Back to the Arcade - Part 6 - Specific Games

Prior to 1978 there were a reasonable amount of games already in circulation; and there were actually arcades, but not the arcades we came to know in the early 1980's.   The older arcades were  filled with pinball machines and electro-mechanical games commonly referred to as Penny Arcades, whereas the arcades of the 1980's became known as video arcades. 

I mentioned in my intro that I played some of these games at local pizza parlors, as they were called back then.  I'm specifically talking about games that pre-date the Space Invaders, Centipede, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong craze that really launched the video arcade revolution.  In the introduction I mentioned a few games that I re-discovered during my journey to go Back to the Arcade.  I specifically mentioned Sprint One (1978), Sea Wolf (1976), and Lunar Lander (1979), but there are several others that fit into this category due to their unique cabinet and control designs.  Once the games of the 80's came into their own, most of them were displayed on color monitors and  controlled by a single joystick and 1 or 2 buttons. What makes the aforementioned games special is that they used unique control systems and presentation techniques to really immerse the player into the action. 

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Take Sea Wolf for instance, the player actually stood up and looked through a rotating periscope to sight enemy ships and used a button on the periscope grip to fire the torpedo.  Games of that era didn't even have the luxury of color screens so in this case the black & white screen was reflected onto a glass/mirror and a blue overlay was used to change the white graphics to blue for a more immersive experience.  

Sea Wolf Explosion

Add to that the idea of explosions when the enemy ships were hit.  This was accomplished by actual light bulbs behind the glass that would light up signifying a hit.

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Additionally, the player looking through the periscope also saw the status of the torpedo loads which were also indicated by actual light bulbs behind the red indicators.  Observers could stand to either side of the machine and watch the player sink ships, but it was only the player that got the full immersive experience.

Sea Wolf Periscope View

I have to admit that is was not until I tackled this project that I truly gained my appreciation for this game and the technology used.  I have probably spent more time trying to properly emulate Sea Wolf on my system more than any other game I have.

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Space Invaders also used the reflective technique and overlays to obtain a 3-D effect as well as giving color to a black & white screen.  Instead of using lights behind the reflective surface, they use a full color image of a planet surface.  Add a colorful bezel on the exterior glass and you have 3 specific depths to a 2 dimensional, black & white video screen. 

It is worth noting that not all of the Space Invaders games used this 3-D design in their cabinets. I remember the first one only being a black & white screen with transparent green overlays for the barricades at the bottom and a transparent red overlay for the special ship that transited the top of the screen. ​

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Atari Stunt Cycle

There were also some games that didn't even use a computer microprocessor (CPU) such as Atari's Stunt Cycle (1976) and Space Race (1973), which was the second game Atari released after Pong and marked the beginning of the commercial video game industry.  Instead, these games used integrated circuits to make the game work.  

Atari Space Race

There is currently an effort to emulate non-CPU based games such as this.  The project is called DICE which stands for Discrete Integrated Circuit Emulator and as of the time of this writing cannot be emulated on my Raspberry Pi.  

More information about the DICE project can be found at ​ https://unmamed.mameworld.info/no_cpu.html

This is actually a very interesting topic and for anyone who is interested in more information I would also suggest the following: http://discrete.mameworld.info/

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Continue to Part 7 - Hardware & Software

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary