Oh how I miss those incredible days in the "Golden Era of Arcade Games". I was 15 in 1981 at the height of the video arcade days and it was wonderful. There was nothing like going down to the video arcade at the local mall and spending an afternoon playing a myriad of video games. Everyone had their favorites. We held "tournaments" on Friday and Saturdays and all you played for was "bragging rights". But being known as the "master" of a particular video game was big stuff back then (LOL). It was a local hang out for many a teens in the 1980's. I still remember when Space Invaders came to our local Jiffy Food Store (similar to a 7-11). As word spread that the game had arrived, literally the entire neighborhood showed up in droves at the Jiffy Store to get his/her turn on this newfound video "wonder" that morphed into a true phenomenon over the next 4 or 5 years after that. Then, a year later Donkey Kong showed up at the same store. WOW, what a craze that caused. Then on to Pac Man, Joust, Ms. Pac Man, Dig Dug, Moon Patrol (A particular favorite of mine), Star Trek, where you sat in an enclosed game pod piloted the Enterprise and Mr. Spock stated "Welcome Aboard Captain" when you inserted the quarter. Another game I particularly liked was called Gyruss. A type of space game where you traveled from Planet to Planet upon finishing each level. It was a challenging but particularly fun game. Wow I spent a lot of quarters in that game over the years. There was even a video game centered around the rock group JOURNEY at the time, which was actually a pretty good game and you even got to hear there music while playing through the various levels. And the list continues on and on with literally hundreds, if not thousands of various video arcade games of all different types. It was truly a great time in history. When a quarter dollar could bring you so much joy for the few minutes (or MANY minutes for a lot of us) could bring you. Two dollars could mean two hours of play time for some of us that were expert players. It's hard to imagine all the different sounds, beeps, bleeps, bings and boings going on (loudly) in the video arcade, but somehow, your mind could separate and drowned out all the other sounds behind you when you were transfixed on playing your particular arcade game. It's funny, many of the games were just mastering "patterns" (Pac Man has a "pattern") that you could memorize and literally play for a LONG......time. I even give credit to girlfriends at the time who may have not been particularly interested in video games, but they "put up with it" because it gave their boyfriends at the time so much joy. Girls standing around watching their boyfriends play over an hour or two, meeting with other friends. Not saying that girls didn't like playing video games because many of them did, but, for a lot of them it was watching their boyfriends play, finding a new boyfriend at the video arcade, or ditching a current boyfriend for a new beau they met at the arcade was the order of business on many a weekend night. I even saw quite a few "squabbles" between girls over boys at the local arcade. And quite a few boys fighting over a girl at the arcade. Oh, the days of the video arcade...... They are gone forever, but WOW, what a great time it was. It is a time I will cherish in my life forever.
Till this day I still dream I am repairing video games.. I started in 1971 with the introduction of Pong and I had a great life in the gaming industry, thanks for that look back,,,u hit the nail on the head,,,,,,bravo
My childhood right before my eyes. Not only could I name about 90% of these games but the arcade/convenience store where I used to hang out and play them. The early 80's were a great time to be a kid.
OMG! Watching this video makes me feel so nostalgic I almost wanna cry. This brings back some of my fondest memories as a teen going to the arcade with my friends.
Those were the days that my friends always talking about, aside from "new romantic" music. I can still remember at least a hundred games I have ever played. It was the golden era.
Well, thank you for watching. If you liked this, you may also like my video, "Complete History of Recorded Music, Part 1." ua-cam.com/video/_7VFdKZoDXU/v-deo.html
Great games, all of them! Stern's Scramble is a personal favorite of mine, and I was a total CARNIVAL addict, which I played at a local pizza parlor! I loved how you can check your score under 99 rankings in Carnival!
Man that brought back some memories riding our bikes down to the convenience store standing behind the convenience store getting stoned mowing yard so you can earn enough money to play simpler times back then I sure miss them but they'll always be in my memories
At one point my local mall (Memorial City, Houston) had 4 arcades in it running simultaneously- Green's, Games games games, Quiptars, and Celebrity Cafe. Countless hours and quarters spent there! A few miles away was Castle Games and Golf, and Malibu Grand Prix each with a large arcade room.
Some people mentioned that I left out a lot of notable games, or favorites of the viewers. There are many games I left out that I really wanted in this, but if EVERY noteworthy game were in here the video would be like an hour or more! Being excluded from this video doesn't mean that it should be excluded from its historical importance.
You made me smell Leather shoes and polish from the custom shoe store and hair being permed and dyed at the hair salon both stores on ether side of wizard's castle arcade 35 years ago..
@Kingly131 I wanted to put Star Castle in the game, but had problems with the video and sound every time it rendered. Star Castle is one of my favorites; I played it often at the local movie theatre/ pizza joint!
Thanks for the video. It was enjoyable to see a lot of my favorites from the arcade era. Some of the early ones i did not recognize but for most of the video, I do remember a lot of these games.
Star Castle was in a great local line-up at the local mall in the first half of the 1980s, right next to battlezone. I recently got the Atari 2600 version of Star Castle, which was released in 2015. IT'S AMAZING WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH AN ATARI AND 32K OF ROM!
