Golden Age Of Arcade Games

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 period began with the release of ''Space Invaders'' in 1978, which 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 transitioned from black-and-white to color, with titles such as ''Frogger'' and ''Centipede'' taking advantage of the visual opportunities of bright palettes.

Video game arcades became a part of popular culture and a primary channel for new games. Video game genres were still being established, but included space-themed shooter games such as '' Defender'' and ''Galaga'', maze chase games which followed the design established by ''Pac-Man'', driving and racing games which more frequently used 3D perspectives such as ''Turbo'' and ''Pole Position'', character action games such as ''Pac-Man'' and ''Frogger'', and the beginning of what would later be called platform games touched off by ''Donkey Kong''. Games began starring named player characters, such as Pac-Man, Mario and ''Q*bert'', and some of these characters crossed over into other media including songs, cartoons, and movies. The 1982 film ''Tron'' was closely tied to an arcade game of the same name.

Relevant time period

Although the exact years differ, most sources agree the period was from about the late 1970s to early 1980s. Technology journalist Jason Whittaker, in ''The Cyberspace Handbook'', places the beginning of the golden age in 1978, with the release of ''Space Invaders''. Video game journalist Steven L. Kent, in his book ''The Ultimate History of Video Games'', places it at 1979 to 1983. The book pointed out that 1979 was the year that ''Space Invaders'' (which he credits for ushering in the golden age) was gaining considerable popularity in the United States, and the year that saw vector display technology, first seen in arcades in 1977 with ''Space Wars'', rise to prominence via Atari's ''Asteroids''. However, 1983 was the period that began "a fairly steady decline" in the coin-operated video game business and when many arcades started disappearing.

Walter Day of Twin Galaxies places this period's beginning in the late 1970s, when color arcade games became more prevalent and arcade video games started appearing outside of their traditional bowling alley and bar locales, through to its ending in the mid-1980s. ''RePlay'' magazine in 1985 dated the arcade industry's "video boom" years from 1979 to 1982. The golden age of arcade games largely coincided with, and partly fueled, the second generation of game consoles and the microcomputer revolution.

In contrast to most other sources, the ''History of Computing Project'' website places the golden age of video games between 1971 and 1983, 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". 1971 was chosen as an earlier start date by the project for two reasons: the creator of ''Pong'' filed a pivotal patent regarding video game technology, and it was the release of the first arcade video game machine, ''Computer Space''.

Business

The golden age was a time of great technical and design creativity in arcade games. The era saw the rapid spread of video arcades across North America, Europe, and Asia. The number of video game arcades in North America was doubled between 1980 and 1982; reaching a peak of 10,000 video game arcades across the region (compared to 4,000 as of 1998). Beginning with ''Space Invaders'', video arcade games also started to appear in supermarkets, restaurants, liquor stores, gas stations and many other retail establishments looking for extra income. Video game arcades at the time became as common as convenience stores, while arcade games like ''Pac-Man'' and ''Space Invaders'' appeared in most locations across the United States, including even funeral homes. The sales of arcade video game machines increased significantly during this period, from $50 million in 1978 to $900 million in 1981, with 500,000 arcade machines sold in the United States at prices ranging as high as $3000 in 1982 alone. By 1982, there were 24,000 full arcades, 400,000 arcade street locations and 1.5 million arcade machines active in North America. The market was very competitive; the average life span of an arcade game was four to six months. Some games like ''Robby Roto'' failed because they were too complex to learn quickly, and others like '' Star Fire'' because they were too unfamiliar to the audience. '' Qix'' was briefly very popular but, Taito's Keith Egging later said, "too mystifying for gamers ... impossible to master and when the novelty wore off, the game faded". At around this time, the home video game industry ( second-generation video game consoles and early home computer games) emerged as "an outgrowth of the widespread success of video arcades" at the time.

