“Skate or Die!” With its funky circular joystick and boom box cabinet, there was no mistaking 720° in your local arcade. Starring a brightly-attired slacker…
Browsing: Arcade games
Ice hockey enthusiast Bob Lemieux dreamed up this popular table game for billiards manufacturers Brunswick back in 1972. Almost instantly, the craze spread across the…
Arcade game designers have always been a creative bunch, generally willing to try any idea (no matter how strange it may seem) if they think…
The deceptively simple concept of Bally Midway’s Amazing Maze – released in 1976 – was this: You were on one side of a maze, and…
Early 1950s fore-runners of arcade games included photo booths which became a national craze and shuffle games which moved beyond bowling with Deluxe Shuffle Targette.…
In the years after Star Wars (1977), anything involving outer space, zippy interstellar craft and dangerous battles was golden. Into this arena of sci-fi fantasy came…
This early Atari title wasn’t exactly the black-and-white equivalent of a Swiss Alps nightmare, but it was the closest a video game could come in…
One of the most frustrating things about almost every pinball game is the gap between the two flippers. No matter how good players are, they…
Designed by future Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs (though Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak reportedly did the bulk of the work), Breakout turned the video game…
You just had to love a game whose entire philosophy on life was summed up in its three-syllable title: Bump ‘n’ Jump. That’s all there…
Part of the beauty of early arcade games was the preponderance of “truth in advertising”. What you read was what you got. So when Atari…
The history of coin-operated video arcade games began not with a whimper, but with several explosive bangs, rendered in simple black-and-white graphics by a young…
This maze arcade game was developed by Namco in 1981 and released in 1982, licensed and distributed by Atari. The player controlled Dig Dug to…
The video game Donkey Kong was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and is owned by Nintendo. It follows the adventures of the eponymous gorilla and a…
In the near future, with half the world ravaged by a nuclear war and violence ruling the streets in America, Marian is kidnapped by a violent street…
The object of Frogger was almost Zen-like: to get to the other side. But considerably less Zen were the many obstacles in your path: zooming…
Back in 1978, arcade games had one undisputed king. Its name was Space Invaders, and at the time, it seemed like it would own the…
Released in 1975, Gun Fight was the first arcade game to incorporate a microprocessor, and the expanded processing capabilities allowed for graphics and gameplay much…
When their KISS pinball machine hit big in the summer of 1979, the folks at Bally saw they had something good going with celebrity-themed pinball…
Flippers have been an important part of pinball games since they were introduced in 1947 with Humpty Dumpty. Just the same, modern pinball players would…