History of Arcade Games

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I, Robot, Atari Inc., 1984

 

I, Robot was the first game to feature 3-D polygon graphics. Only a thousand I, Robots were ever produced.

Xevious, Namco/Atari Inc., 1985
 

Xevious had scrolling terrain background with both ground and air targets. Xevious became the basis of new generation of scrolling shoot'em'up games.

Gauntlet, Atari Games, 1985

 

Gauntlet was designed by Ed Logg. It had good graphics and great game-play with up to 4 simultaneous players.

Space Harrier, Sega, 1986
 

Space Harrier had fast scaling sprite based 3D graphics with stereo diginal sound. It marked the beginning of transformation of established genres toward three-dimensionality and more high-powered arcade hardware.

The game was designed by Sega's legendary game designer Yu Suzuki, who is also responsible for Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, Hang-On and Shen-Mue.

Street Fighter II, Capcom, 1991

 

Cinematronics Warrior was the first one-on-one fighting video game and Data East's Karate Champ (1984) had already introduced the "side view" perspective, the genre of fighting game practically didn't exist until Capcom released Street Fighter II. It had many truly different charachters to choose from and good game play. SFII started the new "golden age" of arcades. SFII was also converted to many home systems and the Super Nintendo version alone sold more than 15 million copies.

The success of SFII procudes many competitors e.g. the Mortal Kombat, Killing Instinct and Virtua Fighter series. SFII has numerous sequels and even a movie was made out of it. Fighting games started the new golden age of arcade games.

Virtua Racing, Sega, 1992
 

Virtua Racing started the new age of fast polygon racing games and high-powered multi-player simulators. Virtua Racing had good gameplay and force-feedback steering with the most realistic graphics up to its date.

Virtua Fighter, Sega, 1993
Virtua Fighter brought fast 3D polygon graphics to fighting games and changed the fighting game industry. Nowadays practically all fighting games have 3D graphics.

Daytona, Sega, 1994
 

Daytona was one of the first racing games to feature fast texture mapped and shaded 3D polygon graphics. Its great graphics, game-play and team-play option made it a huge hit.

Future
Nowadays most of the arcade games are either fighting games, racing games, sport games or shoot'em'ups, with some rare innovative titles. The lack of diversity leaves the arcade business into vulnerable position. The current trend is for more photo-realistics graphics and more processing power, with very little, or no, new ideas at all. The big question is, will the players remaing interested with current game genres or do they want something new?

Most arcade video games have custem designed hardware, but the increasing developing costs and fast development of PC 3D accelerator chips, will most likely make many companies to use more standard PC hardware instead custom solutions.

Nowadays most of the arcade games still have the program, graphics and sound data in ROM chips, but hard disks are coming more popular and popular and will probably replace ROMs.

Standard hardware and harddisks will make it easier to include many games to single video game machine or use the same hardware for different games.

Many current arcade video games had a local network option, enabling 2-16 machines to be connected to single multi-player game in the same arcade. In future arcade video games will probably be connected external network, enabling players to play against players from other cities or even countries.

Author:Petri Kuittinen

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