In 1980, the U.S. arcade video game industry's revenue generated from quarters tripled to $2.8 billion. By 1981, the arcade video game industry in the United States was generating an annual revenue of over $5 billion 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. The total revenue for the U.S. arcade video game industry in 1981 was estimated at more than $7 billion though some analysts estimated the real amount may have been much higher. By 1982, video games accounted for 87% of the $8.9 billion in commercial games sales in the United States. In 1982, the arcade video game industry's revenue in quarters was estimated at $8 billion surpassing the annual gross revenue of both pop music ($4 billion) and Hollywood films ($3 billion) combined that year. It also exceeded the revenues of all major sports combined at the time, 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. 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; 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.

Prior to the golden age, pinball machines were more popular than video games. The pinball industry reached a peak of 200,000 machine sales and $2.3 billion revenue in 1979, which had declined to 33,000 machines and $464 million in 1982. In comparison, the best-selling arcade games of the golden age, ''Space Invaders'' and ''Pac-Man'', had each sold over 360,000 and 400,000 cabinets, respectively, with each machine costing between $2000 and $3000 (specifically $2400 in ''Pac-Man's'' case). In addition, ''Space Invaders'' had grossed $2 billion in quarters by 1982, while ''Pac-Man'' had grossed over $1 billion by 1981 and $2.5 billion by the late 1990s. In 1982, ''Space Invaders'' was considered the highest-grossing entertainment product of its time, with comparisons made to the then highest-grossing film '' Star Wars'', which had grossed $486 million, while ''Pac-Man'' is today considered the highest-grossing arcade game of all time. Many other arcade games during the golden age also had hardware unit sales at least in the tens of thousands, including ''Ms. Pac-Man'' with over 115,000 units, ''Asteroids'' with 70,000, ''Donkey Kong'' with over 60,000, '' Defender'' with 55,000, ''Galaxian'' with 40,000, ''Donkey Kong Junior'' with 35,000, ''Mr. Do!'' with 30,000,
and ''Tempest'' with 29,000 units. A number of arcade games also generated revenues (from quarters) in the hundreds of millions, including ''Defender'' with more than $100 million in addition to many more with revenues in the tens of millions, including ''Dragon's Lair'' with $48 million and ''Space Ace'' with $13 million.

The most successful arcade game companies of this era included Taito (which ushered in the golden age with the shooter game ''Space Invaders'' and produced other successful arcade action games such as ''Gun Fight'' and '' Jungle King''), Namco (the Japanese company that created ''Galaxian'', ''Pac-Man'', ''Pole Position'' and ''Dig Dug'') and Atari (the company that introduced video games into arcades with ''Computer Space'' and ''Pong'', and later produced ''Asteroids''). Other companies such as Sega (who later entered the home console market against its former arch rival, Nintendo), Nintendo (whose mascot, Mario, was introduced in 1981's ''Donkey Kong'' as "Jumpman"), Bally Midway Manufacturing Company (which was later purchased by Williams), Cinematronics, Konami, Centuri, Williams and SNK also gained popularity around this era.

During this period, Japanese video game manufacturers became increasingly influential in North America. By 1980, they had become very influential through licensing their games to American manufacturers. Jonathan Greenberg of ''Forbes'' predicted in early 1981 that Japanese companies would eventually dominate the North American video game industry, as American video game companies were increasingly licensing products from Japanese companies, who in turn were opening up North American branches. By 1982-1983, Japanese manufacturers had more directly captured a large share of the North American arcade market, which Gene Lipkin of Data East USA partly attributed to Japanese companies having more finances to invest in new ideas.

Technology

Arcades catering to video games began to gain momentum in the late 1970s, with ''Space Invaders'' (1978) followed by games such as ''Asteroids'' (1979) and ''Galaxian'' (1979). Arcades became more widespread in 1980 with ''Pac-Man'', ''Missile Command'' and '' Berzerk'', and in 1981 with '' Defender'', ''Donkey Kong'', ''Frogger'' and others. The central processing unit (CPU) microprocessors in these games allowed for more complexity than earlier transistor-transistor logic (TTL) discrete circuitry games such as Atari's ''Pong'' (1972). The arcade boom that began in the late 1970s is credited with establishing the basic techniques of interactive entertainment and for driving down hardware prices to the extent of allowing the personal computer (PC) to become a technological and economic reality.

