Tron (video game)Tron is a coin-operated arcade video game manufactured and distributed by Bally Midway in 1982. The game consists of four subgames inspired by the events of the Walt Disney Productions motion picture Tron released earlier in the summer. The lead programmer was Bill Adams. The music programmer was Earl Vickers. Tron was followed by a 1983 sequel, Discs of Tron, which was not as successful. A number of other licensed Tron games were released for home systems, but these were based directly on elements of the movie and not the arcade game.
History of video gamesThe history of video games began in the 1950s and 1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframes. Spacewar! was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student hobbyists in 1962 as one of the first such games on a video display. The first consumer video game hardware was released in the early 1970s. The first home video game console is the Magnavox Odyssey, and the first arcade video games are Computer Space and Pong.
StratovoxStratovox, known in Japan as Speak & Rescue (スピーク&レスキュー), is a 1980 arcade fixed shooter developed and published in Japan by Sun Electronics and released in North America by Taito. It is the first video game with voice synthesis. The player must shoot UFOs attempting to kidnap astronauts that appear on the right side of the screen. If all astronauts are kidnapped, the game is over. Among the voices the player hears are the phrases "Help me, help me", "Very good!", "We'll be back" and "Lucky".
CinematronicsCinematronics Incorporated was an arcade game developer that primarily released vector graphics games in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While other companies released games based on raster displays, early in their history, Cinematronics and Atari, Inc. released vector-display games, which offered a distinctive look and a greater graphic capability (at the time), at the cost of being only black and white (initially). Cinematronics also published Dragon's Lair in 1983, the first major LaserDisc video game.
ScrollingIn computer displays, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display, vertically or horizontally. "Scrolling," as such, does not change the layout of the text or pictures but moves (pans or tilts) the user's view across what is apparently a larger image that is not wholly seen. A common television and movie special effect is to scroll credits, while leaving the background stationary.
