History of Arcade Games

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Football was the first true video sports game. It was created by Dave Stubben. Its development originally began as a game called "X's and O's" by Steve Bristow in late 1973. The project was shelved for years until the Atari figured out a way to break out from the limits of the single-screen game displays of the time. Football introduced "scrolling" video game displays to the world, allowing games to take place on playfields larger than the monitor on which they were displayed. Later-on Atari has made a lot of money for its patent for scrolling video game displays that rose from Football. Football was also the first game to feature the track ball.

Asteroids, Atari Inc., 1979

 

Asteroids was Atari's answer to Space Invaders. The game was designed by Ed Logg and it utilized a monochrome vector graphics display, which was capable of fast moving objects made of very sharp lines (compared to crude pixel graphics of its time). Combined with great game play it became the biggest selling of game of its time.

Asteroids and Lunar Lander (Atari, 1980) were the predecessors Gravitar (Atari) and many modern rotating ship shoot'em'up games e.g. Xpilot.
Warrior, Vectorbeam/Cinematronics, 1979.

 

Warrior was the first one-on-one fighting game. It was a two-player overhead sword-fighting contest. It had a brillian vector graphics display for its time, but unfortunately it was less reliable than the Atari one. It was a very rare game.

Battlezone, Atari Inc., 1980

 

Battlezone was the the first video game to feature truly interactive 3-D environment. It had 2-color vector display. The United States Armed Forces were so impressed by the game that they commissioned Atari to build specially modified and upgraded versions for use in tank training.

Defender, Williams Electronics, 1980

 

Defender was designed by Eugene Jarvis. It was the first arcade video game to feature artificial "world" in which game events could occur outside on-screen view presented to the player.

Pac-Man, Bally/Midway, 1980
 

Pac-Man designed by Toru Iwatani and it was licensed from Namco. It was based on an ancient Japanese folk-tale. The idea of the game was to control the pac-man character which was moving inside a maze eating dots and to avoid ghosts which tried to kill pac-man. The was a huge hit around the world. It appeared in magazines covers, spawned a cartoon and hit song.

Pac-Man has spawned more sequels than perhaps any other video game: Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, Super Pac-Man, Mr & Mrs. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man, Professor Pac-Man, Pac & Pal, Pac-Land, Pac-Mania, Pac- Attack, Pac-Man 2, Pac-In-Time, Pac-Man VR, Pac-Man Ghost Zone...

 Donkey Kong, Nintendo Ltd., 1981

 

Donkey Kong was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto. It used the same hardware as an older arcade video game called 'Radarscope'. The idea of the game was to control a jumpman character which tried to rescue a girl from a giant ape. Later-on the jumpman was named Mario, the most famous and succesful game-character ever invented.

 

Centipede was designed by Ed Logg and Dona Bailey. It was the first arcade game to be co-designed by a woman. Its colorful graphics and good game play made Centipede the first arcade video game to be more popular with women than with men.

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