While color monitors had been used by several racing video games before (such as '' Indy 800'' and '' Speed Race Twin''), it was during this period that RGB color graphics became widespread, following the release of ''Galaxian'' in 1979. ''Galaxian'' introduced a tile-based video game graphics system, which reduced processing and memory requirements by up to 64 times compared to the previous framebuffer system used by ''Space Invaders''. This allowed ''Galaxian'' to render multi-color sprites, which were animated atop a scrolling starfield backdrop, providing the basis for the hardware developed by Nintendo for arcade games such as ''Radar Scope'' (1980) and ''Donkey Kong'' followed by the Nintendo Entertainment System console.
*

The Golden Age also saw developers experimenting with vector displays, which produced crisp lines that couldn't be duplicated by raster displays. A few of these vector games became great hits, such as 1979's ''Asteroids'', 1980's '' Battlezone'' and ''Tempest'' and 1983's '' Star Wars'' from Atari. However, vector technology fell out of favor with arcade game companies due to the high cost of repairing vector displays.

Several developers at the time were also experimenting with pseudo-3D and stereoscopic 3D using 2D sprites on raster displays. In 1979, Nintendo's ''Radar Scope'' introduced a three-dimensional third-person perspective to the shoot 'em up genre, later imitated by shooters such as Konami's ''Juno First'' and Activision's ''Beamrider'' in 1983. In 1981, Sega's ''Turbo'' was the first racing game to feature a third-person rear view format, and use sprite scaling with full-colour graphics.IGN Presents the History of SEGA
IGN Namco's '' Pole Position'' featured an improved rear-view racer format in 1982 that remained the standard for the genre; the game provided a perspective view of the track, with its vanishing point swaying side to side as the player approaches corners, accurately simulating forward movement into the distance.Bernard Perron & Mark J. P. Wolf (2008), ''Video game theory reader two'', p. 157, Taylor & Francis, That same year, Sega released ''Zaxxon'', which introduced the use of isometric graphics and shadows;Bernard Perron & Mark J. P. Wolf (2008), ''Video game theory reader two''
p. 158
Taylor & Francis, and '' SubRoc-3D'', which introduced the use of stereoscopic 3D through a special eyepiece;

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. ''Rally-X'' in 1980 was the first game to feature continuous background music, which was generated using a dedicated sound chip, a Namco 3-channel PSG. That same year saw the introduction of speech synthesis, which was first used in '' Stratovox'', released by Sun Electronics in 1980, followed soon after by Namco's '' King & Balloon''.

Developers also experimented with laserdisc players for delivering full motion video based games with movie-quality animation. The first laserdisc video game to exploit this technology was 1983's '' Astron Belt'' from Sega, soon followed by ''Dragon's Lair'' from Cinematronics; the latter was a sensation when it was released (and, in fact, the laserdisc players in many machines broke due to overuse). While laserdisc games were usually either shooter games with full-motion video backdrops like ''Astron Belt'' or interactive movies like ''Dragon's Lair'', Data East's 1983 game ''Bega's Battle'' introduced a new form of video game storytelling: using brief full-motion video cutscenes to develop a story between the game's shooting stages, which years later became the standard approach to video game storytelling. By the mid-1980s, the genre dwindled in popularity, as laserdiscs were losing out to the VHS format and the laserdisc games themselves were losing their novelty.

16-bit processors began appearing in several arcade games during this era. Universal's ''Get A Way'' (1978) was a sit-down racing game that used a 16-bit CPU, for which it was advertised as the first game to use a 16-bit microcomputer. Another racing game, Namco's ''Pole Position'' (1982), used the 16-bit Zilog Z8000 processor. Atari's ''Food Fight'' (1983) was one of the earliest games to use the Motorola 68000 processor.

