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TVTranscript
00:01We grew up in them.
00:04Space Invaders, that was great.
00:06The games I really loved were Asteroids,
00:09Missile Command, and above all, Defender.
00:15But I loved Robotron.
00:17I thought that was a really good, fantastic game.
00:20And they made a fortune, 25 cents at a time.
00:24We're talking about in 1981,
00:27Americans dropped 20 billion orders into arcade machines.
00:33They were the gaming world.
00:35It was really weird because it wasn't like a kid phenomenon.
00:39It was like really across-the-board phenomenon.
00:41They popped up everywhere.
00:43But all good things come to an end.
00:45It was a fad.
00:47I think there's no other way to put it until finally,
00:49you know, the whole thing just sort of collapsed under its own weight.
00:52This is the story of the birth and fall of the arcade industry.
01:22Starting as far back as the late 1800s,
01:25penny arcade machines such as strength testers and peep shows dot local pubs and fairgrounds.
01:31In 1927, David Gottlieb creates Baffle Ball, the precursor to the modern pinball machine.
01:37His simple game sparks the pinball craze.
01:39Soon, the mini arcades that grew out of the Great Depression are packed with pinball machines.
01:44For decades, pinball rules the arcades.
01:46But in 1971, a man named Nolan Bushnell changes everything.
01:51He wasn't much of an engineer, but he had these great ideas for doing businesses.
01:56He saw how he could take the technology we were using at Ampex
02:00and make a coin-operated amusement device that might be a hit.
02:07He then built this thing called Computer Space.
02:11Computer Space was not a great marketing success.
02:14Computer Space was a monumental flop.
02:16They made a thousand copies of it.
02:18They didn't sell all thousand copies of it.
02:20It wasn't popular.
02:21It didn't make it to very many venues.
02:23And where it did make it, it wasn't very popular.
02:30So he challenged me to do a ping-pong game.
02:34A very simple one-moving spot.
02:36Nothing could be simpler.
02:39Al got it to the point where it just had the two paddles.
02:43And it was rocking the ball back and forth.
02:45It was so much fun.
02:46I said, stop.
02:48We don't need to go to the next step.
02:51In 1972, the first Pong machine is placed in Andy Capp's pub in Sunnyvale.
02:56And from there, it becomes the world's first huge video game success.
03:00The average Pong machine pulls in $100 a week in quarters.
03:06Oh my God, it's everywhere.
03:09I'm like, oh God, what have I done?
03:14Soon, Atari isn't the only big company making coin-operated video games.
03:19Cinematronics makes a name for itself by releasing a number of successful vector games.
03:24A vector game, or a vector display, actually just takes a single beam,
03:30and the programmer, or hardware, directs it to go to this point to this point.
03:36And that draws a line.
03:39Among their releases is the world's first cooperative game, Ripoff, created by Tim Skelly in 1980.
03:47Ripoff was something that we had come up with just in kicking around some names for a game.
03:53And I had something that was kind of almost like centipedes in the back of my head.
03:56And I just decided that it would be more interesting if, instead of shooting at each other, that they both
04:04shot at the enemy.
04:06And believe it or not, market research said that cooperation amongst young people had become a major factor.
04:14And I thought, well that's great, that fits right into my plans.
04:18So, we made a cooperative game, and it became just a huge success and a great deal of fun to
04:23play.
04:26But the true arrival of the arcade is brought about by three key games.
04:39The first of these is Space Invaders, which is released in 1978.
04:45Space Invaders actually had gameplay that was interesting and actually had a scoring modality.
04:50So, a person could get a score, and you could compete with someone else and compare your scores.
04:54And therefore, a person could become, quote, a video game champion.
04:57So, Space Invaders was like the first game in this three game progression.
05:03With Asteroids following close behind.
05:06Asteroids, it was me for project leader.
05:08There was only one programmer.
05:09There was a technician, the electrical engineer.
05:13I did the art, just line drawings basically, all the fonts and stuff.
05:21That was basically an entire team.
05:25Lyle Raines called me in his office and said,
05:27we had this game called Cosmos, I think it was, where it was a big rock on the screen.
05:31The idea was to shoot the other player.
05:32But the rock was in the way, and people kept shooting the rock.
05:35And he said, well, they kept shooting the rock and rock, nothing happens.
05:37Why don't we put rocks on the screen and the player blows them up?
05:41And I said, well, that sounds like an interesting idea.