I believe 79 to 83 was the Hayday for arcade games. The only really popular arcade games i remember before 79 was Space Invaders which came out in 78 and also Pong from the early 70s There were so many amazing arcade games from 79 to 83. The only popular arcade game i remember from 84 was Dragon's lair.
I never understood the Arcade crash in 1984. I was in the 8th grade in the Spring of 84 when this happened. Everyone i knew was buying the video games for Atari, Intellivision and Coleco Vision back then. What happened that made these 3 companies go under?
great Video - funny how many you remember - far too many to chose from to say what is best but berserk and kung fu master are pretty close - Nice to be reminded of what i did with my childhood - a wonderful era for the humanoids!
Spot On! An absolutely fantastic list of Significant games! I think it was appropriate to show the pre 79 games. (Although you missed the very popular Tank series, plus I would have thrown in Biplanes). The Golden Age is ill defined, but I think your very close. I would make it at From Space Invaders till the mid 80's... maybe the late 80's... but the tech change from 79 to 89 was shocking. (It is like comparing a Model T from the 20's to Delorean in the 80's. The tech had advanced soo fast). So then again the 1983/4 cutoff might be better. Too hard to say. It is much easier in the Computer Gaming world. Going from 8 bit, (Apple 2, Atari 800, Commodore 64 etc), to 16 bit, (The PC, Mac and the Excellent Atari ST and The MIGHTY AMIGA, (ya, I loved the Amigas!)). To 32 Bit.... THE PC ONLY.... To 64 Bit... THE PC ONLY. (Computers folks not Consoles). Thanks again for the great video Sluggo
+sluggotg I think there was the 'pre-golden age' with things like Clowns (78), Boot Hill (77) and then it exploded of course with Space Invaders at the end of 78. This was the start of the golden age which to me didn't last as long. I'd say the start of the beatem ups is where I got out and the most exciting stuff was out by 83. Not sure what other people think.
I remember playing a video game where you could play games like Pacman, Ms Pacman, Pole Position, Dig Dug, Pacmania, Frogger and something like Rally X or something similar to Mappy the Mouse game thingy or Xevious. I also remember playing that game where you're a giant robot in a foggy city. I remember on a different console the Mortal Kombat game where you're racing. I remember playing that skateboard game named after Tony Hawk where you play as a skateboarder from New Jersey who travels around these united states. I remember that car game from Rockstar Games where you can drive cars in a San Francisco-esque town and the police cars don't get broken down. I first heard of LittleBigPlanet from a video about usermade gravity tools back in early 2011? That one video got me to think that LBP would have colored boxes that change gravity but it didn't. But LBP2 had gravity settings. I got LPB3 in Dec 23 2015. I wouldn't have known about the Scunthorpe problem if it weren't for electrons. Like how I wouldn't know about 'the Cubs' big losing streak that still continues on' if people didn't care about outer space.
I can list some games that are really obscure. But great games anyway. Robby Roto is one example. So wild a game. My brother loved Williams' "Bubbles".
Great video !!! I left my like. Just a correction: Popeye was launched in 1982 (and not in 1981 as shown in the video). About Galaxian and Galaga both were developed by Namco and distributed in Japan by Namco, but in North America they were distributed by Midway. I also must say that I felt the lack of some relevant classics like Battle Zone (fantastic game made with vector graphics), New Rally X (the music is unforgettable!), Scramble (ancient horizontal shmup and precursor of Gradius), Circus Charlie (excellent Konami game), Jungle Hunt, Bosconian, Gaplus, Paperboy, Mappy and some important classics released in 1985 as Gradius (one of the most important shmups ever released), Space Harrier and Hang-On.
+Kob's Channel Thank you for the comment. There were a lot of games I wanted to include, and you have a lot of greats on your list. Members of my brother's band had an actual Hang On machine in the bassist's garage for a few years. Also, thank you for the correction. It was 1982! I may have looked at a copyright date or some other source. So happy there are even larger uber nerds out there to correct my mistakes.
Miaymoto wanted to originally do a Popeye game first, but couldn't get the rights, so he did Donkey Kong instead, and then after its success was able to make Popeye. It was really neat when it came out, as it was really the first time you could play something that actually really looked like an animated cartoon in the arcades.
Message for SLUGTOG, who I can't reply to for some reason (YT being stupid again): Thanks for sharing your thought on the Golden Age, and for including some of your insights on computing, too. I used to own an Atari XE which I programmed the heck out of!
Wow, Night Driver. I would have been 9 when that came out. I didn't want to think what it was like to really drive on the streets, but this game taught me I might run into a deer or a hitchhiker. Wait, no, that was Speed Freak!
Mark, I left many games out. If I included everyone's favorites, this video will be hours long. I made a lot of hard decisions, but leaving a favorite game out in no way means I don't think it's significant. Tron and Mattel/ M Network's "Tron: Deadly Discs" are both excellent! And of course, a lot of Tron's gameplay is a tip of the hat to Dominos, Surround, and an entire wave of "box me in" games!
i was around when the golden age came about.. i remember 1 game that i have been looking for in videos that i would like to see again but cant remember thae name of it ...
My brother's a big arcade TRON fan. As for Space Fury, isn't that available on the M.A.M.E. emulator? One of my own favorites that I left out was the game 1942.