3D computer graphics began appearing in several arcade games towards the end of the golden age. Funai's ''Interstellar'', a laserdisc game introduced at Tokyo's Amusement Machine Show (AM Show) in September 1983, demonstrated pre-rendered 3D computer graphics. Simutrek's ''Cube Quest'', another laserdisc game introduced at the same Tokyo AM Show in September 1983, combined laserdisc animation with 3D real-time computer graphics. '' Star Rider'', introduced by Williams Electronics at the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) in October 1983, also demonstrated pre-rendered 3D graphics. Atari's ''I, Robot'', developed and released in 1984, was the first arcade game to be rendered entirely with real-time 3D computer graphics.

Gameplay

''Space Invaders'' (1978) established the "multiple life, progressively difficult level paradigm" used by many classic arcade games. Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado at Taito, he drew inspiration from Atari's block-breaker game '' Breakout'' (1976) and several science fiction works. Nishikado added several interactive elements to ''Space Invaders'' that he found lacking in earlier video games, such as the ability for enemies to react to the player's movement and fire back, with a game over triggered by enemies killing the player (either by getting hit or enemies reaching the bottom of the screen) rather than a timer running out. In contrast to earlier arcade games which often had a timer, ''Space Invaders'' introduced the "concept of going round after round." It also gave the player multiple lives before the game ends, and saved the high score. It also had a basic story with animated characters along with a "crescendo of action and climax" which laid the groundwork for later video games, according to Eugene Jarvis.

With the enormous success of ''Space Invaders'', dozens of developers jumped into the development and manufacturing of arcade video games. Some simply copied the "invading alien hordes" idea of ''Space Invaders'' and turned out successful imitators like Namco's ''Galaxian'' and ''Galaga'', which extended the fixed shooter genre with new gameplay mechanics, more complex enemy patterns, and richer graphics.Game Genres: Shmups
Professor Jim Whitehead, January 29, 2007, Retrieved June 17, 2008 ''Galaxian'' introduced a "risk-reward" concept, while ''Galaga'' was one of the first games with a bonus stage. Sega's 1980 release '' Space Tactics'' was an early first-person space combat game with multi-directional scrolling as the player moved the cross-hairs on the screen.

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 "action games" began being used in the early 1980s, in reference to a new genre of character action games that emerged from Japanese arcade developers, drawing inspiration from manga and anime culture. According to Eugene Jarvis, these new character-driven Japanese action games emphasized "character development, hand-drawn animation and backgrounds, and a more deterministic, scripted, pattern-type" of play. Terms such as "action games" or "character games" began being used to distinguish these new character-driven action games from the space shooters that had previously dominated the video game industry. The emphasis on character-driven gameplay in turn enabled a wider variety of subgenres. In 1980, Namco released ''Pac-Man'', which popularized the maze chase genre, and ''Rally-X'', which featured a radar tracking the player position on the map. Games such as the pioneering 1981 games ''Donkey Kong'' and '' Qix'' in 1981 introduced new types of games where skill and timing are more important than shooting as fast as possible, with Nintendo's ''Donkey Kong'' in particular setting the template for the platform game genre.

The two most popular genres during the golden age were space shooters and character action games. While Japanese developers were creating a character-driven action game genre in the early 1980s, American developers largely adopted a different approach to game design at the time. According to Eugene Jarvis, American arcade developers focused mainly on space shooters during the late 1970s to early 1980s, greatly influenced by Japanese space shooters but taking the genre in a different direction from the "more deterministic, scripted, pattern-type" gameplay of Japanese games, towards a more "programmer-centric design culture, emphasizing algorithmic generation of backgrounds and enemy dispatch" and "an emphasis on random-event generation, particle-effect explosions and physics" as seen in arcade games such as his own '' Defender'' (1981) and '' Robotron: 2084'' (1982) as well as Atari's ''Asteroids'' (1979).

