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Was the Golden Age so ‘Golden'?
The strong emotions that surround arcade nostalgia are a big factor in the popularity of MAME and Retro gaming in general. The love for playing games in darkened mall arcades – bleeding fingers and sweaty palms – nostalgic reminiscences of the coin gobbling cabinets of lost youth. More recently a whole new generation have beloved memories of sitting in swaying simulators or playing frenzied shooting or beat-em-up action on the latest big cabinet. However the purveyor of this entertainment – video amusement – seems to have fallen from grace, seemingly a bygone entertainment media.
Well in reading this feature you will understand that there is more to video amusement than just nostalgia and that its time is far from over. Trying to understand how the video coin-op sector moved from ‘king of the hill' to ‘down in the dumps'.
Taito's 1972 release of Space Monsters that was eventually turned in to Space Invaders by Toshihiro Nishikado. The ability to create a coin-operated entertainment media that was so enthralling that it could cause a shortage in coinage in order to feed the gaming addiction earmarked arcades for greatness. Looking at the technology from its first real adoption in 1971 with Computer Space, moving onto the success of PONG and the phenomena that was Space Invaders, and then PacMan, we have seen the creation of a established market by an American corporation (Atari) building off of the infrastructure that had fed pinball. With the cultivation of this market and the creation of video renditions of previous mechanic amusement games (Taitotronic's Space Invaders was based on the mechanical game Space Monsters, released by Taito Trading Co., in 1972), Japan took control and the American sector became a distribution and sales powerhouse (Atari however continuing as a highly influential technical originator).
The difficulty in recounting the 1971 to 1983 period of video amusement is that most of the main manufacturers of arcade cabinets were just that – manufacturers. Companies more focused on the hardware, cabinetry and sales opportunities - while the actual science of game design and the understanding of the various genres, needed to establish the market, proved to be less important to them. Mining the trends employed for mechanical games and applying them to video cabinets slowed down by 1979, and more and more original adaptations of the video-playing environment started, the modern structure of video gaming establishes itself as more than a fad.
It is important to remember that the players disposable income that feeds the gaming environment is dependant not just on a enticing game, but on a game that is popular and offers group entertainment. Video amusement by its very nature offers a means for players to demonstrate within groups and to their equals their skill at a particular game – the highscore chart a crucial component in establishing this. The subsequent cabinets construction has been to offer not just the best playing position but also the means for surrounding viewers to see the action on screen.
However as the game content became more formulaic in 1983, players started to go elsewhere and sales declined, forcing operators to ring the changes.
1984 – The real amusement decline?
As has been covered in microscopic detail by myself and others regarding the factors of the 1984 video amusement crash, and subsequent 1986 rebirth – it can easily be described as replacing an identical upright cabinet bad idea. Replacing just the PCB (printed circuit board - think open game cartridge) inside the cabinet, with a universal connector (JAMMA), good!
The establishment of the Japanese Amusement Machine Manufacture Association (JAMMA) standard also had a number of other benefits. For one, the removal of the bar to membership of the amusement machine (AM) manufacturers club requiring the ability to build, service and distribute games. The JAMMA standard meant that the PCB's became the key focus for the smaller developers, gone was their near slavery in supporting the old guard able to afford to make cabinets. Companies such as Data East, Capcom, SNK, Toaplan, Irem, Tecmo, Jaleco, and Video Systems – to name a few – found freedom and independence to shine.
Astron Belt, the first laserdisc game - designed by Sega and released in Japan in 1982. It didn't hit the U.S. until late 1983 through Bally/Midway. It was not that the swapping out of cabinets was the only factor in the 1983-4 Crash, the danger of under performing content and technology also played its part. The appearance of laserdisc games seemed to offer a over hyped opportunity to relive the boom days of Pac-Man and Space Invaders - only to fill warehouses with unsold stock and arcades bereft of players, compounded with operator cold feet to buy expensive and unpopular cabinets.
It would take two years for the ghosts of 1984 to be laid to rest and for the industry to find a method to rectify the lack of appealing content, and the operator's hatred of redundant acquisitions. However the ghost of what brought about 1984 would come back to haunt the industry only in a matter of years.
SOURCE: classicgaming.com
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