A History of Video Games: The Golden Years

Posted on Mon 3 Dec 2007 by Keira Peney under History .
[Link]

Space Invaders Last Monday, in A History of Video Games: The Early Years, I left you with Pong. Pong was the first commercially successfully arcade game, and as such opened the way for video games to become an industry. And what an industry it became! Part Two of my history looks at the Golden Age of gaming, when many of the great arcade classics were created.

Arcade games were the evolution of the Pinball machines that had been a fixture of most pubs and college hang-outs. Many pinball companies, seeing the success of Pong, promptly released Pong-clones. Atari responded by forming a company called Kee Games in order to get around distribution problems. Atari kept it’s ownership of Kee Games secret until it produced the next big-hit in 1974 - a two player game called Tank. Tank featured two tanks who had to navigate a maze and then shoot each other. The game was noteworthy as it was the first to use IC-based ROM chips to store graphical data - the upshot of which the things on the screen weren’t just blocks or collections of dots. It looked good, and everyone wanted it. Kee Games and Atari merged, and distributer exclusivity was over.

While the former pinball companies were churning out clones and getting nowhere, Atari was steaming ahead with innovative ideas. They turned out the first four-player game and the first pursuit-in-a-maze game in 1973, the first driving game in 1974, and the first first-person driving game in 1976 - which also allowed the player to sit down in the arcade booth.

In 1975 they produced Breakout, another classic and highly popular game that became an instant phenomenon. At this time there was one other company in America that took video games seriously: Bally/Midway Manufacturing. Midway brought the Japanese influence into American video games as they worked closely with a Japanese developer called Taito. Midway released Taito’s games in America, and Taito released Midway’s games in Japan.

In 1978 Midway began distributing a Taito developed game called Space Invaders. Space Invaders was a smash-hit. There is an interesting interview with Tomohiro Nishikado in which he talks about the design influence behind Space Invaders. Like Pong, Space Invaders left behind a massive pop-culture legacy. It was different, and crucially it didn’t end after a time limit, but allowed players to go for as long as their skill could take them. It also introduced the concept of the High Score. This was the key in games competitive addictiveness, Space Invaders arcade machines found their way into pizza joints, laundromats, airports, and anywhere people might have a quarter and a spare ten minutes. Taito was a success, Bally/Midway was a success, and Atari was a success.

There are many games we can point to now. Space Invaders ushered in the Golden Age of Gaming. Various companies got involved, including Namco, Konami, SNK, Capcom, Amstar, Irem… there were space war games, driving games, football games, puzzle games, shooters. There was side-scrolling, vertical-scrolling, isometric. From shooting aliens, games soon moved onto shooting people. Some designers protested at the violence - and one of these designers went on to create Pac-Man.

Pacman Sex, guns, and alien invasions sell, right? Not as well as games about eating. Pac-Man sold better than Space Invaders, it sold better than Pong, and yet another video game left it’s iconic legacy all over pop culture.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this golden era of gaming is that so many games were produced by one or two people. Anybody with some programing skills and a backer had the potential to produce the next ‘big thing’. There were many notable successes, and most of the older generation of gamers will be able to look back at this period and point to Donkey Kong, or Frogger, or Joust and say: this was the game where it all began. It was a new media, and as such was completely open. Genre’s were invented, defined, and polished. Anything could happen.

So far we have focused mainly on arcade games. This is where most games were released, and where most made their money. However, the games console industry grew alongside the arcade games. In Part One of the history, I talked about the “Brown Box”, or the Magnavox Odyssey. The Odyssey 100, the next console, which was focused mainly on Pong, sold reasonably well. There were many more game-specific consoles sold, that focused mainly on Pong and Pong-clones. A company called Fairchild released the first cartridge based console in 1976, and Atari followed suit. In 1980, Atari released a dedicated Space Invaders console, and secured themselves as top-dogs in the home console market. Other companies tried, and failed, to match them.

This brings us to 1983, the year before I was born. Everyone was making games. Most of those games were clones of successful ones. Everyone was making games consoles. Those consoles were dedicated to playing the clones. The market was saturated with poor-quality knock-offs. Worse, in 1977 the home computer had entered the market. By the early 80’s, the home computer was competing directly with games consoles. Investors withdrew from the console market. In 1982 the Commodore 64 was released, and sold 17 million units. There was no competition - the home computer had more memory, better graphics, could play games and run software like word processors.

E.T. Meanwhile, in the video game industry, developers were leaving companies like Atari to found their own start-ups - taking their knowledge of the systems with them. The big name companies were refusing to credit their developers, and the developers responded by selling secrets about the systems they had worked on. Hyped up games were rushed to market, and then failed dismally. Most notoriously was Atari’s E.T. tie-in, which had less than six weeks development, cost them a fortune for the rights, was rushed to market in time for Christmas, and which ended up as landfill.

And so, the golden era ended.

The Full History

A History of Computer Games: The Early Years
A History of Video Games: The Golden Years
A History of Computer Games: The Plumber is Nigh
A History of Video Games: The Commercial Years
A History of Computer Games: The Strategic Years
A History of Video Games: The Multiplayer Years

5 Responses to “A History of Video Games: The Golden Years

Alec Shade Says:
December 19th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

A very interesting 2 part article which I honestly enjoy reading. I don’t know how much people are reading this story, but I think you are great just for the effort of continually posting your thoughts. Thank you!

Keira Peney Says:
December 21st, 2007 at 8:44 am

Thanks for the kind comment