05:44Also, we need something to make the players come out more.
05:48So, I suggested a saucer, they'll come out and take a shot of the player,
05:50if you didn't do anything or if the number of rocks got real low.
05:54I just went out and did it.
05:55So, within a few weeks, I had things floating around the screen.
05:58And Asteroids suddenly had further enhanced game play,
06:01where people could get very high scores, and also got the competition going
06:05for people playing against each other in a bigger way than Space Invaders started,
06:09for high score laurels.
06:14And then, Pac-Man is unleashed.
06:17But the final thing that really got it going was the third game in this progression,
06:22and that's Pac-Man.
06:23When Pac-Man came out, it caused everybody to fall in love with video games.
06:27Men, women, children, professional people, anybody, any walk of life, any age,
06:33became enamored with video games.
06:35And Pac-Man single-handedly brought the entire female audience into the arcade,
06:40at the same time because of its uniqueness and because of its incredible across-spectrum appeal.
06:45Pac-Man was hit everywhere, it went right off the bat.
06:48The success of Pac-Man, Asteroids, and Space Invaders opens the floodgates for the arcade revolution.
06:56And the gaming world will soon become more successful than anyone ever dreamed.
07:13By the early 1980s, arcades are everywhere.
07:17Well, they popped up everywhere.
07:19You know, 7-Elevens would carry them.
07:21By the time we get to the middle 80s, grocery stores are carrying them.
07:26The funny one, of course, is at least one funeral home had a couple of arcade machines in its basement.
07:32It was an incredible phenomenon at that time.
07:37In 1981, Americans dropped 20 billion quarters into arcade machines.
07:46They spent 75,000 years playing arcade games in 1981.
07:52The media takes notice as arcades become part of popular culture.
07:56But at this point, we reached the peak where, you know, it was now okay for middle-class people to
08:01go into arcades.
08:02The arcade crowd back in the old days was really weird because you definitely had all the little scrubs like
08:06me,
08:06you know, like little kids who were riding their bikes there.
08:08And then you had, like, high school students and you had college students.
08:11It was mostly the guys, but you had the girls kind of hanging there looking at what was going on.
08:15But then it was also really weird because you had, like, businessmen.
08:18You just have to be kids. You didn't have to be young. You didn't have to be, you know, just
08:21a slacker.
08:22It was really weird because it wasn't like a kid phenomenon.
08:25It was, like, really across-the-board phenomenon in terms of who was playing arcade games.
08:30I think the Golden Age was, like, in the early to mid-80s, you know, when you had, like, all
08:34the amazing Midway games and the Atari games.
08:37Games like Joust, Robotron.
08:41The games I really loved were Asteroids, Missile Command, and, above all, Defender.
08:52Defender came out and that was, like, it changed the world.
08:56And thanks to people like Eugene Jarvis, creator of Defender and Robotron, the hits just keep coming.
09:03Eugene is a wild man.
09:07Eugene is a poster boy for something in our industry. I'm not sure why.
09:11Defender was cool because you'd see it and it was only the older kids could play it.
09:16Because it was so intimidating. There's, like, a thousand buttons.
09:18I remember, like, trying to play it a few times and couldn't get anywhere with it.
09:24Defender was the ultimate game for the hardcore gamer. It had seven buttons.
09:29I mean, I don't think any other game had that degree of control complexity. Just trying to keep track of
09:33them would drive you crazy.
09:36I think my right pinky is still kind of crooked from having spent so many hours pushing that control up
09:43and down.
09:44I finally learned how to play it. That was pretty... I would describe that as a life-changing moment.
09:51And so we sat there and played it, like, the whole day, like, you know, until my mom dragged us
09:55out of there.
09:57But I loved Robotron. And I thought that was a really fantastic game.
10:03Robotron, which is one of my favorite games, I actually liked it so much I actually bought it.
10:08That's one of those games that, you know, he's shaking by the time I got back after playing for an
10:12hour.
10:13As the industry peaks, originality is a must.
10:19The golden age of the arcade was incredible. The creativity, I've never seen anything like it.
10:25Every game had to be original. 100% unique. This was the attitude at Atari.
10:30We didn't do driving games because there had been a driving game.
10:33If you did a driving game, it had to be a driving game with guns.
10:36And then there could only be one of those in the industry.
10:40I had a friend who made a driving game where you drove on the ceiling.
