Back to the beginning, a blast to the past where it all started, the Arcades!

As the title insinuates, where best to start than at the beginning of the popular boom of video gaming.

Arcade halls were highly successful and popular all the way through the 1980s, but what you might not remember or realize is the Arcade-version entertainment really first started in the 1920s with old midway style amusement centers.  These centers provided the foundation for arcade centers of later years, with ball tosses, strength tests and shooting accuracy games.

 

 

 

In the 1930s saw the emergence of pinball machines, which still exist as a staple today. Granted, the pinball machines back then were nothing as glamorous as the ones of todays. They didn't have any bells, whistles, flashing lights, etc., but they did lay the foundation for current pinball machines.

 

Then in 1966, the next breakthrough of video gaming broke with the familiar video gaming namesake, Sega, led this charge. They developed Electro-mechanical games with the game Periscope, which was a submarine simulation using a light gun and mechanical waves that simulated a sinking ship when a hit was scored.

http://healthgames.lmc.gatech.edu/blog/2008/09/periscope-sega-arcade-1966.html

 

This sparked a few other game developers to make their own versions, and Taito released a sports game using the same general settings called Crown Soccer Special.

Out of this era, we got the classic game Duck Hunt, released by Sega in 1969, and reintroduced in the Nintendo Entertainment Systems dual game Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt.

 

 

This was merely the beginning though, and the 1980s, also known as the "Golden Age of Arcades."

 

Over the next decade, Arcades saw a booming increase in popularity with great classic titles as Pac-Man and Spaced Invaders, just to name a few. Arcade establishments popped up in shopping malls, convenience stores and even entire arcade shops on some street corners.

 

By 1981, the arcade video gaming industry exceeded $8 billion in the U.S.

 

Pac-Man alone was a blockbuster success, in and of itself.

 

"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." according to Kao, John J. (1989). Entrepreneurship, creativity & organization: text, cases & readings. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. p. 45. ISBN 0-13-283011-6.

 

For a neat chart of arcade games and their past performance in a ranking go to:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_game

 



The history of in-home video game systems

Most members of the classic retro video gaming culture of today know about the Nintendo, Sega and Playstation of the past, but here's a website that goes even beyond that. Time Magazine does a blast from the past to recap even earlier additions to the video game world prior to the video game crash of 1983, which nearly killed the video game in-home console industry in its wake.

http://content.time.com/time/interactive/0,31813,2029221,00.html

I remember playing the Intelivision at my cousins place, but couldn't for the life of me put a name to what the system was called. I used to play the sports montage on it, namely the baseball game. You'd put the game card inside the controller, and based on the icon on the card designating the player you'd want to throw the ball to or control, you'd push the button underneath the 'game card'. It was a neat idea in my opinion.

Like many families in middle-class America, my parents owned an Atari 2600 system with a variety of game cartridges. Man, how games used to be is amazing to say the least. We used to be satisfied and even thrilled with the Burger-Time or Donkey Kong style graphics made up of VERY noticeable pixels. Your character was a series of squares put together in some semblance of order, with different clashing colors to denote clothes and such. Ah, the good ol' days.

Then came the Nintendo Entertainment System into our home. We thought we were in heaven with games like Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt (although often times I lost bullets on the next round from trying to shoot the dog for laughing at me), Legend of Zelda, Bomberman and Duck Tales. I even now sometimes go back to play Super Mario Brothers and realize just how freaking hard that game was! How could I play is so well and even beat the entire game as a kid?

Well, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis came after, and from then on I tended to have enough spending cash to buy both systems. That was the only way back then to get the best games, as some games were only made on Sega, and others only on Nintendo.  Alas, to think that we now describe Super Nintendo and the Genesis as "retro games" and I was a teenager when those two systems were in their prime.

This site does well in going even further back than my own lifetime and experience to some of the predecessors even to the Playstation and Nintendo even.  We've all heard of Pong, but there was actually video game life prior to Pong!

