Concept
Golden age of arcade video games
Related concepts (55)
PC game
A personal computer game, also known as computer game or abbreviated PC game, is a electronic game played on a personal computer (PC) and form of video game. They are defined by the open platform nature of PC systems. Mainframe and minicomputer games are a precursor to personal computer games. Home computer games became popular following the video game crash of 1983, leading to the era of the "bedroom coder". In the 1990s, PC games lost mass market traction to console games on the fifth generation such as the Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation.
Tron
Tron (stylized as TRON) is a 1982 American science fiction action adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. The film stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programmer and video game developer who is transported inside the software world of a mainframe computer where he interacts with programs in his attempt to escape; it also stars Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, and Barnard Hughes.
Berzerk (video game)
Berzerk is a multidirectional shooter designed by Alan McNeil and released for arcades in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago. Following Taito's Stratovox, it is one of the first arcade video games with speech synthesis. Berzerk places the player in a series of top-down, maze-like rooms containing armed robots. Home ports were published for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Vectrex. A sequel, Frenzy, was released in 1982. When the game begins, the player controls a green stick man on the left of the screen.
Q*bert
Qbert (ˈkjuːbərt; also known as Qbert) is an arcade video game developed and published for the North American market by Gottlieb in 1982. It is a 2D action game with puzzle elements that uses isometric graphics to create a pseudo-3D effect. The objective of each level in the game is to change every cube in a pyramid to a target color by making Qbert, the on-screen character, hop on top of the cube while avoiding obstacles and enemies. Players use a joystick to control the character.
Gottlieb
Gottlieb (formerly D. Gottlieb & Co.) was an American arcade game corporation based in Chicago, Illinois. It is best known for creating a vast line of pinball machines and arcade games (including Q*bert) throughout much of the 20th century. Gottlieb's main office and plant was at 1140-50 N. Kostner Avenue until the early 1970s, when a new modern plant and office were opened at 165 W. Lake Street in Northlake, IL. A subassembly plant was also built in Fargo, ND.
Breakout (video game)
Breakout is an arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and released on May 13, 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak, based on conceptualization from Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, who were influenced by the seminal 1972 Atari arcade game Pong. In Breakout, a layer of bricks lines the top third of the screen and the goal is to destroy them all by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them. The arcade game was released in Japan by Namco.
Parallax scrolling
Parallax scrolling is a technique in computer graphics where background images move past the camera more slowly than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in a 2D scene of distance. The technique grew out of the multiplane camera technique used in traditional animation since the 1930s. Parallax scrolling was popularized in 2D computer graphics with its introduction to video games in the early 1980s. Some parallax scrolling was used in the arcade video game Jump Bug (1981).
Defender (1981 video game)
Defender is a horizontally scrolling shooter video game developed by Williams Electronics in 1980 and released for arcades in 1981. A side-scrolling shooter, the game is set on either an unnamed planet or city (depending on platform) where the player must defeat waves of invading aliens while protecting astronauts. Development was led by Eugene Jarvis, a pinball programmer at Williams; Defender was Jarvis' first video game project and drew inspiration from Space Invaders and Asteroids.
Gorf
Gorf is an arcade video game released in 1981 by Midway Manufacturing, whose name was advertised as an acronym for "Galactic Orbiting Robot Force". It is a fixed shooter with five distinct levels, the first of which is based on Space Invaders and another on Galaxian. The game makes heavy use of synthesized speech for the Gorfian robot which teases the player, powered by the Votrax speech chip. Gorf allows the player to buy two additional lives per quarter before starting the game, for a maximum of seven lives.
Space Invaders
is a 1978 shoot 'em up arcade video game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado. It was manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and licensed to the Midway division of Bally for overseas distribution. Space Invaders was the first fixed shooter and set the template for the genre. The goal is to defeat wave after wave of descending aliens with a horizontally moving laser to earn as many points as possible.