10:43Because that was the only way you could get it through this corporate culture where 100% originality was applied.
10:49The business of gaming looks good.
10:52Like today, where they're talking about how the game industry is eclipsing the motion picture industry in terms of revenue.
10:59That was very much the case back then as well.
11:01The revenue from video games was enormous.
11:05I mean, a good game would bring in 800 to 1,000 in a week.
11:08So you'd buy the game and then two weeks, you know, you pay off your, you know, the distributor and
11:13fine.
11:13And there were a lot of arcades, a lot of places where there were video games.
11:17But the market can only grow so much.
11:20Soon, the arcade reaches critical mass and becomes a victim of its own success.
11:26Ironically, when I arrived at Atari in 1982, we were saying,
11:29we're so big, the coin drop in these games is just as large as theatrical revenue for movies.
11:35Now, does that sound familiar?
11:36What had happened is we pretty much saturated the market.
11:39The games did not get obsolete very quickly.
11:41And we filled the arcades with them and we were starting to fill secondary locations like Safeways and 7-Elevens
11:48and dentist offices.
11:49By the middle of 1982, we were just full.
11:52A lot of it was oversaturated in the market in 81, 82, especially 82-ish timeframe.
11:57And we sold thousands and thousands of games that went into dentist's office, you know, besides normal arcades and street
12:04locations like bars and restaurants and bowling alleys.
12:06And it got to the point, there were so many games out there that they couldn't support the amount of
12:12earnings to really justify buying them.
12:15It was a fad. I think there's no other way to put it.
12:18It was like early rock and roll, really.
12:22Enough people started coming and enough companies started making games.
12:25It just kept growing, you know, and people build bigger and bigger ones until finally, you know, the whole thing
12:31just sort of collapsed under its own weight.
12:34Now, the arcade machines that were so successful just a year ago are no longer making enough money to support
12:40the market.
12:42By the time the early 80s came around, the economic life for a lot of games, for simple games, and
12:50the simple games are those that everybody was playing, was probably less than a year.
12:56Well, the games cost enough that they really needed to have an economic model that would last for several years
13:04in order to pay for them.
13:05And the home console market takes a bite out of the arcade as well.
13:09The other thing that people point out is that their home console is starting getting better about this point, the
13:14Atari 800 and other stuff started coming out.
13:17And the consoles, you know, artwork used to be so different, you know, the arcade would be here and consoles
13:23would be down here.
13:24The discrepancy started narrowing and they started affecting our business.
13:29Yeah, I definitely think the rise of the consoles really have hurt the arcade overall because there's just not much
13:35you can do on an arcade machine that you can't do on a home console.
13:40Bloodied and bruised, the arcade market looks like it's down and out.
13:44But only time will tell.
13:57By the mid-80s, the days of arcade games bringing in $1,000 a week are over, and the coin
14:02-op industry is a mere shadow of what it once was.
14:05Many companies, such as Cinematronics, are out of business.
14:08But Atari is still alive and still making arcade hits, such as Gauntlet and Marble Madness.
14:17Marble Madness was supposed to be sort of a video game equivalent of miniature golf.
14:22But, you know, putting didn't make a whole lot of sense in that context, so it sort of evolved.
14:27The graphics stayed intact, but it kept on evolving, and so we got the track balls for controllers, and we
14:33got enemies in there blocking your path, and it went to a time basis, sort of became a race game.
14:45You know, we have a resurgence like Gauntlet came out.
14:48It came from several sources. My son was very much into D&D at the time. It was very hot
14:52stuff to do, and you know, that's where the original concept came from.
14:57You'll come out with two good games right in a row, and it's like, oh, yes, you're right, all right.
15:03In 1991, the arcade experiences one of its greatest resurgences, with Capcom's release of Street Fighter II.
15:10Fight!
15:12When the fighting games started to come back in the 90s, like, it was like an upturn, and you did
15:16start to see machines going into weird places again.
15:20I spent a lot of money on Street Fighter.
15:24You know, the Street Fighter series, in its 2D incarnation, basically has lived on to this day, and there's something
15:29very compelling about that.
15:33Street Fighter is a巨人.
15:35After Street Fighter II came out, there were nearly 600 new fighting games, but none of them could go beyond
15:40Street Fighter.
15:42But as successful as the Street Fighter series and its fellow fighting games are, it isn't enough to fully revitalize
15:49the market.