Feel free to post any comments, negative positive or otherwise on this blog. All additions are welcome, and feel free to feed this blog to your other friends who used to live in the closet of Nintendo video gamers of the "retro age."

Female gamers in the video game industry.

As promised, here's a little tidbit about the female gamer, and how the video game industry is finally starting to see this sector that makes up slightly over half the U.S. population as a potential market share base.

The gaming industry even 6 years ago was seen predominantly as a male-based sector, but lately video game producers are beginning to finally target and be concerned with female gamers.  For the longest time, the female gamer did not "exist", although I am certain there were girls out there who did play and enjoy video games. Society as a whole did not fathom a girl playing video games, that would just be weird after all.

But lately, the emergence of the female gamer has been a very real and tangible thing, with girls and women openly starting to "come out of the box" so to speak, and embracing that which used to be hidden behind closed doors.

As far as me, being a guy, I think this new revelation is a very good thing for the industry.  It forces video game developers to broaden their spectrum when it comes to producing concepts to video games to try to capture this "new" market.

You are beginning to see stronger female protagonists, and, in certain cases, antagonists.  Another benefit women are tending to see is female characters which are a bit more clothed. There are not as many female characters who you'd be more likely to see in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar, but now they can be a character girls can look up to.  Also in some cases, they are characters even guy gamers can respect too.

I believe the video game industry has got their mind heading in the right direction, developing more games for girls to play with their significant other in multiplayer mode.  Not only shooters that have always been seen predominantly as a "guy thing", but now even RPGs (Role-Playing Games) are taking on more of a multiplayer aspect, and not simply in the MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) spectrum, but on console games.  This is very successful, and was mostly apparent in the Tales series by Bandai Namco who has been developing 4-player potential RPGs for years now.

Even the recent release of Diablo III has a multiplayer function where you can play with your family or as a couple.  No more are the days where the girl is a spectator role as their male counterpart plays their way through a game.

Introduction

Greetings all you vintage video gaming fans! This blog is started out as a class assignment requirement, but I do not believe it will end just as that.

I've played video games all the way back to the Atari 2600 and 2200 days, and grew up with the regular Nintendo Entertainment System. The gaming systems back then used to have a much longer lifespan than they do now. The NES was dominant on the market for almost a decade. (1985-1991, according the the Nintendo Corporate webpage) Wow! 6 years of just one system on the market. The original NES stuck around for a couple years later. I for one know of one game with a  copyright date of 1992 (Dragon Warrior IV) that I still play to this day.

There is something to say about a game that is over 20 years old still having great appeal even today! Sure, the graphics are very primitive, but the gameplay itself was revolutionary.

Atari really started it off however. Before the game console introduced by Atari, when you'd want to go play a video game meant a physical trip to an arcade.  Normal people couldn't afford the massive gaming units, much less could fit them inside their house.  A garage only has so much space when you park your car in there.

Atari solved this dilemma by producing a system roughly the size of a current day DVD player that could be hooked up to your television set. Then you could play any number of games that came on cartridges about the size of a common era Ipad.  A much better solution to having a single arcade game taking up nearly the same size as a full-sized entertainment center, and in some cases an entire couch!

Granted, looking back on it now, the graphics of these two systems were very limited, but they still revolutionized an industry that is now one of the most lucrative industries in the world.

I plan to guide all of you through the progression of the process we are now at with the new generation of the video gaming world. How video gaming is now an accepted and often celebrated culture; a stark contrast to the past viewpoints of video game nerds/geeks. How video games have permeated into movies and television, and you can't forget: the icons that still survive through these decades as staples that every video game "geek" can't be worth his salt without knowing about. Video gaming pervasiveness into the OTHER gender, namely the female gamer as well as any other tidbits of interesting things I can find and condense here in this one blog post. A one-stop shop for video game enthusiasts and the formerly endeared "geeks."

Enjoy the trip through time and witness with me throughout the decades, from the arcades that would eat away an entire roll of quarters in a single afternoon to the common era with games that are as open-ended as a real jaunt through a post-apocalyptic landscape invaded by zombies and bandits.