Limited technological advence over the course of the era as well as a large selection of consoles, each with a poor selection of games, lead to a market unable to support each manufacturer... even today the market can barely support the 3 main console developers. It was the single most interesting stock market crash of all time imo. The 8bit era split into two... an era where they just pumped crap out hoping it would sell, and an era where they knew the games had to be top notch and on fewer consoles with greater chance of compatibility with local friends. This fortunately gave rise to PC gaming and greatly increased the standard we see on consoles today.
I don't think the "limited technological advances" had much to do with it. As long as the games were innovative, we would play. We weren't enjoying Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis and saying, "Gee, I wish there were 3D rendered graphics and audio dialogue..." It was that there were many lousy games for each good one when the market was saturated.
Yes there are many hundreds of games not mentioned, This could have been done year by year and still dozens of clips would not cover them all. I noticed that Tron was absent, That game made more money than the movie did. My favorite arcade classic is still Space Fury; Too bad it happens to be rare and also sought after by collectors. I may never see it again. All said though, I rather enjoyed this, I only wish was longer with more content,
Does anyone have books fromt he classic period, like "Mastering Pac-Man" and the once by "Major Mayhem" (I forget the title but it's one of many my shelf)? Or the Pac-Man issue of "Dynamite" magazine? Or other classic magazines like "Play Meter", "Electronic Games" (not EGM, which pales in comparison), and "Joystik" (spelled without a C)?
+tinnitischannel I had only one but damn I read it and read it. 50 games featured many of which I hadn't seen. It was called "How to Master the Video Games" by Tom Hirschfeld. Of course now in MAME I have them all but I still remember the disappointment when I finally play "Wizard of Wor" in 1998!! :o)
+tinnitischannel The book by Major Mayham's title is just out of memory... It's like on the tip of my tongue but the thought is evading my mind like a laser base scooting behind a barrier to duck away from a Space Invader. I owned the major mayhem book years after its publication date but borrowed it from the public library many times. I owned Mastering PacMan by the late Ken Uston (WHO ACTUALLY HAD A COLECOVISION GAME NAMED AFTER HIM IN 1983!!!!!) but I was already underway developing my own patterns. It's a great informative book in other areas.
Me and my buddies were 18 in 1980 when the arcades first opened with these games ! we would all go once or twice a week and spend about 30 $ each learning and playing all the great video games ! . We each would stick mostly to our favorite game . .but I haven't thought about that Popeye game in 35 years ! what a rush .
gracias por tu video amigo me ayudaste a saber que tema de videojuego cargaba en la cabeza y no podia dormir ya por no recordar su nombre gracias!!! es el de popcorn jajajaja
I sure do! It was a wonderful game. The resort town of Wildwood, NJ had only one arcade with that game, located on Oak Avenue. Excellent gameplay, but it is also one of the games that Atari ported to the 2600. It changed the layout but was beautifully done and was one of the best 2600 titles ever made in the 8-bit era.
Vanguard was one of my all time favorite and I love that you could add quarters and continue to make it to the end and along with that game a similar game that I played was Pleiades.
The Atari version retained this feature, allowing players to continue until reaching Gond. Luther takes on the Gond (80s commercial for the Atari game)
We bought a defective Atari 2600 Kangaroo game! We ended up having to return it for a regular one! It made a creepy melody that was sort of like the theme played backwards, but not quite, and it always produced an impassible corruption of board two! Weird. It's the kind of weirdness people got by "frying" their reset switches. Only it was the default state! Kangaroo was a great Atari game, and a nice Donkey Kong inspired arcade game too.
That would be part of the silver age. And, while the 1990s games were technically superior, to me, in genral, game play was inferior to the classic games that laid the groundwork.
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+Classic Arcade Warehouse My wish is tht the arcade games of yesteryear will return to the aracdes. Here in Wildwood NJ, thee boardwalk was filled with these classics... ALL OF THEM! There is a man who was featured on haorders who opened a nice pinbll arcade in the boardwalk mall. Almost every machine is pre-1975. I hear there are vintage arcade games there now as well.
tinnitischannel This is a great video with some fantastic games but Dragon's Lair pioneered what exactly? Quick time events? Overcharging for games? Gimmicks? Valuing graphics over gameplay? Dragon's Lair represents everything you seem to dislike about modern games so I'm not sure why you might flatter this misstep in gaming history by including it. I assume you'll argue it represented a technical step forward but when was this laser disc technology ever used again (apart from Space Ace) and when was it ever used to make good games?
Off the top of my head, the technology was used again in MACH 3, Bega's Battle, Cube Quest, Astron Belt, Badlands (featured on 1980s game show Starcade), and, 8 years later, Time Traveler. Dragon's Lair definitely was a technological pioneer. Whether or not it's a good game is a matter of taste. But to have been there in 1983, and to be able to interact with a fully-animated cartoon in an era that only knew of sprites, was a pretty amazing thing. Also consider that this was the height of "create your own adventure" books fad, where readers became the protagonist, and when he got to the bottom of a page got to make a decision choose where to take the story. Dragon's Lair enabled us to live out this type of book and control the hero. Sure, we knew the control was extremely limited, but it made us 1980s gamers imagine the possibilities of the future of games. With the advent of polygons, which laid the groundwork for today's realistic cgi modelling, we now have fully-animated characters that players have full control over. I like to think that many designers along the way who made these things possible saw Dragon's Lair as a work of art and dreamed of taking interactivity to where it is today.
