Whether you remember old arcade games or not, you absolutely should know some basic classification of them and this article will be a perfect guide for you. The world of retro arcade games is waiting for you!
Redemption and merchandiser arcade games
An arcade game is the term which does not primarily stand for these arcade video game machines that we are talking about here. There are other games such as Pinball machines, various games requiring certain skills, for example chess, table-top games or any games that can be played successfully under the condition of you having certain physical and mental skills.
There are also redemption games, where players play to earn a redemption ticket or something alike which they could use to redeem various rewards. One more popular kind of typical arcade games is the one that could be seen around the amusement arcades, known as a merchandisers. Most of the merchandisers allowed players to pick their choices of toys or other stuff that they needed to skilfully pick or get by putting both their logical skills and physical abilities.
This is also the reason why such merchandiser games are called a hybrid arcade game, where you have to show off your skill, typically called “Skill with prize” or SWP and games of chance. One of the most popular and typically seen merchandiser game is the claw crane. This one will require operating a crane and grabbing a toy in such a manner that you will be able to carry it to the exit point.
A short history of arcade games
Arcade video games came into existence around the 1970s. The first type of arcade game that was released and came out as a breakthrough was the ‘Pong’. This was a multiplayer game. Comparing to the current games, Pong is the most boring game to play now but this was a massive hit back then. In fact, the whole gaming idea existed because Pong was launched in the first place.
The idea was so simple yet revolutionary. There were some bunch of electronic components like computer circuits. Which would take input from the players and compute them accordingly and would show the result of the computation on the screen for visual representation.
This was the whole revolution behind all of these modern games we have at our disposal now.
This was mostly the time of TTL, which stands for transistor-transistor-logic. Games like the Galaxy game, Pong, Computer space were all designed using the TTL based gaming mechanism. As the technology evolved and the world saw the next generation of integrated circuits spanning to microprocessors, the next revolutionary era of gaming started. This was the 1980s. Games like Space Invaders had already been dominating the market from the late 70s. 1980s arcade machines gave birth to the Pac-Man, Missile Command by Atari and Donkey Kong by Nintendo.
Unfortunately, the madness of these arcade games began to wane down in 1983 with the arousal of home video game consoles, personal computers and other gaming devices. This was a heartbreak all arcade gaming youths at the same time relief for the parents of those young chaps. The whole arcade gaming was more than just playing games but was a lifestyle and culture.
Yes, the game Pong is actually pretty boring. I stopped playing after few minutes of try.