The Video Game Revolution and the Golden Age of Arcade Video Games

The Video Game Revolution and the Golden Age of Arcade Video Games

Years before there were video games the closest thing to that you could play were pinball machines. They were pretty much relegated to bars and bowling alleys, though you could occasionally find them in a café or other locale. The first video game in wide release was a table top version of Pong, from Atari. I personally remember seeing my first video game, and it was Pong, sitting in the lobby of a Quality Inn hotel, with a comfortable chair on either side of it. It was so simplistic, yet to me it was the future. I was fascinated by it and amazed. I had seen nothing like it before. You could spend hours just watching the electronic ball bouncing back and forth between the virtual paddles. Bleep, bloop, bleep, bloop…thinking back on it now it seems a little ludicrous but at the time it was the state of the art. With this simple game, Atari had eclipsed the entire pinball industry and consigned it to eventual doom. Pinball games still exist to this day but are by and large extinct. They are just not diverse enough to keep people’s attention in a day and age where video games have become more real looking than anyone ever imagined they possibly could.

Shortly after this a number of games came out on the market. Space Invaders, then Asteroids, Galaxian, Bandito, Balloon Bomber, Space Wars, Lunar Lander and more. Then an explosion of games came; Battlezone, Tempest, Star Castle, Pac Man, Bezerk, Centipde, Defender and more. The Golden Age of Arcade Video Games had officially arrived..