Golden age of arcade video games
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The golden age of arcade video games was the period of rapid growth, technological development, and cultural influence of arcade video games from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The release of Space Invaders in 1978 led to a wave of shoot-'em-up games such as Galaxian and the vector graphics-based Asteroids in 1979, made possible by new computing technology that had greater power and lower costs. Arcade video games switched from black-and-white to color, with titles such as Frogger and Centipede taking advantage of the visual opportunities of bright palettes.
The golden age of arcade games began to wane in 1983 due to a plethora of clones of popular titles that saturated arcades, the rise of home video game consoles, both coupled with a moral panic on the influence of arcades and video games on children. This fall occurred during the same time as the video game crash of 1983 but for different reasons, though both marred revenues within the North American video game industry for several years. The arcade game sector revitalized later during the early 1990s particularly with the mainstream success of fighting games.
Time period
Although the exact years differ, most sources agree the period lasted from about the late 1970s to early 1980s.
Technology journalist Jason Whittaker, in The Cyberspace Handbook, places the beginning of the
One outlier is the History of Computing Project website, which says the era began in 1971, when the creator of Pong filed a pivotal patent regarding video game technology and when the first arcade video game machine, Computer Space, was released.[7] It defines the era as covering the "mainstream appearance of video games as a consumer market" and "the rise of dedicated hardware systems and the origin of multi-game cartridge based systems".[8]
Business
The golden age was a time of great technical and design creativity in arcade games. The era saw the rapid spread of
In 1980, the U.S. arcade video game industry's revenue generated from quarters tripled to $2.8 billion.[17] By 1981, the arcade video game industry in the United States was generating more than $5 billion a year[1][18] with some estimates as high as $10.5 billion for all video games (arcade and home) in the U.S. that year, which was three times the amount spent on movie tickets in 1981.[19] The total revenue for the U.S. arcade video game industry in 1981 was estimated at more than $7 billion[20] though some analysts estimated the real amount may have been much higher.[20] By 1982, video games accounted for 87% of the $8.9 billion in commercial games sales in the United States.[21] In 1982, the arcade video game industry's revenue in quarters was estimated at $8 billion[22] surpassing the annual gross revenue of both pop music ($4 billion) and Hollywood films ($3 billion) combined that year.[22][23] It also exceeded the revenues of all major sports combined at the time,[23] earning three times the combined ticket and television revenues of Major League Baseball, basketball, and American football, as well as earning twice as much as all the casinos in Nevada combined.[24] This was also more than twice as much revenue as the $3.8 billion generated by the home video game industry (during the second generation of consoles) that same year;[22] both the arcade and home markets combined added up to a total revenue between $11.8 billion and $12.8 billion for the U.S. video game industry in 1982. In comparison, the U.S. video game industry in 2011 generated total revenues between $16.3 billion and $16.6 billion.[25]
Prior to the golden age,
The most successful arcade game companies of this era included
During this period,
Technology
Arcades catering to video games began to gain momentum in the late 1970s, with
While color monitors had been used by several
The golden age also saw developers experimenting with
Several developers at the time were also experimenting with
This period also saw significant advances in digital audio technology. Space Invaders in 1978 was the first game to use a continuous background soundtrack, with four simple chromatic descending bass notes repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and changed tempo during stages.[56] Rally-X in 1980 was the first game to feature continuous background music,[57] which was generated using a dedicated sound chip, a Namco 3-channel PSG.[58] That same year saw the introduction of speech synthesis, which was first used in Stratovox, released by Sun Electronics in 1980,[57] followed soon after by Namco's King & Balloon.
Developers also experimented with
Gameplay
With the enormous success of Space Invaders, dozens of
Others tried new concepts and defined new genres. Rapidly evolving hardware allowed new kinds of games which allowed for different styles of gameplay. The term "
The two most popular genres during the golden age were space shooters and character action games.
