- Eugene Jarvis, the designer and programmer of Defender,
went on to program such hits as Stargate, Robotron,
and more recent hits like NARC and Cruis'n USA.
- Pac-Man spawned ten arcade game sequels:
Ms. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, Baby Pac-Man, Professor Pac-Man,
Jr. Pac-Man, Pac & Pal, Pac-Land, Pac-Mania and Pac-Man VR.
- Pinball was banned in New York
until 1976.
- Vectrex
was a self-contained arcade game system that allowed consumers to play
vector games at home.
- It was only recently that someone was able to achieve the
perfect score on Pac-Man. In 1999, Billy Mitchell reached a score of
3,333,360 points, the highest score possible on the game.
- Most videogames you see our on site
are close to or over 20 years old. Has it really been that long since
you played them as a kid??
- Steve Juraszek was a 15
year-old prodigy who was able to score over 15 million in Defender. I
challenge you to score over 100,000!!!
- You are standing at the end of a road
before a small brick building. (What?! You don't
remember Adventure?!)
- At their peak, video arcade games grossed more money than
the music, books and movie industries.
- In addition to Tron,
the arcade game Discs of Tron was created for
the movie, but it wasn't finished in time for the premiere. The upright version,
and the coveted Environmental Discs of Tron (EDoT)
have become hot collector items. EDot features
digitalized speech, and
Sark
taunts you!
- True story: the first successful arcade game was tested at
Andy Capp's tavern. A few weeks after being on
location, it broke down. The reason? It was
jammed with quarters.
- Baby Pac-Man was the first and only one of
three video game / pinball hybrid games every made. The other two games:
Granny and the Gators (also released by Bally) and Caveman (released by
Gottlieb) were not very successful.
- During the peak of the arcade game industry in 1982 over
1.5 million games appeared in 24,000 arcades and other locations across the
U.S.
- Computer Space, the first arcade game ever
made was released in three colors: green, red and blue.
- Sprint 2
was actually the first Sprint game released? The "2" represents
the number of players that could play the game. Sprint 1 was released two
years later in 1978.
- Many
classic games were converted to newer games (by replacing the controls,
marquee and game board) since they no longer made money in arcades. In
retrospect, this wasn't such a good idea, since classics are the most
popular games today.
-
Tank,
a black and white arcade game released in 1974 was the first arcade game to
use a ROM (read only memory) chip.
-
Nintendo’s
first arcade game, Radarscope did not sell well. In fact 2,000 of the 3,000
games made were converted in Donkey Kong games, leading to the harder to
find Donkey Kong games in red cabinets (as opposed to the traditional blue
cabinet Donkey Kongs).
-
To
date, no home system has matched the success of the Atari 2600 (a.k.a. the
VCS). It was in production for an amazing 14 years.
-
Space
Invaders earned three times as much money as the
original Star Wars movie grossed at the box office.
-
What
the complete Joust collection is? Joust, Joust 2, and
Joust pinball. (Joust pinball pits players against one another.)
-
Atari
developed a very unique pinball game named Hercules. It was so large that it
used a billard cue ball for a pinball!
-
The
thing with Pac-Man, is that you've got to
decimate, before you're decimated. It's just like life. --Jeff Spicolo,
Fast Times At Ridgemont High.
-
It
is not uncommon for many hardcore arcade collectors to have games in their
living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom. Yes, some of us have serious
issues.
-
Centipede
was the first arcade game designed by a woman.
- In
1972, Pong was first put on a test location in a local bar. After two
weeks, Atari was called to fix the machine. The problem: it was jammed
with too many quarters.
- Nintendo’s first arcade game,
Radarscope did not sell well. In fact 2,000 of the 3,000 games made
were converted in Donkey Kong games, leading to the harder to find
Donkey Kong games in red cabinets (as opposed to the traditional blue
cabinet Donkey Kongs).
- Mario, Nintendo’s star character of
Donkey Kong fame was originally called "jumpman".
- Pac-Man spawned ten arcade game
sequels: Ms. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, Baby Pac-Man,
Professor Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man, Pac & Pal, Pac-Land, Pac-Mania and
Pac-Man VR.
- When released Asteroids was so popular
that many arcade operators needed to make bigger coin boxes to hold
the quarters the game collected