I've played through most of the early 80s games on MAME and selected them into 3 folders: "Favourites", "Technical Fail" (like if it's missing sound, bad colours - not emulated to a playable state yet) and "Fail" (if I think it's just a bad game - or not appealing enough for me to be selected to the Favourites folder) Dazzler is in the "Fail" folder - I didn't like it enough to put it in my favourites folder (Only good maze games like Pacman, Berzerk and Ladybug would get in)
Midway was the U.S. Distributor. Even though Namco made Pole Position and Dig Dug, they were distributed by Atari so sometimes Atari may also get credit for game creation.
maybe golden era is the word - after the 1990s arcades stated dying out - playing at home on a console/home computer was the norm and could never match the excitement of the sights and sounds of the old arcade..
Now there's no need to bad-mouth other viewers. We all have our likes and dislikes in video games. But in your defense, El Rinco'n was also in the wrong just bad-mouthing golden age arcade games without offering anything constructive. And obviously not old enough to appreciate the historic significance of things.
Oh how I miss those incredible days in the "Golden Era of Arcade Games". I was 15 in 1981 at the height of the video arcade days and it was wonderful. There was nothing like going down to the video arcade at the local mall and spending an afternoon playing a myriad of video games. Everyone had their favorites. We held "tournaments" on Friday and Saturdays and all you played for was "bragging rights". But being known as the "master" of a particular video game was big stuff back then (LOL). It was a local hang out for many a teens in the 1980's. I still remember when Space Invaders came to our local Jiffy Food Store (similar to a 7-11). As word spread that the game had arrived, literally the entire neighborhood showed up in droves at the Jiffy Store to get his/her turn on this newfound video "wonder" that morphed into a true phenomenon over the next 4 or 5 years after that. Then, a year later Donkey Kong showed up at the same store. WOW, what a craze that caused. Then on to Pac Man, Joust, Ms. Pac Man, Dig Dug, Moon Patrol (A particular favorite of mine), Star Trek, where you sat in an enclosed game pod piloted the Enterprise and Mr. Spock stated "Welcome Aboard Captain" when you inserted the quarter. Another game I particularly liked was called Gyruss. A type of space game where you traveled from Planet to Planet upon finishing each level. It was a challenging but particularly fun game. Wow I spent a lot of quarters in that game over the years. There was even a video game centered around the rock group JOURNEY at the time, which was actually a pretty good game and you even got to hear there music while playing through the various levels. And the list continues on and on with literally hundreds, if not thousands of various video arcade games of all different types. It was truly a great time in history. When a quarter dollar could bring you so much joy for the few minutes (or MANY minutes for a lot of us) could bring you. Two dollars could mean two hours of play time for some of us that were expert players. It's hard to imagine all the different sounds, beeps, bleeps, bings and boings going on (loudly) in the video arcade, but somehow, your mind could separate and drowned out all the other sounds behind you when you were transfixed on playing your particular arcade game. It's funny, many of the games were just mastering "patterns" (Pac Man has a "pattern") that you could memorize and literally play for a LONG......time. I even give credit to girlfriends at the time who may have not been particularly interested in video games, but they "put up with it" because it gave their boyfriends at the time so much joy. Girls standing around watching their boyfriends play over an hour or two, meeting with other friends. Not saying that girls didn't like playing video games because many of them did, but, for a lot of them it was watching their boyfriends play, finding a new boyfriend at the video arcade, or ditching a current boyfriend for a new beau they met at the arcade was the order of business on many a weekend night. I even saw quite a few "squabbles" between girls over boys at the local arcade. And quite a few boys fighting over a girl at the arcade. Oh, the days of the video arcade...... They are gone forever, but WOW, what a great time it was. It is a time I will cherish in my life forever.
Till this day I still dream I am repairing video games.. I started in 1971 with the introduction of Pong and I had a great life in the gaming industry, thanks for that look back,,,u hit the nail on the head,,,,,,bravo
+gee m
No, thank YOU for sharing your expriences with video games. I love to hear such memories.
I was 12 in 1980 what a year. BMX and video games.Good times
Yes I had a mongoose gold plated bmx bike that I saved up for. Good times .
Cool.I had a bunch had a redline and a P.k ripper....I still ride out i still vid out.Cheers man!
TheGravygun I raced in MD with my RACE INC and Hutch. :-)
Yeah, i was 8. BMX ang game, mmmm
how do you feel about now?
Man I loved playing these games. The 80s were bad ass.
My childhood right before my eyes. Not only could I name about 90% of these games but the arcade/convenience store where I used to hang out and play them. The early 80's were a great time to be a kid.
the 1980s: They still are a great time to be a kid. I never left!
Can I borrow your Delorean?
OMG! Watching this video makes me feel so nostalgic I almost wanna cry. This brings back some of my fondest memories as a teen going to the arcade with my friends.
Those were the days that my friends always talking about, aside from "new romantic" music. I can still remember at least a hundred games I have ever played. It was the golden era.
