So after the video game crash of 1977, a new wave of video games came out, namely Space Invaders. This was solely the game that brought the industry out of the crash. It was designed by Tomohiro Nishikado and was released in 1978 in Japan and was then licensed in America by Bally and released there. It was a revolutionary game and one of the first shooters out there, taking inspiration from popular media of the time such as The War of the Worlds and Star Wars, hence the space and shooting scenario. The aim of Space Invaders was to kill a whole wave of aliens that would move across the screen simultaneously and get closer towards the player as the game went on. In 1980 the Atari 2600 version of the game quadrupled the sales of the system solely because of Space Invaders which is why it was what ended the video game crash with its revolutionary system sales.
The hardware used for Space Invaders was developed solely for the game itself as microcomputers in Japan weren't powerful enough to run a game like Space Invaders so Nishikado had to make his own hardware to create the game, thus creating the arcade board but even after this he couldn't programme Space Invaders exactly how he had intended it to be as he couldn't get it to display colour or get the enemies to move as fast as he wanted them to. (Source 1)
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| The revolutionary Space Invaders (Source 5) |
So we've established how awesome and revolutionary Space Invaders was and how it pretty much brought the industry out of the video game crash but there must be other reasons as to why this is known as the golden age of video games. Well Space Invaders inspired many other companies and people to step into the video game industry and inspiration was given for more games to be produced, along with the influx of new consoles as well and major companies that we still know of today. Arcade games exploded into the market as more and more were created, they were the highlight of the golden age of video games but even as this was all happening, the idea of bringing games into the home was looked into more and more, thus creating the second generation consoles such as the Atari 2600 by Atari, the Intellivision by Mattel and the ColecoVision that allowed people to play the award winning arcade game 'Donkey Kong' in their own homes. Disgruntled former Atari programmers also got together and created the company 'Activision' a well known video games company even to this day. Activision was the first third-party developer of video games.
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| Donkey Kong (Source 6) |
By the early 1980's, 8 million American homes had a video game console and home video gaming was totalling to $3.8 billion a year, almost half of what the arcade video game industry was making. (Source 2) This was a marvelous achievement and when the idea of bringing video games into the home really took off.
So what were the main video games that were well-known for being in the golden age? Well alongside Space Invaders, we also had: Pac-Man, Ultima, Zork, Flight Simulator, Wizardry, Pitfall!, Lode Runner and King's Quest (Source 3). These games were revolutionary and were some of the foundations for establishing the main genres of games we all know today:
Ultima, Wizardry: Roleplaying game (rpg)
Zork, King's Quest: Adventure
Flight Simulator: Simulation
Pitfall!: Platformer
Lode Runner: Puzzle
Pac-Man: Maze
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| A puzzle genre game, