JCAP Log #1: A Little History
Before diving into a project focused on building a retro arcade cabinet from scratch, a basic knowledge of the storied history of video arcade games is useful.
The key word in "video arcade game" is actually not arcade, or game, but video. This is because arcade games themselves predate PONG and its ilk by decades. The first ever, Baffle Ball, was an early incarnation of modern pinball games, and was built all the way back in 1931. Over the next couple of decades, other coin-slot based amusement machines such as jukeboxes and slots started to gain a foothold in American culture. The problem though was the perception of these machine's connection (either implicit or explicit) with gambling.
Baffle Ball
The question was whether or not pinball machines were a "game of chance". And with the combination of cash payouts and the lack of user control, this debate was often lost by the amusement industry. The controversy even lead to New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia enacting a prohibition on the machines in 1942 city-wide that would remain into effect until 1976! Therefore the industry gradually divorced itself from monetary reward, opting instead to circumvent gambling laws by offering prizes such as gum as compensation instead (the advent of the gumball machine). This didn't however do anything to assuage the sentiment among many that the youth would be "corrupted" by the machines due to their perception as a gateway to gambling, and as a result pinball bans swept the nation throughout the 40s.
Mayor LaGuardia Smashing a Pinball Machine
It took the addition of user-control in the form of flippers to start to bring the machines into a better light. The stigma remained, but the innovation signaled the beginning of the transition from games of chance into games of skill. Pinball remained illegal in many areas for years afterwards, and where it wasn't illegal, heavy taxes and regulations limited their use. The pinball machine became a symbol of "rebelling" for youth, spawning cultural tropes such as The Fonz from Happy Days. The controversy surrounding pinball and other coin-operated games largely remained straight through to the 70s. Unfortunately for pinball, however, just as it was finally shaking the stigmas and regaining legalized status, a new force of coin-operated amusement smashed into and permeated American culture like a tidal wave.
Almost as long as there have been computers, there have been computer games. Tic-tac-toe in 1950 using light bulbs and driven by a room-sized vacuum tube computer. Nim the year after on the Nimrod computer. Checkers a year after that. The first video-based computer game first saw light in short order with OXO in 1952, another tic-tac-toe game, played on a 35x16 dot matrix CRT. The game was actually controlled using a rotary telephone controller! The very first real-time graphics based game (as opposed to the image updating only when the player makes a move) was a game of billiards run on the MIDSAC computer. What interesting to note about these examples is that almost all of them served the primary purpose of showcasing the power of their host system.
World's First Virtual Pool Game on the MIDSAC
One of the first video games produced purely for the sake of entertainment was the 1958 Tennis for Two, run on a Donner Model 30 and displayed on an oscilloscope. Hundreds of visitors queued up to play the game during its debut at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and it's largely considered one of the first "real" modern video game. Over the next few years, different graphics demos and for the sake of research or niche entertainment at companies and campuses nation-wide. A wide range of graphics-based business and management education games were made leading into the 60s, these and others were restricted to whichever systems they were developed for and there was yet to be a true commercial "video game industry" established.
Tennis for Two
This all began to change in early 1960 with the creation of Spacewar! at MIT. A simple 2-player space game, it was released with every PDP-1 computer sold, making it potentially the first video game to be available outside of a single research institution. The high $120,000 price tag of the PDP-1 however meant only 55 were ever sold. Some weren't even purchased with a monitor, making the game unplayable. This trend of computer games being built and shuffled around the very small circles of academia continued throughout the 60s and into the early 70s. Finally, in 1971 and inspired by Spacewar!, the first coin-operated computer game saw its debut in the form of Galaxy Game. Built using newer PDP-11, it was still too expensive to be commercially viable at over $20,000 per unit. The developers would go on to debut the prototype, but eventually dropped the project due to high costs and lack of a business plan. Bridging the gap between research novelty and the tinder of the modern multi-billion dollar video game industry would instead take the inspiration of a man named Nolan Bushnell, and the founding of a company virtually synonymous with video games: Atari.
Spacewar!
In 1971, Bushnell and friend Ted Dabney came to the realization that you didn't necessarily need an entire pre-built computer system for a video game, and in fact one could develop the logic-driving electronics for as little as $100 (70s bucks). With this paradigm in mind they designed and built Computer Space, also inspired by the original Spacewar!. Though the complicated game failed to really catch on with casual players, and sales were ultimately disappointing due to poor marketing, it would serve as the catalyst that would drive Bushnell and Dabney in 1972 to ultimately form the precursor to Atari: Syzygy Engineering. Their goal was to license games to bigger companies in lieu of making them on their own. Upon finding out that the name Syzergy was already taken, and with the revenue generated from Computer Space, Bushnell and Dabney incorporated under the name Atari.
