Tag-Archive for » Arcade «

80s Arcade Games

06 Dec 2010 by admin

The 1980s are considered to be the golden age of arcade games. It was in 1972 that the first electronic arcade games with coin slotting machines came into the limelight with Atari inventing the game called Pong, which was a ping-pong game. This game caught the imagination of gamers from all walks of life, especially teenagers who flocked game joints with coins in hand to play them. Though Atari could not maintain their supremacy in the Arcade game segment as a lot of clones came into the market, the 80s saw some of the most inventive Arcade games.

There were the popular pinball games, whose mechanical ancestors were replaced by state of the art electronic counterparts. There were arcade games to be seen all over, from the big shopping malls, to restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, bars, bowling alleys, college campuses, movie theatres, airports, bakeries etc. The phenomenon was popular all over the US and Japan and caught the fancy of the rest of the world as well.

The 80s saw some of the most popular arcade games ever, beginning with games like Space Invaders which made their debut in 1978, Pac-man in 1980, Donkey Kong in 1981 and Tapper in 1983 being the most popular ones.

Most of these games extensively used solid-state electronic technology and integrated circuits. Those operated by coins, usually ended up using multiple CPUs and additional sound and graphics chip boards, with the latest display technology of that time.

Yet, what perhaps made these games most popular across all sections of the society was the ease of use. It did not take much time to learn these games and they could be learned on the fly. The rules of the games were also simple. One could play the game as long as their character on the screen lived. Once it died, they had to put in another coin and start all over again.

Arcade Games provides detailed information on Arcade Games, Free Arcade Games, Online Arcade Games, Real Arcade Games and more. Arcade Games is affiliated with Online Computer Games [http://www.i-ComputerGames.com].

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Classic Arcade Games

05 Oct 2010 by admin

The new millennium is the millennia of PC games. But before PCs became a household phenomenon, the only games of its kind that kids knew, and a whole generation of Americans have grown up playing, were arcade games.

Arcade games consist of a simple, yet bulky machine, with a colorful screen, and some sticks or buttons to play with, and a device to put coins in, which allows the game to be played for a particular period of time.

Today, you can find arcade games that run on computers, using emulators. But before that had happened, arcade games were typically found, apart from the especial entertainment centres and video arcades, in restaurants, malls and movie halls. Kids and grown ups alike played mainly three types of arcade games: the famed pinball, video games or redemption games.

Yet, the ancestry of arcade games could be traced to the hugely popular games commonly known as the “amusement park midway games” like ball toss game and shooting galleries which were popular at the beginning of the 20th century.

The 1930s saw the first coin-operated pinball machines. Though being made of wood with all functions mechanical rather than electronic and being a far cry from the electronic ones that were to come much later, they were still quite a hit. The late seventies would see these mechanical pinballs being replaced by electronic games.

The change in fortunes of arcade games happened with the formation of a company called Atari in 1972. This company created the coin-operated machines, beginning with the electronic ping pong game, called Pong. Pong was a huge hit, and led to even more home video game systems being introduced onto the market.

Many games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders became huge hits in the late seventies and early eighties, paving the way to a revolution. The last breath to the arcade games was provided by the emergence of two player fighting games like Street Fighter II , Mortal Kombat¸ Fatal Fury, King of fighters etc in the early 90s. However, this was not to redeem the fate of arcade games completely, as the growth in computers and video technology saw the emergence of new type of games, including PC games and games that ran on special consoles such as the Playstation, Gameboy and the X-box pushing arcade games into the sidelines, to almost the end of their existence.

Arcade Games provides detailed information on Arcade Games, Free Arcade Games, Online Arcade Games, Real Arcade Games and more. Arcade Games is affiliated with Online Computer Games [http://www.i-ComputerGames.com].

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Basketball Arcade Games

10 Sep 2010 by admin

When arcade games gained popularity in the 1970s, they were the traditional type like the first pinball games, Pac-Mac, Pong, and Space Invaders. However, over time, the creators of these games realized they had to innovate and improve constantly to retain the attention of their players. This led to them diversifying into games like the High Impact Football game series. This was a completely new format for arcade games. However, these games did not do as well as their ancestors. Perhaps players took time to adjust to them.

It was not until the release of basketball arcade games that this type of game really caught on. The first that really took the arcade games by storm was NBA Jam. This genre got noticed immediately with its release and became popular worldwide.

NBA Jam was unique in a lot of ways. First of all it was more expensive than the other games, where finishing a game required no less than $2. It was also the very first game that used real teams, real players with their real names, with the digitized version of these players playing the game on screen.

Playing the game was akin to watching a game on TV, only better, since here the game players could make control every move of their favourite basketball players. More so, one could defy gravity to make them do what a player wanted them to do. This has been one of the criticisms of the game, that it featured unrealistic effects, with the players flying as much as their heights to score a point. Fans of the game however maintained, that this was actually a great high.

