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The Golden Age of Arcades: Late 70s to Mid 80s
In short
Before consoles took over the living room, the place to play was a dark, noisy arcade full of glowing cabinets. For a few dazzling years, roughly from 1978 to 1983, arcade video games were one of the biggest entertainment businesses in the world.
Fun fact: Space Invaders' screen was really black and white. The green and other colours came from strips of coloured cellophane stuck over parts of the monitor.
The full story
Before the boom
Arcade video games began in 1971 with Computer Space, made by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, who went on to found Atari. Atari followed it in 1972 with Pong. The industry grew steadily but quietly for the rest of the decade. Then a game from Japan changed everything.
Space Invaders lights the fuse (1978)
Taito released Space Invaders in 1978, designed by Tomohiro Nishikado. It was one of the first games to keep a high score between plays, which gave players a reason to come back, and its marching beat sped up as the aliens got closer. That simple trick piled on the tension.
It was huge. Taito estimated it had sold more than 100,000 machines in Japan by the end of 1978, and over 60,000 had been sold in the US by 1980. Contemporary estimates put its takings at around $2 billion by 1982, which made it the highest-grossing entertainment product of its day, ahead of Star Wars. The tale that it caused a national shortage of 100-yen coins in Japan is widely regarded as an urban legend.
The rush that followed (1979–1981)
After Space Invaders, everyone wanted a hit. 1979 brought Namco's Galaxian and Atari's Asteroids, which drew its spaceships with vector lines. Arcades spread into cafés, shops, airports and hotel lobbies, and the games moved from black-and-white to colour.
- Pac-Man (1980): Namco released it in Japan on 22 May 1980 as Puck Man, and Midway brought it to the US that October. The name was changed so nobody could vandalise the "P". Toru Iwatani designed it to appeal beyond the young male crowd, and it gave gaming its first true mascot, along with power-ups and little cutscenes between levels.
- Missile Command and Berzerk (1980) added Cold War jitters and talking robots.
- Donkey Kong (1981): Shigeru Miyamoto built it partly to reuse unsold Radar Scope cabinets. It first appeared in Japan on 9 July 1981, reached North America in October 1981, and introduced Jumpman, the carpenter who would become Mario. Space Panic got there first, but Donkey Kong became the template for the platform game.
- Defender, Frogger, Galaga and Centipede (1981) all became staples.
For many of us in the UK, these machines were part of seaside piers, chip shops and pubs, eaten up ten pence at a time.
The crash and the recovery (1983 onwards)
By 1983 the market was saturated. Too many similar games, too many cabinets and the North American home console crash all hit at once, and takings fell sharply. Many historians close the golden age here.
Arcades didn't die, though. From the mid-1980s, conversion kits let operators swap games into existing cabinets cheaply, new genres like the scrolling beat-'em-up arrived, and Sega's motion cabinets such as Hang-On (1985) and Out Run (1986) made the arcade feel special again. That set the stage for the next boom in 1991, when Street Fighter II arrived.
Legacy
The golden age set the basic grammar of games: lives, levels that get harder, high-score tables and characters with personalities. It also helped drive down the cost of microchips and hardware, which eased the way for home computers. Most importantly, it made Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Mario names that everyone knew.
For the nerds (click to open)
Inside Space Invaders (1978)
| Part | Detail |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel 8080 at 1.9968 MHz |
| Program ROM | 8 KB |
| RAM | 1 KB general RAM plus 7 KB video RAM (1 bit per pixel) |
| Resolution | 256×224, on a monitor turned on its side |
| Helper chip | An external shift register to move the invaders quickly, because the 8080 had no fast shift instruction |
| Sound | Texas Instruments SN76477 plus analogue circuits |
| Colour | Black-and-white CRT with coloured cellophane overlays |
Before CPUs: Pong (1972)
Pong had no processor and no RAM or ROM at all. Its game was built from roughly 66 TTL logic chips running off a 7.159 MHz clock, which drew the ball and paddles directly in time with the TV's electron beam. Space Invaders marks the shift to microprocessor games.
Playing, values and builds
Playing them today
Original cabinets are big, heavy and need care, but they turn up on auction sites and at specialist restorers. For most of us, official collections on modern consoles, or a mini cabinet, are the easier way back in. Arcade history books also make great gifts for fans.
Where to buy now
Find retro arcade on eBay UK (opens in new tab) (Ad: affiliate link)