''M.A.C.H. 3'' is a

shoot 'em up Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of chara ...

LaserDisc video game An interactive film is a video game or other interactive media that has characteristics of a cinematic film. In the video game industry, the term refers to a movie game, a video game that presents its gameplay in a cinematic, scripted manner, ...

developed by

Gottlieb Gottlieb (formerly D. Gottlieb & Co.) was an American arcade game corporation based in Chicago, Illinois. History The main office and plant was located at 1140-50 N. Kostner Avenue until the early 1970s when a new modern plant and office was lo ...

and released for US arcades in 1983 under their Mylstar brand. The player controls a high-speed fighter aircraft in one of two missions: either a "Fighter Raid" seen flying forward at low altitude or "Bombing Run" seen in a top-down mode. Video backgrounds from the LaserDisc are overlaid by

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

. The title is both a reference to

Mach number Mach number (M or Ma) (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a boundary to the local speed of sound. It is named after the Moravian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach. : \mathrm = \frac ...

and is an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for "Military Air Command Hunter". It was released in Japan by

Taito is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, toys, arcade cabinets and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the importing vodka, vending machines and jukeboxes into Japan. It b ...

Development

The primary programmers and game designers were Chris Brewer and Fred Darmstadt. The overlaid graphics of the fighter were by Gottlieb's video graphics artist, Jeff Lee. Hardware enabling the graphics overlay on top of the background video was designed by David Pfeiffer. Clay Lacy shot the jet footage.

Reception

In the United States, ''M.A.C.H. 3'' reached the number-one position on ''RePlay'' magazine's "Player's Choice" upright

arcade cabinet An arcade cabinet, also known as an arcade machine or a coin-op cabinet or coin-op machine, is the housing within which an arcade game's electronic hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the Japanese Amusement Ma ...

earnings chart in January 1984. On ''

Play Meter ''Play Meter'' (initially ''Coin Industry Play Meter'') was an American trade magazine focusing on the coin-op amusement arcade industry, including jukebox and arcade game machines. It was founded in December 1974 by publisher and editor Ralph C. ...

s "National Play Meter" polls, it was the top-grossing laserdisc game in August and October 1984. It was listed by AMOA among the top five highest-grossing arcade games of 1984. In Japan, ''Game Machine'' listed ''M.A.C.H. 3'' on their March 15, 1984 issue as being the second most-successful upright arcade unit of the month.

References

External links

*{{KLOV game, id=8471 Arcade video games 1983 video games Arcade-only video games Combat flight simulators LaserDisc video games Gottlieb video games Rail shooters Video games developed in the United States Single-player video games

Development

Reception

See also

References

External links