In 1978 Space inveders, one of the most popular arcade geame of all time was released and a year later Atari released Asteroids, it sold over 70,000 cabinets and was Atari's highest selling game.
The 80s kicked off with the release of Pac-Man, which whent on to becom the most successful video game of all time, iys sold up to 350,000 cabinets and earned over 2 billion dollars, also in 1980 Atari released tempest, the first arcade game to use high resolution colour vector graphics. Due to the growing popularty of video games 1981 saw the release of a host of classic titles from Dig-Dug to Frogger, but the most notable release was Donkey Kong, It was the second game to feature multiple levels and the first ever game to feature something of a storyline. In 1983 the industry took a hit going from making 12 Billion dollars to only 100 million in just 3 years, this was due to an oversaturation of simmilar games and conserned pearents speeking outagainst video games. The industry took anoter hit in 1985-86 with the release of the NES and Sega master system, the focus switched from arcade games to home consoles. |
Arcade Cabinets first appeared in the early 1900's in the form of games such as Pinball and and Baffle Ball however the first Arcade Video game didn't appear until September of 1971 with the installation of Galaxy Game in Stanford University, Then in November of the same year Computer Space, the first mass-produced arcade game was released. Computer Space was co-developed by Nolan Bushnell who later founded Atari.
The following year Pong was released and became the first commercially successful Coin-operated video game, it sold over 35,000 Units and supured more than 15 companies to begin developing video games. Three years later Gun fight was released and it was the first game to use a microprocessor. The industy didn't pick up again untill the early 90s when capcom released street fighter 2, from their arcades began to focuse on competetive fighting games. In 1999 konami released Dance Dance Revolution and the industy gained another huge boom, this made companies realize that to keep the arcade buisness alive they needed to provide what home consoles could not. from here companies begain to develop alot of different shooting a racing games that couldent be repliated in someones front room.
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Bibliography:
Rubin,P. (2014). Check Out This Glorious, Colorful History of Arcade Games. Available: http://www.wired.com/2014/05/arcade-history/. Last accessed 14th Feb 2016.
Rubin,P. (2014). Check Out This Glorious, Colorful History of Arcade Games. Available: http://www.wired.com/2014/05/arcade-history/. Last accessed 14th Feb 2016.