Namco's
Popular culture
Some games of this era were so widely played that they entered
The game that most affected popular culture in North America was Pac-Man. Its release in 1980 caused such a sensation that it initiated what is now referred to as "Pac-Mania" (which later became the title of the last coin-operated game in the series, released in 1987). Released by Namco, the game featured a yellow, circle-shaped creature trying to eat dots through a maze while avoiding pursuing enemies. Though no one could agree what the "hero" or enemies represented (they were variously referred to as ghosts, goblins or monsters), the game was extremely popular. The game spawned an animated television series, numerous clones, Pac-Man-branded foods, toys, and a hit pop song, "Pac-Man Fever". The game's popularity was such that President Ronald Reagan congratulated a player for setting a record score in Pac-Man.[100] Pac-Man was also responsible for expanding the arcade game market to involve large numbers of female audiences across all age groups.[101] Though many popular games quickly entered the lexicon of popular culture, most have since left, and Pac-Man is unusual in remaining a recognized term in popular culture, along with Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Mario and Q*bert.
Seen as an additional source of revenue, arcade games began popping up outside of dedicated arcades, including bars, restaurants, movie theaters, bowling alleys, convenience stores, laundromats, gas stations, supermarkets, airports, even dentist and doctor offices.
In 1982, the game show Starcade premiered. The program focused on players competing to achieve high scores on the latest arcade titles, with the chance to win the grand prize of their own arcade machine if they could hit a target score within a specific time frame. The show ran until 1984 on TBS and syndication.
In 1983, an animated television series produced for Saturday mornings called Saturday Supercade featured video game characters from the era, such as Frogger, Donkey Kong, Q*bert, Donkey Kong Jr., Kangaroo, Space Ace, and Pitfall Harry.
Arcade games at the time affected the
Arcade games also influenced the
In more recent years, there have been critically acclaimed documentaries based on the golden age of arcade games, such as
Strategy guides
The period saw the emergence of a gaming media, publications dedicated to video games, in the form of video game journalism and strategy guides.[23] The enormous popularity of video arcade games led to the very first video game strategy guides;[126] these guides (rare to find today) discussed in detail the patterns and strategies of each game, including variations, to a degree that few guides seen since can match. "Turning the machine over" - making the score counter overflow and reset to zero - was often the final challenge of a game for those who mastered it, and the last obstacle to getting the highest score.
Some of these strategy guides sold hundreds of thousands of copies at prices ranging from $1.95 to $3.95 in 1982[126] (equivalent to between $6.00 and $12.00 in 2024).[127] That year, Ken Uston's Mastering Pac-Man sold 750,000 copies, reaching No. 5 on B. Dalton's mass-market bestseller list, while Bantam's How to Master the Video Games sold 600,000 copies, appearing on The New York Times mass-market paperback list.[126] By 1983, 1.7 million copies of Mastering Pac-Man had been printed.[128]
List of popular arcade games
The games below are some of the most popular and/or influential games of the era.[129]
Vector display |
Raster display |
Name | Year | Manufacturer | Legacy Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Space Invaders | 1978 | Taito (Japan) / Midway (U.S.) | Considered the game that revolutionized the video game industry.[130] The first blockbuster video game,[131] it established the shoot 'em up genre,[132] and has influenced most shooter games since.[133] |
Galaxian | 1979 | Namco (Japan) / Midway (U.S.) | Created to compete with Space Invaders. The first game to use multi-colored, animated sprites.[134][135] Aliens move in a swooping formation and attack by dive bombing the player's ship. |
Lunar Lander
|
1979 | Atari | Arcade version of an earlier minicomputer game concept. First Atari coin-op to use vector graphics. |
Asteroids | 1979 | Atari | Atari's most successful coin-operated game. It is one of the first to allow players to enter their initials for a high score. |
Battlezone | 1980 | Atari | Custom cabinet with novel 2-way dual-joystick controls incorporating top-fire button, and periscope-like viewer.[136] Early use of first-person pseudo 3-D vector graphics. It is widely considered the first virtual reality arcade game.[137] Also used as the basis for a military simulator.[138] |
Berzerk
|
1980 | Stern Electronics | Early use of speech synthesis was also translated into other languages in Europe. Indestructible adversary appears in order to eliminate lingering players. This became an oft-employed device (e.g. Hallmonsters in Venture) to increase challenge and limit play duration of arcade games. |
Missile Command | 1980 | Atari | Theme of the game was influenced by the Cold War era. |
Pac-Man | 1980 | Namco (Japan) / Midway (U.S.) | One of the most popular and influential games, it had the first gaming |
Phoenix
|
1980 | Amstar Electronics / Centuri (U.S.) / Taito (Japan) | One of the first games with a boss battle .