The things that make me cry are often absurd. like "Radioactivity (William Orbit Hardcore mix)" by Kraftwerk (1990) or "Later is Now" by Devo. (2010)
Wow that's deep man. Great arcade memories along with some great music like Kraftwerk and Devo. That's what life is about.
Zaxon was ahead of its time.
This was fantastic. How am I only now just finding this? You nailed all the classics, and brought back a ton of memories. Thanks for posting this.
That was quite a trip down memory lane! Thanks. :)
Well, thank you for watching. If you liked this, you may also like my video, "Complete History of Recorded Music, Part 1." ua-cam.com/video/_7VFdKZoDXU/v-deo.html
Amazing walk down memory lane thanks!
thanks for the trip down memory lane.i miss my arcade days,treasured times.awesome vid need 1 for 86 to 94 95
Thank you for viewing! Good night. :)
I really enjoyed this. Amazing how things progress in just a few short years, from Galaga to Gauntlet
+frishnit Yes; it all happened so very fast!
Great little video. I would have added for 1980 Scramble, Carnival and MoonCresta.
Great games, all of them! Stern's Scramble is a personal favorite of mine, and I was a total CARNIVAL addict, which I played at a local pizza parlor! I loved how you can check your score under 99 rankings in Carnival!
+tinnitischannel Yes, the first ranking system there was! The next was AstroBlaster I think.
I loved Spy Hunter too! This is nowhere a complete list, but I'd love to hear what viewers enjoyed that I left out!
Man that brought back some memories riding our bikes down to the convenience store standing behind the convenience store getting stoned mowing yard so you can earn enough money to play simpler times back then I sure miss them but they'll always be in my memories
At one point my local mall (Memorial City, Houston) had 4 arcades in it running simultaneously- Green's, Games games games, Quiptars, and Celebrity Cafe. Countless hours and quarters spent there! A few miles away was Castle Games and Golf, and Malibu Grand Prix each with a large arcade room.
VERY WELL DONE! Takes me back to my teenage years😃
Thank you. I'm glad to share the memories!
Ah the good old days when great fun could be had for a quarter. Simpler times :)
Simpler, more enlightened times.
Love this time in the arcade, this was my childhood, lots of nostalgia, thank's for the video, Excellent :o)
Moon patrol 😍
Some people mentioned that I left out a lot of notable games, or favorites of the viewers. There are many games I left out that I really wanted in this, but if EVERY noteworthy game were in here the video would be like an hour or more! Being excluded from this video doesn't mean that it should be excluded from its historical importance.
It's ok. I'd rather be here than listen to watch mojos stupid top 10 lists.
You made me smell Leather shoes and polish from the custom shoe store and hair being permed and dyed at the hair salon both stores on ether side of wizard's castle arcade 35 years ago..
we can be silly sometimes . great video
The 80s in the valley......... Too many good memories tyvm
@16:13 never realized the dots in the side of the death star said that sentence! Needed a reduced video to get it!
I forgot about a lot of these games until I watched this and remember most of them !!
God knows how many quarters I spent on Galaga and Xevious.
That was excellent, just what I wanted to view with great presentation, thanks
I'm so glad you enjoyed this. thank you for viewing.
@Kingly131 I wanted to put Star Castle in the game, but had problems with the video and sound every time it rendered. Star Castle is one of my favorites; I played it often at the local movie theatre/ pizza joint!
Thanks for the video. It was enjoyable to see a lot of my favorites from the arcade era. Some of the early ones i did not recognize but for most of the video, I do remember a lot of these games.
Moon patrol is the best..................... I love it ................
Thx for all the comments... please share this video with your friends and others!
This list could go on for hours. Two games that come to my mind from that period are Star Castle & Battle Zone
Spent a summer playing star castle and eating fries at my local burger joint . Awesome game
Star Castle was in a great local line-up at the local mall in the first half of the 1980s, right next to battlezone. I recently got the Atari 2600 version of Star Castle, which was released in 2015. IT'S AMAZING WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH AN ATARI AND 32K OF ROM!
Mr. Do, Ponpoko, Vanguard, Tron and many more!
Mr. Do is great game, i love it. Scramble 1981 and Phoenix...:)
Gauntlet 1985 yeah!!!
I believe 79 to 83 was the Hayday for arcade games.
The only really popular arcade games i remember before 79 was Space Invaders which came out in 78 and also Pong from the early 70s
There were so many amazing arcade games from 79 to 83.
The only popular arcade game i remember from 84 was Dragon's lair.
I live in a beach resort town and the arcade crash never happened. If they told me then, I wouldn't have believed it.
I never understood the Arcade crash in 1984. I was in the 8th grade in the Spring of 84 when this happened.
Everyone i knew was buying the video games for Atari, Intellivision and Coleco Vision back then.
What happened that made these 3 companies go under?
Too many products were in the market at that time and the quality games were hard to find.
I disagree there were so many amazing video games back then in 84.
If you went to an arcade in 84 they were usually busy.
If you had to omit a few due to time constraints, then you should do a Part Two video!
80's games for life. I have most of them with original patterns. Thanks for the video who ever you are.
I am Tinnitischannel, a musician. I'm rarely on YT today but I come in to read your comments.
great Video - funny how many you remember - far too many to chose from to say what is best but berserk and kung fu master are pretty close - Nice to be reminded of what i did with my childhood - a wonderful era for the humanoids!
