Interesting game facts
Dragons Lair
1. Dragon's Lair was the first
game that cost 50 cents to play.
2. Dragon's Lair wasn't the
first laser disc game, but it was the most well known (and the most successful).
3. Dragon's Lair was so popular
when released arcades would put a TV monitor on top of the game so others could watch the game being played.2. Space Invaders earned three times as much money as the original Star Wars movie
grossed at the box office.
4. Space Ace was released as
both a conversion kit and a dedicated game. The conversion kits usually converted Dragon's Lair machines. The dedicated games are extremely rare today.
5. Dragon's Lair II production
as put on hold because of the decline in popularity of arcade games. It was finally released in 1991.
Pac Man
1. There are 240 dots to be
devoured in each Pac-Man maze.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. The actual names of the
ghosts in Pac-Man are: Shadow, Speedy, Bashful and Pokey. The ghosts' nicknames are Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, respectively.
5. Pac-Man's creator came up
with the Pac-Man character after looking at a pizza missing one slice.
6. 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.
7. The smash hit song Pac-Man
Fever made it all the way to #9 on the charts. The song was performed by Buckner & Garcia who also wrote Froggy's Lament, Do the Donkey Kong, and The Defender.
8. Pac-Man was originally released
in Japan as Puck Man. When the game was brought over to the US, the name was changed due to fears of people using the name in a more vulgar sense. Hint: What rhymes with puck?
9. Bally released a trivia
game know as Professor Pac-Man. The game was a huge bomb, only 400 were made (by comparison over 100,000 Pac-Man games were made).
10. During the heyday of arcade
games, a number of boardgames were released based on games including Pac-Man, Zaxxon, Pitfall, Donkey Kong, Berzerk, Centipede and Q*Bert.
Defender
1. At the 1981 AMOA (Amusement
Machine Operators of America) convention in 1981, Defender won "videogame of the year."
2. 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.
3. 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!!!
4. Defender was the first game
to keep track of action that happened "off screen." In the scanner area, you could watch as Landers upducted the humans.
5. Eugene Jarvis designed Defender
in 1980.
6. Williams arcade games such
as Defender, Stargate, Robotron and Sinistar are among the most challenging and difficult games to play.
Pong
1. Pong, the first successful
arcade game ever released also had the simpliest game play: "avoid missing ball for high score."
2. The first successful arcade
game was tested on located at an establishment known as "Andy Capp's." That game was Atari's Pong.
3. 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.
4. Pong was not the first video
game, but the first successful video game.
Computer Space first arcade
game
1. Computer Space, the first
arcade game ever made was released in three colors: green, red and blue.
2. The first arcade game (Computer
Space) was a flop. It was too hard to understand.
Firsts
1. Gorgar, a pinball game released
by Williams in 1979 was the first arcade game or pinball machine to use synthesized speech.
2. Tail Gunner, a game released
by Cinematroncs in 1981 was the first game to use true 3-D graphics.
3. Berzerk is the only game
known to have caused a fatality. In the early 1980s a person died of a heart attack while playing the game.
4. Atari Football (released
in 1979) was the first game to use a trak-ball controller.
5. Steve Russell, an MIT student,
created Spacewar in 1961. This was the basis for the first video arcade game.
6. Food Fight, an Atari classic
from 1983, was the first game and the only classic to feature an "instant replay" feature. The feature appears when a round lasts a long time or the player has a lot of narrow escapes.
7. Gun Fight, a Midway game
produced in 1975 was the first game to use a microprocessor. The microprocessor's speed? A whopping 2 mhz.
8. Tank, a black and white
arcade game released in 1974 was the first arcade game to use a ROM (read only memory) chip.
9. 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.
10. Galaga was one of the first
games to feature a bonus stage.
11. Warrior, a vector game
by Cinematronics was the first one-on-one fighting game. The game was released in 1979, predating Street Fighter by 8 years.
12. Budweiser Tapper, a Bally
Midway game where you play a bartender who serves beer to customers was also released in another form: Rootbeer Tapper (a non-alcoholic form) to appease child-oriented arcades.
13. I Robot was first game
to use 3-D polygon graphics. The game was released by Atari in 1983. Yes 1983. Take that Nintendo and Sony.
14. Centipede was the first
arcade game designed by a woman.
15. Humpty Dumpty was the first
pinball machine to use flippers.
Atari
1. Nolan Bushnell originally
developed games under the name "Syzygy." After his first creation, he started the company known as Atari.
2. Nolan Bushnell, the founder
of Atari also founded Chuck E Cheese.
3. 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.
4. Atari was commissioned by
the U.S. military to develop a training simulator version of Battlezone. Two cabinets were made with a modified version of original Battlezone.
5. Steve Jobs originally worked
for Atari. Yup, he left to start that little company now known as Apple.
6. A number of companies released
clones of Atari's Pong after the game was a huge success.
7. Atari developed a very unique
pinball game named Hercules. It was so large that it used a billard cue ball for a pinball!
Tron
1. Tron was a box-office flop,
but an arcade sensation.
2. 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!
3. The levels of TRON are RPG,
COBOL, BASIC, FORTRAN, SNOBOL, PL1, PASCAL, ALGOL, ASSEMBLY, OS, JCL, and finally USER. (Most of these are old programming languages.)
4. Flynn's is the name of the
arcade in Tron.
