The pre-fame years . ( 1965 - 1978 )

The beginning of arcades starts with games, but not video-type games.

To start, an arcade is actually an archway. A metal connecting ceiling held up by columns between walkways but, – in the history of gaming – that's probably here nor there.

The first video game is largely a matter of opinion and is ALSO... sort of here, nor there. As it would be quite sometime until an arcade with video games became common.

(Check out the Sega roulette's in the beginning... Right?)

The "arcade" started in the mid-1960's though – which is to say, you could find arcade parlors outside of fairs and boardwalks – though a video game cabinet in its walls was a rarity until around '78. A mid/early seventies arcade consisted of standards like whack-a-mole, shoot the can, coin-betting machines, ski-ball, fortune tellers and what-have-you. They were basically halls for odd distractions that didn't fit anywhere outside of a fairground, an arcade was a novelty stop in your neighborhood available year-round. Novelties like Spacewar! (1961) But nobody really cares about Spacewar! except for it's brief appearance in "Jaws"(1975) – the orange machine. The real seller of the genre... was Pong (1972).

As soon as Pong plopped down, the video game craze began, though the video game and arcade wouldn't conceive their inevitable marriage until about 1979. Pong, and later Asteroids, were just distractions in a sea of oddities and their complete dominance, converting the arcade into the video-arcade (or just arcade post-1985), would be forged on a completely different field of battle.

To really be accepted, video games needed to wrap themselves in something familiar. With the advent of the tabletop cabinet – or cocktail-style cabinet – games were now made in a size that mad sense to the seventies life-style. The cabinets were for all intents a table, but with controls on both sides and an appealing Oak wood finish. Second was a renters agreement.

Restaurants could rent machines from vendors and split profits and potential failure. From the tabletop's golden years of 1978 to 1983, you could find a tabletop machine in damn near every restaurant in America – until they closed. Now you can mostly find them in the hands of hobbyist.

That success meant large numbers of games produced in a very short period of time. And By 1978, arcades were forced to reanalyze their player based: Video arcades won.

The eighties would turn out to be the classic era of video games, sort of how we think of the seventies and rock music. But the enduring popularity of the industry would be catapulted by a little town in Iowa...

Next week, Part II . Sudden Success

Photo thanks

on1stsite , numb3r , Hiddenloop , kylemac

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 1:53 am and is filed under arcade history. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.