Great little Vid Thank's!
Spot On! An absolutely fantastic list of Significant games! I think it was appropriate to show the pre 79 games. (Although you missed the very popular Tank series, plus I would have thrown in Biplanes).
The Golden Age is ill defined, but I think your very close. I would make it at From Space Invaders till the mid 80's... maybe the late 80's... but the tech change from 79 to 89 was shocking. (It is like comparing a Model T from the 20's to Delorean in the 80's. The tech had advanced soo fast). So then again the 1983/4 cutoff might be better. Too hard to say.
It is much easier in the Computer Gaming world. Going from 8 bit, (Apple 2, Atari 800, Commodore 64 etc), to 16 bit, (The PC, Mac and the Excellent Atari ST and The MIGHTY AMIGA, (ya, I loved the Amigas!)). To 32 Bit.... THE PC ONLY.... To 64 Bit... THE PC ONLY. (Computers folks not Consoles).
Thanks again for the great video
Sluggo
+sluggotg I think there was the 'pre-golden age' with things like Clowns (78), Boot Hill (77) and then it exploded of course with Space Invaders at the end of 78. This was the start of the golden age which to me didn't last as long. I'd say the start of the beatem ups is where I got out and the most exciting stuff was out by 83. Not sure what other people think.
I remember playing a video game where you could play games like Pacman, Ms Pacman, Pole Position, Dig Dug, Pacmania, Frogger and something like Rally X or something similar to Mappy the Mouse game thingy or Xevious. I also remember playing that game where you're a giant robot in a foggy city. I remember on a different console the Mortal Kombat game where you're racing. I remember playing that skateboard game named after Tony Hawk where you play as a skateboarder from New Jersey who travels around these united states. I remember that car game from Rockstar Games where you can drive cars in a San Francisco-esque town and the police cars don't get broken down. I first heard of LittleBigPlanet from a video about usermade gravity tools back in early 2011? That one video got me to think that LBP would have colored boxes that change gravity but it didn't. But LBP2 had gravity settings. I got LPB3 in Dec 23 2015. I wouldn't have known about the Scunthorpe problem if it weren't for electrons. Like how I wouldn't know about 'the Cubs' big losing streak that still continues on' if people didn't care about outer space.
wow some forgotten gems there
I can list some games that are really obscure. But great games anyway. Robby Roto is one example. So wild a game. My brother loved Williams' "Bubbles".
Great video !!! I left my like. Just a correction: Popeye was launched in 1982 (and not in 1981 as shown in the video). About Galaxian and Galaga both were developed by Namco and distributed in Japan by Namco, but in North America they were distributed by Midway. I also must say that I felt the lack of some relevant classics like Battle Zone (fantastic game made with vector graphics), New Rally X (the music is unforgettable!), Scramble (ancient horizontal shmup and precursor of Gradius), Circus Charlie (excellent Konami game), Jungle Hunt, Bosconian, Gaplus, Paperboy, Mappy and some important classics released in 1985 as Gradius (one of the most important shmups ever released), Space Harrier and Hang-On.
+Kob's Channel Thank you for the comment. There were a lot of games I wanted to include, and you have a lot of greats on your list. Members of my brother's band had an actual Hang On machine in the bassist's garage for a few years. Also, thank you for the correction. It was 1982! I may have looked at a copyright date or some other source. So happy there are even larger uber nerds out there to correct my mistakes.
Miaymoto wanted to originally do a Popeye game first, but couldn't get the rights, so he did Donkey Kong instead, and then after its success was able to make Popeye. It was really neat when it came out, as it was really the first time you could play something that actually really looked like an animated cartoon in the arcades.
Good vid. Just let the classics speak for themselves.
Excellent video, all i can say
thank you. I hope it brought back fond memories.
Nice nostalgic video though it's missing two of my personal favorites, Bosconian (1981) and Spy Hunter (1983).
You know, Bosconian is truly underrated. It went under the radar of a lot of gen Xers. Sad. But there's a Pac-Man plug & play that includes it.
Message for SLUGTOG, who I can't reply to for some reason (YT being stupid again): Thanks for sharing your thought on the Golden Age, and for including some of your insights on computing, too. I used to own an Atari XE which I programmed the heck out of!
Wow, Night Driver. I would have been 9 when that came out. I didn't want to think what it was like to really drive on the streets, but this game taught me I might run into a deer or a hitchhiker. Wait, no, that was Speed Freak!
How in the world did Tron not make this video; It made more than the movie did in revenue.
Mark, I left many games out. If I included everyone's favorites, this video will be hours long. I made a lot of hard decisions, but leaving a favorite game out in no way means I don't think it's significant. Tron and Mattel/
M Network's "Tron: Deadly Discs" are both excellent! And of course, a lot of Tron's gameplay is a tip of the hat to Dominos, Surround, and an entire wave of "box me in" games!
i was around when the golden age came about.. i remember 1 game that i have been looking for in videos that i would like to see again but cant remember thae name of it ...
Canyou describe the game? Perhaps I, or one of the viewers, can figure it out!