5. Space Paranoids was never
made. It was a fictional game that Jeff Bridge's character created in the movie Tron.
Television & Movies
1. Frogger was featured in
a Seinfeld epsiode. George had to get a Frogger arcade game across a busy street in New York. He didn't make it...
2. The classic "Silver Spoons"
TV show from the 80s has a Dragon's Lair, Gorf, and Asteroids Deluxe featured in Ricky's living room!
3. For the movie War Games,
Mathew Broderick was given a Galaga and a Galaxian to practice on. On screen, he played for a whopping 10 seconds or so.
4. Starcade was a game show
based on video games. Remember STARCADE!?! Contestants could win their very own arcade game.
5. Vanguard uses the music
that is featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Donkey Kong
1. Nintendos 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).
2. Nintendo released a sequel
to Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr.: Donkey Kong 3.
3. Mario, Nintendos star character
of Donkey Kong fame was originally called "jumpman".
4. Red Donkey Kong cabinets
are very rare. They are from the very first few made off the production line: Radarscope factory conversions. These games are VERY collectible.
5. A couple of classic games
were so popular that had their own cereal released. Anyone remember Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior and Pac-Man cereal?
Lawsuits
1. Jungle Hunt was originally
released as Jungle King starring a Tarzan-like character. The game was modified slightly and re-released as Jungle Hunt when the owner of the Tarzan rights threatened to sue for copyright
infringement.
Tempest
1. The concept for Tempest
was though up in a dream that game designer Dave Theurer had one night.
2. Tempest is the most popular
arcade games among collectors. According to the Video Arcade Preservation Society, 264 collectors owned the game (as of March 2001), followed by Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man.
Really Now!?!
1. When released Asteroids
was so popular that many arcade operators needed to make bigger coin boxes to hold the quarters the game collected.
2. Back in the 1980s many strategy
guides were released on playing and beating arcade games.
3. Many games with black and
white monitors used color overlays to simulate a color screen.
4. In Missile Command, you
will only loose up to three cities per round. Use that to your advantage, as you get an extra city every 10,000 points!
5. Crystal Castles is one of
the few classic arcade games to actually have an ending.
6. Chicken, Fight Like A Robot!
Berzerk digitized 31 words and re-arranged them in various combinations to produce a good size library of phrases.
7. Two arcade games have been
created based on music stars. Bally Midway released Journey in 1983, based on the rock group of the same name and Sega released Michael Jackson's Moonwalker in 1990.
8. Proper arcade etiquette
to let someone know you want to play the next game was (is) to put your quarter above the control panel or marquee bracket.
9. Many lesser know arcade
games were released for Colecovision (a home videogame console), including: Congo Bongo, Frenzy, Lady Bug, Looping, Q*Bert's Qubes, Space Fury, Space Panic and Victory.
10. Space Invaders caused a
coin shortage when originally released in Japan.
11. Pinball was banned in New
York until 1976.
12. When originally released
most arcade games cost anywhere from $1,700 to $4,500 per game.
13.Vectrex was a self-contained
arcade game system that allowed consumers to play vector games at home.
14. Most full size arcade games
weigh 250 350 pounds.
15. At their peak, video arcade
games grossed more money than the music, books and movie industries.
16. There have been over 3000
different arcade gmes made since they first appeared in the 1970s.
17. On average, we spent 8
hours cleaning and shopping out our games before we make them available for sale.
18. Over 40 different laser
disc games were made. Unfortunately nearly all of these games are very difficult to find nowadays.
19. 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.
20. Walter Day created Twin
Galaxies in 1981. This is the organization that keeps track of high scores.
21. During their peak popularity
arcade games were everywhere: pizza shops, restaurants, retail stores, even car dealerships.
22. 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.
23. Gorf has five levels: in
the last level, you fight the Gorfian Flagship. Good luck! You'll need it!
24. In Stargate, if you carry
four humans with you as you enter the stargate, you will warp four levels.
25. There were five Mr. Do
arcade games released: Mr. Do! (1982), Mr. Do's Castle (1983), Mr. Do's Wild Ride (1984), Do! Run Run (1984) and Neo Mr. Do! (1996).
26. Arcade games hold up amazingly
well in a game room as they were constructed to be turned on up to 16 hours a day or more. But to save wear and tear (and electricity!) you should keep your game off when not in use.
27. You are standing at the
end of a road before a small brick building. (What?! You don't remember Adventure?!)
28. Top arcade players can
play some games for over 20 hours on the same quarter.
29. What the complete Joust
collection is? Joust, Joust 2, and Joust pinball. (Joust pinball pits players against one another.)
30. Video game violence existed
prior to the Mortal Kombat era. In Exidy's Death Race (released in 1976) the player's goal was to drive over Gremlins (which appeared as real people to many). In Chiller, a later release by the
company from 1986, the object was to shoot
human targets and was quite gory for the time.
31. 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.
1. Most videogames you see
on QuarterArcade.com are close to or over 20 years old. Has it really been that long since you played them as a kid???
2. QuarterArcade.com uses a
real-time inventory system. Every game, part and item listed on their website is available for sale.
3. Their sister site, Great Game Database has information on nearly 6,500 games, including
2,400 arcade games, 2,200 console games
and 1,900 handheld games.
"Do You Know?" is from Quarter
Arcade web site. I got them throughout their web site!