|
Rally-X | 1980 | Namco | Driving game with overhead, scrolling maze. First game with a radar.[58] When released, was predicted to outsell two other new releases: Pac-Man and Defender.
|
Star Castle | 1980 | Cinematronics | The colors of the rings and screen are provided by a transparent plastic screen overlay. |
Wizard of Wor | 1980 | Midway | Allowed two-player competitive or cooperative fighting of monsters in maze-like dungeons. |
Centipede | 1981 | Atari | Co-created by programmer Dona Bailey. |
Defender
|
1981 | Williams Electronics
|
Horizontal scrolling space shooting game that was praised for its audio-visuals and gameplay. Was predicted to be outsold by Rally-X, but Defender trounced it, going on to sell 60,000 units. |
Tempest
|
1981 | Atari | One of the first games to use a color vector display. |
Donkey Kong
|
1981 | Nintendo | Laid foundations for , in subsequent games. |
Frogger | 1981 | Konami (Japan) / Sega-Gremlin (North America) | Novel gameplay notable for being free of fighting and shooting. |
Scramble | 1981 | Konami (Japan) / Stern (North America) | First scrolling shooter game, featuring forced horizontal scrolling motion.
|
Galaga | 1981 | Namco (Japan) / Midway (North America) | Space shooting game that leapfrogged its predecessor, Galaxian, in popularity. |
Gorf | 1981 | Midway | Multiple-mission fixed shooter game. Some of the levels were clones of other popular games. Notable for featuring robotic synthesized speech. |
Qix | 1981 | Taito | The objective is to fence off a supermajority of the play area. Unique gameplay that didn't have shooting, racing, or mazes. |
Vanguard | 1981 | SNK (Japan) / Centuri (US) | Early scrolling shooter that scrolls in multiple directions, and allows shooting in four directions,[143][144] using four direction buttons, similar to dual-stick controls.[145] Along with Fantasy, Super Cobra and Bosconian, is significant as being among the first video games with a continue screen.[146] |
BurgerTime | 1982 | Bally Midway (US)
|
Platform game where the protagonist builds hamburgers while being pursued by food. Original title changed from Hamburger when brought to the U.S. from Japan. |
Dig Dug | 1982 | Namco (Japan) / Atari (North America) | Novel gameplay where underground adversaries were defeated by inflating them or dropping rocks on them. Rated the sixth most popular coin-operated video game of all time.[147] |
Donkey Kong Jr. | 1982 | Nintendo | Jumpman was renamed Mario in this sequel. This was the only time Nintendo's mascot was featured as an antagonist in any of their games. |
Front Line | 1982 | Taito | One of the first of many 1980s games with commando-style infantry ground combat (guns, grenades and tanks) as the theme. |
Joust
|
1982 | Williams Electronics
|
Allowed two-player cooperative or competitive play. |
Jungle King | 1982 | Taito | An early side-scrolling (and diagonal-scrolling) platformer with vine-swinging mechanics, run & jump sequences, climbing hills, and swimming. Almost immediately re-released as Jungle Hunt due to a lawsuit from the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate claiming character copyright infringement on the character of Tarzan. This version changed the Tarzan character to a pith helmet-wearing white explorer.[148] |
Kangaroo | 1982 | Sunsoft (Japan) / Atari (US) | Unusual for a platform game, there is no jump button. Instead, the player pushes up—or up and diagonally—to jump. |
Moon Patrol | 1982 | Williams Electronics (U.S.)
|
Along with Jungle Hunt, one of the first arcade games with parallax scrolling.[149] |
Ms. Pac-Man | 1982 | Midway (North America) / Namco | One of the most popular of all time, this game was created from a hack of Pac-Man. It has four different mazes and moving bonus fruit.