My brother's a big arcade TRON fan. As for Space Fury, isn't that available on the M.A.M.E. emulator? One of my own favorites that I left out was the game 1942.
super breakout was released in 1978 tempest in 1981
the Golen Axe of arcade games ;)
Limited technological advence over the course of the era as well as a large selection of consoles, each with a poor selection of games, lead to a market unable to support each manufacturer... even today the market can barely support the 3 main console developers. It was the single most interesting stock market crash of all time imo. The 8bit era split into two... an era where they just pumped crap out hoping it would sell, and an era where they knew the games had to be top notch and on fewer consoles with greater chance of compatibility with local friends. This fortunately gave rise to PC gaming and greatly increased the standard we see on consoles today.
I don't think the "limited technological advances" had much to do with it. As long as the games were innovative, we would play. We weren't enjoying Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis and saying, "Gee, I wish there were 3D rendered graphics and audio dialogue..." It was that there were many lousy games for each good one when the market was saturated.
Yes there are many hundreds of games not mentioned, This could have been done year by year and still dozens of clips would not cover them all. I noticed that Tron was absent, That game made more money than the movie did. My favorite arcade classic is still Space Fury; Too bad it happens to be rare and also sought after by collectors. I may never see it again. All said though, I rather enjoyed this, I only wish was longer with more content,
Good video. Just as a correction: "Qix" came out in 1981 and "Popeye" was released in 1982.
+Michael Welle Thank you! Q*BErt wss the most popular arcade game of 1982, and I always associate it with that year because of that.
Dragon's Lair is the best looking arcade game in that vid.
Shame about the game - it really was pretty terrible.
0:57 makes me sleepy LOL
Does anyone have books fromt he classic period, like "Mastering Pac-Man" and the once by "Major Mayhem" (I forget the title but it's one of many my shelf)? Or the Pac-Man issue of "Dynamite" magazine? Or other classic magazines like "Play Meter", "Electronic Games" (not EGM, which pales in comparison), and "Joystik" (spelled without a C)?
+tinnitischannel I had only one but damn I read it and read it. 50 games featured many of which I hadn't seen. It was called "How to Master the Video Games" by Tom Hirschfeld. Of course now in MAME I have them all but I still remember the disappointment when I finally play "Wizard of Wor" in 1998!! :o)
+tinnitischannel The book by Major Mayham's title is just out of memory... It's like on the tip of my tongue but the thought is evading my mind like a laser base scooting behind a barrier to duck away from a Space Invader. I owned the major mayhem book years after its publication date but borrowed it from the public library many times. I owned Mastering PacMan by the late Ken Uston (WHO ACTUALLY HAD A COLECOVISION GAME NAMED AFTER HIM IN 1983!!!!!) but I was already underway developing my own patterns. It's a great informative book in other areas.
Marble Madness, Adventure, Paper Boy
I think Super Breakout was 78....and where was SeaWolf?
Me and my buddies were 18 in 1980 when the arcades first opened with these games ! we would all go once or twice a week and spend about 30 $ each learning and playing all the great video games ! . We each would stick mostly to our favorite game . .but I haven't thought about that Popeye game in 35 years ! what a rush .
I loved Popeye, and there was a pizza joint that had it. Like Donkey Kong, it took a lot of quarters to master!
gracias por tu video amigo me ayudaste a saber que tema de videojuego cargaba en la cabeza y no podia dormir ya por no recordar su nombre gracias!!! es el de popcorn jajajaja
Gracias por gozar del vídeo video del juego. Lo siento; me disculpo si usted perdió sueño sobre él
Anyone remember the game Vanguard from the early 80s
I sure do! It was a wonderful game. The resort town of Wildwood, NJ had only one arcade with that game, located on Oak Avenue. Excellent gameplay, but it is also one of the games that Atari ported to the 2600. It changed the layout but was beautifully done and was one of the best 2600 titles ever made in the 8-bit era.
Vanguard was one of my all time favorite and I love that you could add quarters and continue to make it to the end and along with that game a similar game that I played was Pleiades.
The Atari version retained this feature, allowing players to continue until reaching Gond. Luther takes on the Gond (80s commercial for the Atari game)
+Jeff garrett I was just playing Kangaroo on mame . Fun fun fun
We bought a defective Atari 2600 Kangaroo game! We ended up having to return it for a regular one! It made a creepy melody that was sort of like the theme played backwards, but not quite, and it always produced an impassible corruption of board two! Weird. It's the kind of weirdness people got by "frying" their reset switches. Only it was the default state!
Kangaroo was a great Atari game, and a nice Donkey Kong inspired arcade game too.
To me personally the golden age of video games in the arcades was 90-99
That would be part of the silver age. And, while the 1990s games were technically superior, to me, in genral, game play was inferior to the classic games that laid the groundwork.
The Silver Age was dominated by tournament fighters to much (although I loved those back in the day).
All the arcades were closed down after the 80s. Just a few with average games. Home consoles took over.
I’m 15 again 👍
Bring the arcade home! Remember the arcades filled with video games? Relive that experience in your home. We offer new arcade machines loaded with 60 classic arcade games. Check it out at www.classicarcadewarehouse.com
+Classic Arcade Warehouse
My wish is tht the arcade games of yesteryear will return to the aracdes. Here in Wildwood NJ, thee boardwalk was filled with these classics... ALL OF THEM! There is a man who was featured on haorders who opened a nice pinbll arcade in the boardwalk mall. Almost every machine is pre-1975. I hear there are vintage arcade games there now as well.