Computer Space Controls
With the addition of game engineer Al Alcorn to their team, Atari released its first game: PONG. An immediate success, PONG was so popular that the company's 6 employees were having trouble keeping up with orders, an estimated $40 dollars a day per machine was being generated (unheard of at the time), and Sears even released a dedicated home version. The effects of PONG were almost immediate. The massive financial success enabled Atari to fund further game development, but more importantly, it triggered the beginning of a viable commercial video game industry almost overnight. Pinball machines began their decline as manufacturers began switching to video arcade production instead. Over the next several years over 15 new video arcade game companies were formed, and along with new technological innovations they developed, signaled the beginning of the "golden age" of arcade. The microprocessor saw its debut in Bally's Midway division in the game Gun Fight in '75, and was immediately recognized the foundation for the future of arcade games. Over the next 5 years, some of the most recognizable video games of all time were released: Space Invaders in '78, Asteroids and Galaxian in '79, Defender and of course Pac-Man in 1980, Centipede and Donkey Kong in '81. Arcade machines were finding their way into every institution in the country, from grocery stores to doctor's offices, pulling in some cases up to $400 per week per machine. TV shows, songs, and branded goods spun off of the industry at a rapid pace. The industry as a whole was grossing $7 billion annually by 1981, and the horizon looked bright and profitable for everyone involved.
Atari's first game: PONG
Someone once said that all good things must come to an end, and in historical fashion in 1983, the arcade game and video game industry as a whole discovered it was not immune. What started the great video game crash can best be summed up in one phrase: market oversaturation. There were simply too many arcades, with owners often ordering far more machines than their players could ever play. For every great game released there were a hundred duds on its coattails. The most poignant example of this was the doomed 1982 release of E.T. for the Atari 2600. The game was rushed to completion in order to hit Christmas markets, and as a result was virtually unplayable. Hundreds of thousands of cartridges were eventually dumped in a New Mexico landfill under strict secrecy, ostensibly to cover Atari's shame. The other side of the market coin was the question of game difficulty. Players were pumping their quarters into a game, getting great at it, then dropping it. Even the production of smash hits like Space Invaders were being halted because simply no one wanted them any more. Some game makers attempted to ameliorate the doldrums by simply increasing the difficulty of their games, but this often served to instead turn away large numbers of casual players. Game manufacturers faced a dilemma: in the same way a relatively small number of alcoholics drive the majority of the alcohol industry's profits, the relatively small number of hardcore arcade gamers drove a large proportion of the arcade industry's profits. Make a game too easy, and these individuals would move on quickly from a game. Make it too hard, and you shut out the casual gamers. But while this dichotomy and the market dynamics certainly initiated the crash, it took a specter of decade's past to catalyze the crash.
Discarded Arcade Machines
The old fears, which never truly disappeared, returned with a surge: arcades were corrupting the very moral fabric of our youth. Promoting violence, gambling, debauchery, and sin in every arcade across the country. Many suburban housewives in need of a moral crusade took up the cause of ridding their picturesque communities of the scourge of addiction. By 1985 a wave of new prohibitions and witch hunts echoed through the industry, with some arcades even being lumped under the same column heading as porn shops. Violent games such as 1976's Death Race were cited as the video game industry's attempt to promote and profit from violence against other people, every incident involving an arcade was jumped on by the hysteric media and readers, and one suburban mother at the time referred to arcade owners as "scum of the earth". At the same time as this near religious fervor was peaking, the oversaturation of the market was reaching its tipping point. Such it was that, by 1985, the gaming industry's annual revenue had plummeted from over $12 billion to only $100 million. As a result the industry as a whole nearly died entirely. The death knell of the arcade industry, signalling the point of no return, was the rise of the home-gaming industry. People simply didn't need to go to arcades anymore to game alone or with friends, and they could have dozens of different games in their very own living room. Tie all of these factors in with external ones such as the economic and gas crises of the 80s, and the case of who killed the arcade industry is open and shut.
Atari Game Cartridges Recovered from New Mexico Landfill
After the crash, the arcade industry entered hibernation for almost a decade. It experienced one last breath of life in 1991 with the introduction of Capcom's Street Fighter II, and in fact this breath turned into something of a boom, focused on fighting arcade games that lasted well into the mid-90s. While this certainly brought the arcade game out of a coma, it failed to take it off life support. Such it is that today, video arcades are extremely few and far between. Most "modern" arcade games are nothing like the retro cabinets of the golden age. Usually you'll find them spitting out tickets to redeem for prizes at a Chuck E. Cheese's (coincidentally, founded by Bushnell himself). Although the video arcade game will never return to its previous status in American culture, it still maintains something of a sacred spot in the hearts and minds of retro gamers and enthusiasts around the world. Original parts, especially monitors, are becoming more and more difficult to come by. And as the video arcade game continues its journey further and further back into the annals of history, it's up to those of us who still respect the origins of the modern $100 billion video game industry that's moved from the back of bars to the front of our living rooms to never forget the Golden Age of the arcade.
Modern-Day Arcade Keeping the Dream Alive