|
Pengo | 1982 | Sega | A maze game set in an environment full of ice blocks, which can be used by the player's penguin, who can slide them to attack enemies.[150] |
Pole Position | 1982 | Namco (Japan) / Atari (U.S.) | After Sega's Turbo revolutionized sprite scaling with their third-person cockpit racer, Namco brought 16-bit graphics to the arcade, dropped the player's perspective closer to being directly behind the car, and added dramatic curves to the track. The game also incorporated product placements for companies (including licensee Atari) on passing billboards. |
Popeye | 1982 | Nintendo | Nintendo used higher resolution foreground sprites displayed over lower resolution backgrounds, Donkey Kong was originally intended to be made with Popeye characters, but at the time, Nintendo was unsuccessful at securing the licensing from King Features Syndicate.[153]
|
Q*bert | 1982 | Gottlieb | Became one of the most merchandised arcade games behind |
Robotron 2084
|
1982 | Williams Electronics
|
Popularized the dual joystick control scheme. |
Gravitar | 1982 | Atari | Not popular in the arcades due to its difficulty, but the gameplay inspired many clones like Thrust and Oids. |
Time Pilot | 1982 | Konami (Japan) / Centuri (U.S.) | Time travel themed aerial combat game with free-roaming gameplay in open air space that scrolls indefinitely in all directions, with player's plane always remaining centered.[156][157][158] |
Tron | 1982 | Bally Midway
|
Earned more than the film it was based on.[159] Gameplay consists of four subgames. |
Xevious | 1982 | Namco (Japan) / Atari (U.S.) | The first arcade video game to have a TV commercial. scrolling shooters.[81]
|
Zaxxon | 1982 | Sega | First game to employ isometric axonometric projection , which the game was named after.
|
Crystal Castles | 1983 | Atari | Among the first arcade games which do not loop back to earlier stages as the player progresses, but instead offers a defined ending.[161] |
Champion Baseball | 1983 | Sega | A sports video game that became a major arcade success in Japan, with Sega comparing its success there to that of Space Invaders.[162] It was a departure from the "space games" and "cartoon games" that had previously dominated the arcades,[162] and went on to serve as the prototype for later baseball video games.[163][164] |
Dragon's Lair | 1983 | Cinematronics (U.S.) / Atari (Europe) / Sidam (Italy) | An early laserdisc video game, which allowed film-quality animation. The first arcade video game in the United States to charge two quarters per play.[165] It was also the first video game to employ what became known as the quick time event . This game is one of three arcade games that are part of the Smithsonian's permanent collection, along with Pac-Man and Pong.
|
Elevator Action | 1983 | Taito | An action game that is a mix of platformer, puzzle and shooter genres. |
Gyruss | 1983 | Konami (Japan) / Centuri (U.S.) | Often remembered for its musical score that plays throughout the game, Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor".[166] |
Mappy | 1983 | Bally Midway (U.S.)
|
Side-scrolling platform game |
Mario Bros. | 1983 | Nintendo | A game featuring simultaneous play with Mario and his brother Luigi as Italian-American plumbers in pest-inhabited sewers. Introduced Luigi for the first time, while also establishing he and Mario as plumbers. |
Sinistar | 1983 | Williams Electronics
|
First game to use stereo sound. It was also the first to use the 49-way, custom-designed optical joystick that Williams had produced specifically for this game. Notable for appearance of menacing villain. |
Spy Hunter | 1983 | Bally Midway
|
Overhead view, vehicular combat game that is memorable for its music, "The Peter Gunn Theme", that plays throughout the game. |
Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator | 1983 | Sega | vector games released.[167]
|
Star Wars
|
1983 | Atari | Uses several digitized samples of actors' voices from the film. |
Tapper
|
1983 | Bally Midway
|
Originally aligned with American beer Budweiser , was revamped as Root Beer Tapper, so as not to be construed as attempting to peddle alcohol to minors.
