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Advanced Lingo For Games
by Gary Rosenzweig

Chapter 2 Section 3

The first coin-operated video game was Nolan Bushnell's Computer Space. It was like Space War, with the user controlling a ship out to destroy an enemy flying saucer. The machine accepted quarters.

Computer Space was not very successful. It turned out that the concept and controls were too advanced for people that had never seen a computer before.

Bushnell took his modest profits, only $500, and created his own company: Atari.

Atari is the warning call that players give each other in the Japanese game of Go.

Atari's first creation was Pong, a game much simpler than Computer Space. The game was a success. Atari distributed the game through the same channels as pinball machines.

The next step for Atari was to sell Pong into homes. Atari teamed up with Sears to sell a home version of the game in 1975. Then, in 1976, Atari introduced Breakout, the first of the more complex video game classics. Not only was Breakout notable because of it brought video games to a new level, but also because it was designed by Steven Jobs, who later revolutionized the personal computer industry.

In 1979, a Japanese company, Taito, developed Space Invaders, the first genuine video game hit. It began to take over the arcades. Atari fought back with its own hit, Asteroids.

Figure 2.2

The heyday of video arcade games was in the early '80s, but the machines still remain popular today.

Also during 1979 and 1980, dozens of other games were invented where players fought robots and aliens. However, the next big hit came from a simple maze game where the hero was a yellow dot.

Pac-Mac was not expected to be a hit. It was seen as too "cute" to be taken seriously. But kids in the arcades loved it. It was also the first arcade game that appealed to girls as well as boys and the first video game to bring in money from merchandizing.

In 1982 there were 1.5 million arcade game machines in America in about 24,000 arcades and many miscellaneous locations. At the same time, 20 million home video games were sold, which cut heavily into the amount of television watched at home. In 1982, the video game industry was bringing in twice as much revenue as the American film industry.

The early '80s saw a constant stream of new video games by competing companies. The video arcade industry peaked around that time, and then fell back to the more stable level that we have today. This decline was caused by several factors, including the modernization of the mall and the advent of home game systems.