflexes than on memorizing sequences of moves.

Appearance of New Arcade Game Controls

Arcades catering for video games began to gain momentum in the end of 70-ies with such video games as 1978’s Gee Bee and Galaxian of 1979. And it became widespread in 1980 with the release of such video arcade games as King and Balloon, Tank Battalion, Pac-Man, and others.

The central processing unit in games of those times allowed for more complexity in comparison with the earlier discrete circuitry games, such as Pong that was created by Atari in 1972.

At that time several games were released that came with some new controls. For example, Football from Atari, released in 1978, came with the trackball, Hogan's Alley used tethered light guns, Paperboy included a bicycle handlebar, and racing wheel was included in Night Driver.

Other specialty controls, such as crossbow-shaped light gun in Crossbow and pedals in racing games, also were introduced to the arcade market during this period of time.

But, despite of the appearance of new arcade game controls, most manufacturers continued to prefer the buttons and joysticks.

Video Games of Different Times

Here is a wonderful video that shows different games starting from such classic video arcade games as Space Invaders (1980) and Donkey Kong (1982), and ending with such famous games of our times as World of Warcraft (2005) and Final Fantasy XII (2006). The newest shown game is MotorStorm (2007), while the oldest one is Pong (1972).

First half of the video is especially nice. This is so nostalgically to see the favorite games from the childhood. Pac-Man (1981), Super Mario Bros. (1985), Tetris (1989) – these video games are true legends. A wish to play video arcade games of those times appears again and again. Even though more than 20 years have passed, these video arcade games are still popular.

You can watch the video about the history of video games below. You can also watch it and view a full list of shown video games here.

Arcade Games are the Best Choice for Thrill Seeking Gamer

There are a lot of cool online video games which men and women from across the globe enjoy playing. And arcade online games are one of the best among them.

Arcade games are really great. Your entire mental abilities are put to work and many of your sensory faculties too when you are making a strategy in order to pass a level. Also there are arcade games that are simply action and aren’t requiring you to think a lot. In this case you just need to shoot all enemies to complete the stage.

Arcade games are very entertaining and incredibly enjoyable. If the online game is of a really good quality, it can make you even feel just like you are in an arcade room with plenty of sounds around you and also countless games from where to pick.

Arcade video games have something wonderful. They simply can't be weighed against other types of online games, because arcade online games have got pieces and bits of action flash games, puzzle, strategy and others.

If you are a thrill seeking gamer, then the arcade games are exactly for you. Follow this link to enjoy these games.