|
Track & Field | 1983 | Konami (Japan) / Centuri (North America) | The first arcade Olympic sports video game. It helped popularize arcade sports games, which began being produced at levels not seen since the days of Pong and its clones a decade earlier.[168]
|
1942 | 1984 | Capcom | Capcom's first arcade hit. Features Pacific War air combat. Standardized the template for aerial shoot 'em ups featuring vertical scrolling. |
Karate Champ | 1984 | Technōs Japan/ Data East (US) | The first popular player vs. player fighting game for arcades.[169] Initially released as a dual joystick game with alternating play. The subsequent Player vs. Player version featured four 4-way joysticks. |
Kung-Fu Master | 1984 | Irem (Japan) / Data East (US) | The first side-scrolling beat-em-up arcade game.[170] |
Punch-Out!! | 1984 | Nintendo | A boxing fighting game featuring digitized voices, dual monitors, and a third-person perspective. |
Paperboy | 1985 | Atari | Novel controls and high resolution display. |
List of best-selling arcade games
For arcade games, success was usually judged by either the number of
- Space Invaders (750,000)[172]
- Pac-Man (400,000)[27]
- Donkey Kong (132,000)[173]
- Ms. Pac-Man (125,000)[174]
- Asteroids (100,000)[175]
- Defender (70,000)[176]
- Centipede (55,988)[177]
- Galaxian (50,000 in the US)[178]
- Hyper Olympic (Track & Field) (38,000 in Japan)[179]
- Donkey Kong Jr. (30,000 in the US)[173]
- Karate Champ (30,000 in the US)[180]
- Mr. Do! (30,000 in the US)[37]
- Tempest (29,000)[38]
- Q*bert (25,000)[181]
- Robotron: 2084 (23,000)[38]
- Dig Dug (22,228 in the US)[177]
- Pole Position (21,000 in the US)[38]
- Popeye (20,000 in the US)[34]
- Missile Command (20,000)[182]
- Jungle Hunt (18,000 in the US)[183]
- Dragon's Lair (16,000)[184]
- Berzerk (15,780)[185]
- Scramble (15,136 in the US)[185]
- Battlezone (15,122)[73]
- Champion Baseball (15,000 in Japan)[162]
- Stargate (15,000)[38]
- Star Wars (12,695)[177]
- Super Cobra (12,337 in the US)[185]
- Space Duel (12,038)[177]
- Atari Football (11,306)[73]
- Gee Bee (10,000)[186]
Decline and aftermath
The golden age cooled around the mid-1980s as copies of popular games began to saturate the arcades. Arcade video game revenues in the United States had declined from $8 billion in 1981 to $5 billion in 1983,[187] reaching a low of $4 billion in 1984.[188][189] The arcade market had recovered by 1986, with the help of software conversion kits, the arrival of popular beat 'em up games (such as Kung-Fu Master and Renegade), and advanced motion simulator games (such as Sega's "taikan" games including Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run and After Burner).[188]
Arcades remained commonplace through to the 1990s as there were still new genres being explored. In 1987, arcades experienced a short resurgence with (Super Famicom in Japan) greatly improved home play and some of their technology was even integrated into a few video arcade machines.
In the early 1990s, the release of
By the early 2000s, the sales of arcade machines in North America had declined, with 4,000 unit sales being considered a hit by the time.
Since the 2000s, arcade games have taken different routes globally. In the United States, arcades have become niche markets as they compete with the home console market, and they adapted other business models, such as providing other entertainment options or adding prize redemptions.[197] In Japan, some arcades continue to survive in the early 21st century, with games like Dance Dance Revolution and The House of the Dead tailored to experiences that players cannot easily have at home.[198]
Legacy
The Golden Age of Video Arcade Games spawned numerous cultural icons and even gave some companies their identity. Elements from games such as are still recognized in today's popular culture, and new entries in the franchises for some golden age games continued to be released decades later.
See also
References
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going into virtually every location in the country [..] even a few funeral homes had video games in the basements
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To cash in on the Pac-Man video mania, game developers also introduced Asteroids, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Tron, and hundreds more. By 1982, arcade games had become a multi-billion dollar industry. In that year alone, almost 500,000 machines were sold at prices ranging as high as $3000 each.
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In 1980 alone, according to Time, $2.8 billion in quarters, triple the amount of the previous years, were fed into video games. That represents 11.2 billion games, an average of almost 50 games for every person in the US.
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In 1981, $10.5 billion was spent on all features of video games, 3 times the amount spent on movie tickets that year (Surrey, 1982, p. 74).
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The figure of more than $7 billion for last year's video arcade game revenues is a conservative one. Some industry analysts estimate that the real amount spent on video games was as much as five times higher.
