The introduction of gaming all started back in the early 70's with strangely enough, a oscilloscope. A man named William Higinbotham created a game on the oscilloscope called "Tennis for Two" which is a two dimensional representation of a tennis court which then appeared on the oscilloscope screen. This game was then said to become extremely popular and started the revolution of gaming.
The next big thing that was created was the Arcade Machine. This was originally created with a television screen inside a cabinet with extremely primitive games that were started by inserting the amount of coins that were asked to be inserted.
The Arcade Machine first appeared in 1971 when students from Stanford University set up an arcade game called, Galaxy Game. Galaxy Game was the very first commercial video game. It was installed in Tresidder Union in September 1971, the game was quickly acknowledged by the Stanford community, with people waiting for up to hours for a turn of this machine. The typical features of an arcade game consisted of a monitor, on which the game is displayed. They may display either raster or vector graphics, raster being most common. Standard resolution is between 262.5 and 315 vertical lines, depending on the refresh rate (usually between 50 and 60 Hz). Slower refresh rates allow for better vertical resolution. Monitors may be oriented horizontally or vertically, depending on the game. Some games use more than one monitor. Some newer cabinets have monitors that can display high-definition video. They also featured printed circuit boards (PCB) or arcade system boards, the actual hardware upon which the game runs. Hidden within the cabinet. Some systems, such as the SNK Neo-Geo MVS, use a main board with game carts. Some main boards may hold multiple game carts as well.
A power supply to provide DC power to the arcade system boards and low voltage lighting for the coin slots and lighted buttons.
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| Some of the features available on the original arcade machine. |
A marquee, a sign above the monitor displaying the game's title. They are often brightly colored and backlit.
A bezel, which is the border around the monitor. It may contain instructions or artwork.
A control panel, a level surface near the monitor, upon which the game's controls are arranged. Control panels sometimes have playing instructions. Players often pile their coins or tokens on the control panels of upright and cocktail cabinets.
Coin slots, coin returns and the coin box, which allow for the exchange of money or tokens. They are usually below the control panel. Very often, translucent red plastic buttons are placed in between the coin return and the coin slot. When they are pressed, a coin or token that has become jammed in the coin mechanism is returned to the player. See coin acceptor. Early coin slots could be defeated using a piezo-electric gas fire or gas oven igniter held against the steel bodywork of the cabinet, thus enabling free credits to be obtained. In some arcades, the coin slot is replaced with a card reader that reads data from a game card bought from the arcade operator.
The sides of the arcade cabinet are usually decorated with brightly coloured stickers or paint, representing the gameplay of their particular game.
After this very large companies realized that they could make a lot of money making Arcade Machines, so they began to make their own Arcade Machines using their own game ideas.
In 1972 the company named Atari was formed by Nolan Bushnel and Ted Dabney, who were originally an engineering firm called Syzygy Engineering. Atari essentially created the Coin-Operated video game industry with the video game named, Pong. The very first electronic Ping Pong video game. Imitators stopped Atari from dominating the entire video game market by recreating the pong Arcade Machine using different sprites and giving it a different name.
Atari are mostly responsible for a lot of the progress made in the gaming world. A lot of the games that they released inspired a chain of events that took gaming to the level that is is today. The games that inspired people the most were, Pong, Space invaders and Centipede.
After this chain-reaction the popularity of Arcade Machines went through the roof, they were being sold to. bars, pubs and even some restaurants.
Although the Arcade Machine was popular, it had many limitations and flaws that some people may have not cared about back then. An example of the main limitation being the most obvious thing about it being that you had to go to it and spend money every time you wanted to play it. People back then wouldn't have cared because they didn't have Home Consoles, but this is one of the main reasons why people went on to invent Home Consoles in the first place.
In the 1990's there was a noticeable lack of profit in Arcade Machines, this was because they simply began dying out as they became less popular due to the increase of home consoles.
In the late 80's and early 90's a lot of consoles were made rendering arcade machines useless as a person could buy a game once and play it as many times as they wanted. there was later production of a hand held console created by Nintendo called, the Game Boy in 1989.
Nintendo and Sega today are two of the most successful game companies in the world, and are largely responsible for the way we see games today, starting with very influential and successful games that they released as arcade machines.
Nintendo even revolutionized the way we play games with their arcade game Wild Gunman released in 1874 and was a Light Gun Shooter game, so the player was given a gun shaped controller so they could aim at the screen and fire, this drove the player to feel like an even bigger part of the game.
Other influential arcade games they made were, Donkey Kong and Space Firebird.
A lot of these game were created by one of Nintendo's Leading game designers, Shigeru Miyamoto, he is responsible for all of the signature nintendo Series, such as Mario and Zelda.
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