Namco's ''Bosconian'' in 1981 introduced a free-roaming style of gameplay where the player's ship freely moves across open space, while also including a radar tracking player & enemy positions. ''Bega's Battle'' in 1983 introduced a new form of video game storytelling: using brief full-motion video cutscenes to develop a story between the game's shooting stages. Other examples of innovative games are Atari Games' ''Paperboy'' in 1984 where the goal is to successfully deliver newspapers to customers, and Namco's ''Phozon'' where the object is to duplicate a shape shown in the middle of the screen. The theme of Exidy's ''Venture'' is dungeon exploration and treasure-gathering. ''Q*bert'' plays upon the user's sense of depth perception to deliver a novel experience.

Popular culture

Some games of this era were so popular that they entered popular culture. The first to do so was ''Space Invaders''. The game was so popular upon its release in 1978 that an urban legend blamed it for a national shortage of 100 yen coins in Japan, leading to a production increase of coins to meet demand for the game (although 100 yen coin production was lower in 1978 and 1979 than in previous or subsequent years, and the claim does not withstand logical scrutiny: arcade operators would have emptied out their machines and taken the money to the bank, thus keeping the coins in circulation). It soon had a similar impact in North America, where it has appeared or is referenced in numerous facets of popular culture. Soon after the release of ''Space Invaders'', hundreds of favourable articles and stories about the emerging video game medium aired on television and were printed in newspapers and magazines. The Space Invaders Tournament held by Atari in 1980 was the first video game competition and attracted more than 10,000 participants, establishing video gaming as a mainstream hobby. By 1980, 86% of the 13–20 population in the United States had played arcade video games, and by 1981, there were more than 35 million gamers visiting video game arcades in the United States.

The game that most affected popular culture in North America was ''Pac-Man''. It was released 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''.Ramsey, David.
The Perfect Man – How Billy Mitchell became a video-game superstar and achieved Pac-Man bliss
" ''Oxford American'', issue 53. Spring 2006. ''Pac-Man'' was also responsible for expanding the arcade game market to involve large numbers of female audiences across all age groups. 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. Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese were founded specifically as restaurants focused on featuring the latest arcade titles.

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 music industry, revenues for which had declined by $400 million between 1978 and 1981 (from $4.1 billion to $3.7 billion), a decrease that was directly credited to the rise of arcade games at the time. Successful songs based on video games also began appearing. The pioneering electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) sampled ''Space Invaders'' sounds in their 1978 self-titled album and the hit single "Computer Game" from the same album, the latter selling over 400,000 copies in the United States. In turn, YMO had a major influence on much of the video game music produced during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Other pop songs based on ''Space Invaders'' soon followed, including "Disco Space Invaders" (1979) by Funny Stuff, "Space Invaders" (1980) by Player One (known as Playback in the US), and the hit songs " Space Invader" (1980) by The Pretenders and "Space Invaders" (1980) by Uncle Vic. The game was also the basis for Player One's "Space Invaders" (1979), which in turn provided the bassline for Jesse Saunders' "On and On" (1984), the first Chicago house music track. The song " Pac-Man Fever" reached No. 9 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and sold over a million singles in 1982, while the album '' Pac-Man Fever'' sold over a million records, with both receiving Gold certifications. That same year, R. Cade and the Video Victims also produced an arcade-inspired album, ''Get Victimized'', featuring songs such as "Donkey Kong". In 1984, former YMO member Haruomi Hosono produced an album entirely from Namco arcade game samples entitled ''Video Game Music'', an early example of a chiptune record and the first video game music album. Arcade game sounds also had a strong influence on the hip hop, pop music (particularly synthpop) and electro music genres during the early 1980s. The booming success of video games at the time led to music magazine '' Billboard'' listing the 15 top-selling video games alongside their record charts by 1982. More than a decade later, the first electroclash record, I-F's "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass" (1997), has been described as "burbling electro in a vocodered homage to Atari-era hi-jinks", particularly ''Space Invaders'' which it was named after.