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Video game machines have an average weekly take of $109 per machine. The video arcade industry took in $8 billion in quarters in 1982, surpassing pop music (at $4 billion in sales per year) and Hollywood films ($3 billion). Those 32 billion arcade games played translate to 143 games for every man, woman, and child in America. A recent Atari survey showed that 86 percent of the US population from 13 to 20 has played some kind of video game and an estimated 8 million US homes have video games hooked up to the television set. Sales of home video games were $3.8 billion in 1982, approximately half that of video game arcades.
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At that time, a game for use in entertainment arcades was considered a hit if it sold 1000 units; sales of Space Invaders topped 300,000 units in Japan and 60,000 units overseas.
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Estimates counted 7 billion coins that by 1982 had been inserted into some 400,000 Pac Man machines worldwide, equal to one game of Pac Man for every person on earth. US domestic revenues from games and licensing of the Pac Man image for T-shirts, pop songs, to wastepaper baskets, etc. exceeded $1 billion.
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The machines were well worth the investment; in total they raked in over a billion dollars worth of quarters in the first year alone.
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It became arguably the most famous video game of all time, with the arcade game alone taking in more than a billion dollars, and one study estimated that it had been played more than 10 billion times during the twentieth century.
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In the late 1990s, Twin Galaxies, which tracks video game world record scores, visited used game auctions and counted how many times the average Pac Man machine had been played. Based on those findings and the total number of machines that were manufactured, the organization said it believed the game had been played more than 10 billion times in the 20th century.
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With more than 60,000 units sold in the United States, Donkey Kong was Nintendo's biggest arcade hit. ... Nintendo released Donkey Kong Junior in 1982 and sold only 30,000 machines, 20,000 Popeye machines (also 1982), and a mere 5000 copies of Donkey J (1983).
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Defender was Williams Electronics' biggest seller. More than 55,000 units were placed worldwide.
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In 1982, Universal Sales made arcade history with a game called Mr Do! Instead of selling dedicated Mr Do! machines, Universal sold the game as a kit. The kit came with a customized control panel, a computer board with Mr Do! read-only memory (ROM) chips, stickers that could be placed on the side of stand-up arcade machines for art, and a plastic marquee. It was the first game ever sold as a conversion only. According to former Universal Sales western regional sales manager Joe Morici, the company sold approximately 30,000 copies of the game in the United States alone.
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Sit-Down-Rennspiel Get A Way (1978) mit 16-bit-CPU.
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{{cite news}}
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What are the best-selling video games? There are a number of factors to consider when attempting to answer this question. First, there are several different types of video games, which makes comparisons difficult, or perhaps unfair. Arcade games are played for a quarter a play (although some are 50 cents, or even more), while home games are bought outright, and their systems must be purchased as well.
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Jumpman hopped over barrels, climbed ladders, and jumped from suspended platform to suspended platform as he tried to rescue a damsel from his pissed-off pet gorilla. The game was a smash, and sixty-five thousand cabinets were sold in Japan, propping up the then-struggling Nintendo and laying the groundwork for Nintendo and Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto to dominate gaming throughout the 1980s and beyond.
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Donkey Kong sold some 67,000 arcade cabinets in two years, making two of its American distributors sudden millionaires thanks to paid commission. As a barometer of success, know that Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man are the only arcade games to have sold over 100,000 units in the United States.
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With more than 60,000 units sold in the United States, Donkey Kong was Nintendo's biggest arcade hit. The arcade industry began its long collapse the year after Donkey Kong was released, and Nintendo's arcade fortunes eroded quickly. Nintendo released Donkey Kong Junior in 1982 and sold only 30,000 machines, 20,000 Popeye machines (also 1982), and a mere 5000 copies of Donkey Kong 3 (1983).
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Gottlieb sold approximately 25,000 Q*Bert arcade machines.
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Cinematronics sold more than 16,000 Dragon's Lair machines in 1983, for an average price of $4300. Coleco purchased the home rights to the game, giving Cinematronics an additional $2 million.
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Further reading
- The Official Price Guide to Classic Video Games by ISBN 0-375-72038-3
External links
- The KLOV Top Video Games Lists by Greg McLemore and friends
- Reference to the term 'Golden Age'
- The Dot Eaters, Videogame History 101
- Internet Archive, Virtual Arcade