However, the game continued to climb on the popularity charts and featured basketball greats of their times like Karl Malone, Chris Webber, Colbert Cheaney, Jeff Hornacek, David Robinson, Charles Oakley among others. After a time people discovered other features of the game like Easter eggs and other special features to be activated by use of buttons and joysticks.

The game saw many sequels and spin-offs, including the NBA Jam: Tournament Edition, NBA Jam Extreme of 1996 and even a 3D version of the game featuring a commentary. The other games in the line were NBA Hangtime and NBA Hangtime Extreme. A college version of the game, called College Slam was also introduced in 1995.

The huge success of basketball games also gave rise to other sports games, which centred on games like football and baseball.

Arcade Games provides detailed information on Arcade Games, Free Arcade Games, Online Arcade Games, Real Arcade Games and more. Arcade Games is affiliated with Online Computer Games [http://www.i-ComputerGames.com].

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Free Arcade Games

03 Sep 2010 by admin

Arcade games are an age-old tradition. They have existed as a term since the heyday of the pinball machine, and even earlier in many cases. There are several websites that offer free arcade games including solo player, multi-player, action, adventure, card/casino, racing or skill games. Some of the popular free gaming sites on the Internet are game.co.in, free-games-online.com, freearcade.com, ultimatearcade.com, Cnet’s download.com, and freeclassicgames.com. Arcadenut.com, Funny-games.biz and GameAlbum.com are other great entertainment sites which offer free arcade games.

Free Games (www.free-games.au) is an online directory of free games on the Internet, which also reviews and ranks the most popular games. Per their lists, the five most popular games available on their site are The Mafia Boss, Real Mud – the 4th Coming, Runescape, Aegis and Terraworld. All these games are massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPG).

Some popular arcade games from the 1980s are available at Triplets and Us (http://www.tripletsandus.com/80s/80s_games/arcade.htm). These include PacMan, Frogger, Space Invaders, Mario Brothers, Asteroids and Tetris. The site also contains links to several Java arcade emulator game sites.

Flash Games ([http://www.t45ol.com/flash-game/arcade-games.php]) offers all free arcade games in Flash. The site contains the traditional arcade games in flash format like Space Invaders, Pong, Super Mario Brothers, Tetris, Donkey Kong and Street Fighter.

Arcade RockStar (http://www.arcaderockstar.com/) is a free gaming network where members participate in daily tournaments, and win cool prizes like cell phones, iPods, gift cards and Sony PSPs, among others. Since it is an ad-supported network, the members must be prepared for different forms of ads such as sponsorships, sweepstakes, banners, text links or pop-ups.

Arcade Games provides detailed information on Arcade Games, Free Arcade Games, Online Arcade Games, Real Arcade Games and more. Arcade Games is affiliated with Online Computer Games [http://www.i-ComputerGames.com].

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Arcade Games

17 Jul 2010 by admin

Arcade games are typically coin-operated games found in restaurants, pubs, video arcades, and other public spaces. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines or redemption (rewarding the player per their score) games. These machines are programmed and equipped for a specific game, and consist of a video display, a set of controls (joystick, buttons, light guns or pressure-sensitive pads on the ground), and the coin slot.

Arcade games usually have very short levels, simple controllers, iconic characters, and increasing levels of complexity. They are designed as short adrenaline-driven thrillers compared to most console games, which have more complex play and stronger storylines. One reason for this is that since the game is coin-operated, the player rents the game for as long as their game avatar survives on the field. Any game on a console or a PC can be referred to as ‘arcade game’ if it has these attributes.

The history of arcade games dates back to the early 20th century amusement park games like shooting galleries, mechanical fortune-tellers or jukeboxes.

Today, there are 4,926 known arcade games, and these modern avatars are based on pure electronics and integrated circuits. The modern arcade games were developed in the 1970s, and one of the most famous of these early games is Pong, a simple game simulating Ping Pong.

Ralph Baer, who is now known as the creator of video games, created the first known home video game consoles in the 1970s. Improvements were brought to home consoles from late 1970s to early 1980s, the time during which Atari 2600, Intellivision and Colecovision were released. The video game slump of 1983 was not filled until the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) reached North America in 1985. This was when games like Mario Bros. and many others of today’s popular Nintendo games were launched.

The last two decades of gaming history have witnessed the creation of separate markets for games on video game consoles, home PCs and handheld devices.

The latest generation of arcade video games also has interactivity as part of the game design, making the game player feel more involved in the game. A radical form of interactivity, virtual reality, has not really taken off in the arcade game genre, but this is due to the technical limitations of truly being able to achieve real virtual reality by any means.

Arcade Games provides detailed information on Arcade Games, Free Arcade Games, Online Arcade Games, Real Arcade Games and more. Arcade Games is affiliated with Online Computer Games [http://www.i-ComputerGames.com].

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