O
ne can think of the clas sic arcade game as a form of the com puter game, in the same way that a silent slap stick com edy is a form of film or thehard-boiled detec tive novel is a form of lit er a ture. The clas sic arcade game form fell out of favor with the com mer cial gam ing com pa nies pretty much as
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soon as the tech nol ogy was avail able to move beyond it. How ever, many inde pend -ent game devel op ers still work on clas sic arcade games either for their own
amuse ment or to be released as freeware or share ware titles. Many of these labors of love are imi ta tions of estab lished clas sic arcade games, but many oth ers are inter est -ing exper i ments in new gameplay. There remains some th-ing uniquely com pel l-ing about the form, and the fact that one does not need to have a sophis ti cated 3D engine to make a won der fully enter tain ing clas sic arcade game helps to make the form an appeal ing one in which to work.
It bears men tion ing that when I refer to the clas sic arcade game, I do not mean to imply that all clas sic arcade games are clas sics. Many of them are quite bad. As with any media, the old arcade games that are remem bered and talked about decades after their release tend to be the best ones, thus cre at ing the false impres -sion of a “golden age.” The bad arcade games have fallen between the cracks of his tory. The term “clas sic arcade game” refers to the form as a clas sic one, not to the games them selves, just as one might refer to “clas si cal music.” Surely the term
“arcade game” is not lim it ing enough, since this would seem to include every game found in an arcade, includ ing mod ern rac ing, gun, and fight ing games, none of which are what I con sider to be part of the form I am con cerned with here.
The clas sic arcade game form had its com mer cial and cre ative hey day in the late 1970s through the early 1980s, when machines exhib it ing the form lined the arcades. Looking at the games as a whole, one can come up with a series of traits that they all shared. Some of these aspects of the form may have been arrived at because of the com mer cial con sid er ations of the arcades. The thought was to get a player to eas ily under stand a game, so that by the end of his very first game he had a good sense of how the game worked and what was nec es sary for suc cess. Sec ond, a player’s game, even the game of an expert, could not last very long, since any one player had only paid a quar ter, and if the game only earned a sin gle quar ter in a half hour, it would not be prof it able to oper ate. Players needed to be sucked in to replay the games, to keep plunk ing in quar ters. As a result, in some ways the arcade games had to be more refined than home games are today. Once the player has pur chased a home game, often for at least a hun dred times the cost of a sin gle arcade game play, the sale is com pleted. If he is not com pletely dis gusted with the game he is unlikely to return it. Fea tures such as scor ing and high-score tables only served to increase the arcade game’s addic tive nature and encour age play ers to keep spend ing money.
In addi tion, the tech ni cal restric tions of the day lim ited what the games could do, and thereby influ enced what the game could accom plish in terms of gameplay.
Had the design ers had the RAM and pro cess ing power to include fully scroll ing game-worlds that were many times the size of the screen, they prob a bly would have. If the games had been able to replay full-motion video of some sort, per haps the design ers would have incor po rated more story line into the games. But the fact
remains that a unique genre of com puter games emerged, and if the com mer cial and tech ni cal lim i ta tions shaped the form, so be it. Just as early films had to work with the lim i ta tions of silence and short run ning times, com puter game design ers were lim ited in what they could cre ate, and were able to come up with bril liant games none the less. Often, work ing within a series of strict con straints forces art ists to focus their cre ativ ity in a fash ion which leads to better work than if they could do any thing they wanted.
One key ingre di ent to many clas sic arcade games was their wild vari a tion in
gameplay styles. Cen ti pede, Mis sile Com mand, PacMan, and Frogger are as dif -fer ent from each other as they pos si bly could be. Many clas sic arcade games
fea tured vari a tions on a theme: Cen ti pede, Space Invaders, Galaga, and Tem pest all revolved around the idea of shoot ing at a descend ing onslaught of ene mies. How -ever, the gameplay vari a tions these games embraced are far more rad i cal than the tiny amount of vari a tion one will find in mod ern games, which are more con tent to end lessly clone already-proven gam ing gen res. Despite the wild vari ety of
gameplay that can be found in clas sic arcade games, one can still look back on these games as a col lec tive, as an artis tic move ment in the brief his tory of com puter games. By ana lyz ing the form’s shared traits, mod ern game design ers can learn a lot about how they can make their own games more com pel ling expe ri ences for the player.
Tem pest is one of many clas sic arcade games that is cen tered on shoot ing at ene mies which keep get ting closer. Tem pest is mem o ra ble because of the many unique twists included.