Arcade games also influenced the film industry; beginning with ''Space Invaders'', arcade games began appearing at many movie theaters, while early films based on video games were also produced, most notably ''Tron'', which grossed over $33 million in 1982 which began the ''Tron'' franchise which included a video game adaptation that grossed more than the film. Other films based on video games included the 1983 films ''WarGames'' (where Matthew Broderick plays ''Galaga'' at an arcade), ''Nightmares'', and ''Joysticks'', the 1984 films ''The Last Starfighter'', as well as '' Cloak & Dagger'' (in which an Atari 5200 cartridge implausibly containing the eponymous arcade game becomes the film's ''MacGuffin''). Arcades also appeared in many other films at the time, such as '' Dawn of the Dead'' (where they play ''Gun Fight'' and '' F-1'') in 1978, and '' Midnight Madness'' in 1980, ''Take This Job and Shove It'' and ''Puberty Blues'' in 1981, the 1982 releases ''Rocky III'', ''Fast Times At Ridgemont High'', ''Koyaanisqatsi'' and '' The Toy'', the 1983 releases '' Psycho II'', '' Spring Break'',''Terms of Endearment'' and '' Never Say Never Again'', the 1984 releases ''Footloose'', ''The Karate Kid'' (where Elisabeth Shue plays ''Pac-Man''), '' The Terminator'', '' Night of the Comet'' and ''The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension'', the 1985 releases ''The Goonies'', ''The Heavenly Kid'', '' The Boys Next Door'' and ''Ferris Bueller's Day Off'' as well as the 1986 films '' Something Wild'', ''The Color of Money'' and ''Psycho III'' (where Norman Bates stands next to a '' Berzerk'' cabinet). ''Over the Top'' and ''Can't Buy Me Love'' showcase several arcade game cabinets as well. Coin-operated games (both video and mechanical) are central to the plots of the 1988 films ''Big'' and '' Kung-Fu Master''.

In more recent years, there have been critically acclaimed documentaries based on the golden age of arcade games, such as '' The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters'' (2007) and '' Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade'' (2007). Since 2010, many arcade-related features or films incorporating 1980's nostalgia have been released including '' Tron: Legacy'' (2010), ''Wreck-It Ralph'' (2012), ''Ping Pong Summer'' (2014), ''Pixels'' (2015), '' Everybody Wants Some!!'' (2016),'' Summer of 84'' (2018) and ''Ready Player One'' (2018) which is based upon the novel by Ernest Cline and directed by Steven Spielberg. Television shows and streaming series have exhibited arcade games including '' The Goldbergs'' and the Netflix series '' Stranger Things'' (both of which feature ''Dragon's Lair'' among other games).

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. The enormous popularity of video arcade games led to the very first video game strategy guides; 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 (equivalent to between $ and $ in ). 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. By 1983, 1.7 million copies of ''Mastering Pac-Man'' had been printed.

List of popular arcade games

The games below are some of the most popular and/or influential games of the era.

List of best-selling arcade games

For arcade games, success was usually judged by either the number of arcade hardware units sold to operators, or the amount of revenue generated, from the number of coins (such as quarters or 100 yen coins) inserted into machines, and/or the hardware sales (with arcade hardware prices often ranging from $1000 to $4000). This list only includes arcade games that have sold more than 10,000 hardware units.

*''Space Invaders'' (750,000)
*''Pac-Man'' (400,000)
*''Donkey Kong'' (132,000)''Donkey Kong'' sales:
*Japan: 65,000 of ''Donkey Kong''
**
*United States: 67,000 of ''Donkey Kong''
**
*United States: 30,000 of '' Donkey Kong Jr.''
**
*''Ms. Pac-Man'' (125,000)
*''Asteroids'' (100,000)
*'' Defender'' (70,000)
*''Centipede'' (55,988)
*''Galaxian'' (50,000 in the US)
*'' Hyper Olympic'' (''Track & Field'') (38,000 in Japan)
*'' Donkey Kong Jr.'' (30,000 in the US)
*''Karate Champ'' (30,000 in the US)
*''Mr. Do!'' (30,000 in the US)
*''Tempest'' (29,000)
*''Q*bert'' (25,000)
*'' Robotron: 2084'' (23,000)
*''Dig Dug'' (22,228 in the US)
*'' Pole Position'' (21,000 in the US)
*''Popeye

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