I have a modded XBOX with 20,000 games and all the classics . 60? LOL
Yes, just a spammer. Who doesn't love playing the classics on MAME?
Or how about, From Computer Space to Pong to Space Invaders to Pac-Man to Dragon's Lair to Gauntlet
Yeah, that works, too. Dragon's Lair was a pioneering game.
tinnitischannel This is a great video with some fantastic games but Dragon's Lair pioneered what exactly? Quick time events? Overcharging for games? Gimmicks? Valuing graphics over gameplay? Dragon's Lair represents everything you seem to dislike about modern games so I'm not sure why you might flatter this misstep in gaming history by including it. I assume you'll argue it represented a technical step forward but when was this laser disc technology ever used again (apart from Space Ace) and when was it ever used to make good games?
Off the top of my head, the technology was used again in MACH 3, Bega's Battle, Cube Quest, Astron Belt, Badlands (featured on 1980s game show Starcade), and, 8 years later, Time Traveler. Dragon's Lair definitely was a technological pioneer. Whether or not it's a good game is a matter of taste. But to have been there in 1983, and to be able to interact with a fully-animated cartoon in an era that only knew of sprites, was a pretty amazing thing. Also consider that this was the height of "create your own adventure" books fad, where readers became the protagonist, and when he got to the bottom of a page got to make a decision choose where to take the story. Dragon's Lair enabled us to live out this type of book and control the hero. Sure, we knew the control was extremely limited, but it made us 1980s gamers imagine the possibilities of the future of games. With the advent of polygons, which laid the groundwork for today's realistic cgi modelling, we now have fully-animated characters that players have full control over. I like to think that many designers along the way who made these things possible saw Dragon's Lair as a work of art and dreamed of taking interactivity to where it is today.
by the by, MACH 3 is another arcade game I played the heck out of, in the arcade right across the street from the arcade that had Crazy Climber
@kyoku1982 Thanx!
Mostly next year is the 45th anniversary of games.
this comment is one year old.
PHOENIX!!!! TEMPEST!!! GALAGA!!! POPEYE!!! DONKEY KONG JR.!!!
More or less nailed it for me but its all subjective.. I'd have added scramble
BUT WHERE'S THE MR. DO FRANCHISE
Where's Death Race or Star Castle? ;)
Qix is Jezzball but sophisticated
7:37
Pacman & Centipede walk into a bar. Pacman eats Centipede.
+Dr. Awkward I can just picture the always moving centipede travelling right into PAc-Man's mouth as he waka wakas open and closed.
When dinosaurs ruled the earth
A lot of my favorites were on this list, time go by fast.
If you liked this, you may also like my video, "Complete History of Recorded Music, Part 1." ua-cam.com/video/_7VFdKZoDXU/v-deo.html
Anyone remember Dazzler?
Dazzler: also a 1970s disco-themed super heroine from Marvel comics.
I've played through most of the early 80s games on MAME and selected them into 3 folders: "Favourites", "Technical Fail" (like if it's missing sound, bad colours - not emulated to a playable state yet) and "Fail" (if I think it's just a bad game - or not appealing enough for me to be selected to the Favourites folder)
Dazzler is in the "Fail" folder - I didn't like it enough to put it in my favourites folder
(Only good maze games like Pacman, Berzerk and Ladybug would get in)
Midway didnt own pacman that was namco
Midway was the U.S. Distributor. Even though Namco made Pole Position and Dig Dug, they were distributed by Atari so sometimes Atari may also get credit for game creation.
My mom played Q*bert a lot when she was a kid in the 80s
+Enderk40 J. It's one of my favorite arcade games. My high score is 2/3 of a million points.
+tinntischannel cool, i am trying to get.past the first level which I'm new to the game but its great how its programmed.
Ms Pac Man was the only game where you didn't mind being the girl character. (I refuse to believe that Samus is a girl)
Samus is a girl.
Any game before 1990 was Classic, not Golden.
Labelling them "golden" makes them no less Classic!
maybe golden era is the word - after the 1990s arcades stated dying out - playing at home on a console/home computer was the norm and could never match the excitement of the sights and sounds of the old arcade..
MR.DRILLER
Ava R Thanks for the comment, Ava. I'm not familiar with Dr. Driller.... do you mean Robby Roto? I'll have to do some research.
am sorry to say this punch out came ou tin 1984 so did kung fu master not 1983 sapce cae came ou tin 1983 not 1984
Don't be sorry for my mistakes. Thank you for pointing it out!
Only if you lived in America the golden age ended in 78. In Japan things were just heating up..
In American in 1978, the golden age was just beginning...
I have pressed like for Dragon's Lair, Punch Out, Kung Fu Master and Gauntlet, the others are shit. Now and in the past.
Found the clueless moron.
Now there's no need to bad-mouth other viewers. We all have our likes and dislikes in video games. But in your defense, El Rinco'n was also in the wrong just bad-mouthing golden age arcade games without offering anything constructive. And obviously not old enough to appreciate the historic significance of things.
VERY WELL DONE! Takes me back to my teenage years😃
Thank you again.