15:51Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, these were games that took a lot of coordination, and it excluded two major classes of
15:59people.
16:00The casual gamer was a businessman that wanted to play on his lunch hour, and women.
16:05They were very complex, and so the casual gamer didn't want to spend their life figuring out how to punch,
16:11kick, and fight somebody to death and knock their heads off.
16:16The problem with fighting games was that if there was a period of maybe like a year where anyone could
16:20get into fighting games,
16:21and after that, it was hard for, like, somebody new to walk in the arcade and not just get their
16:24ass kicked and just get laughed out of the place.
16:27It was kind of a feedback loop that kept new people from getting into it after a while.
16:32To stay alive, the arcade must evolve.
16:35A single quarter was not enough revenue for a game to earn.
16:39We ultimately figured out that we needed a buck, and we don't have dollar coins in the States.
16:45A buck is a big spend, it's not a casual spend, and so we needed a new generation of arcade
16:50games to show how this should be done.
16:53And Yu Suzuki was the big player there. Hang On, Out Run, R360, he had it down.
17:00Yu Suzuki from Sega is considered one of the pioneers for arcade games in the early 90s.
17:06Yu Suzuki transformed the video game business.
17:09If you look at the period of time from when he started making these simulators through, say, 1995, Sega dominated
17:16the arcades.
17:21Since I created Hang On, a lot of people were getting more and more into games where you just don't
17:25use a joystick. It becomes a physical experience.
17:33You need a moving cabinet, that was very important, and the hardware manufacturers were challenging more and more complicated movements.
17:41Well, it just makes the experience a little more real, right?
17:46I think what it does is, it tends to heighten the gameplay experience.
17:50It takes some imagination to kind of, you know, put those things together.
17:53The arcade industry is great because of, you know, these unique things.
18:00I think this is more pushing the envelope of human capacity, rather than of the industry itself.
18:12With a normal console, right, you know, you just kind of limit it to your controller, and there's some add
18:16-ons.
18:18Like for Dance Dance Revolution or games like that, to have that custom piece of equipment, it adds a whole
18:23nother gameplay element, a whole nother experience.
18:25It takes it to a deeper level.
18:31While it looks like the arcade may never reclaim its former glory, some people still think it has a future.
18:44I think what you're going to see in terms of arcade games in the future is just more things that
18:48are like the larger machines.
18:51Like ride simulators.
18:57You know, there's something about a driving game where you actually have a steering wheel and pedals that you can't
19:00really duplicate at home, even with the wheel and pedals, and just the larger kind of location-based entertainment machines.
19:06Yeah, there is. There are arcades out there, and Sega actually was very forward thinking in this.
19:13Theme parks, or even just, you know, say like a boardwalk somewhere, or specifically downtown somewhere there's a new game
19:20center.
19:22But the idea there is to give you an experience that you can't get at home.
19:27I always thought there was a future. I just thought it would be so small.
19:31You know, I figured there would be enough arcades where people would want to go, you know, people to hang
19:35out, or bars.
19:37You could have a drink in one hand and play a game with another. Just entertainment.
19:41But no matter what happens, the people who were there in the beginning will never forget the time when a
19:46quarter was all you needed to be a gamer.
19:51Actually, it's great making the games because, for one thing, we were all a little club. There were about 150
19:57game creators in the entire business at that point.
20:01We mostly knew each other, too, whether we were at Atari, or Williams, or Valley, or the like.
20:10When you went to an arcade, there was this great rush you'd get because you'd make your game and you'd
20:13put it in there with all the other new games, usually by guys that you knew.
20:18And you'd see just how much money your game could make in one week. It was great.
20:25Oh, that was always a really good feeling.
20:27More importantly is when you go in there and see the expressions of the people's faces.
20:31I remember the first time we tested Millipede and some gal walked up.
20:34She was a Centipede player and she was very good at it. And she got to the point where, you
20:38know, all the insects were flying down the screen.
20:41And just the expressions of the face of, oh, you know, it's like, ah, panic.
20:46That was worth it for a game designer and for, you know, testing. That's the kind of expression you want
20:51to pull on.
20:53What you can't get, of course, and this is what I really miss about arcades, is just the notion of
20:58going into this crazy, dark, loud place.
21:01It's just lit by screens and filled with all the music of the games and, you know, sticky coke on
21:06the floor and stuff like that.
21:07I mean, to me, that's just an amazing experience that you can never really have again.
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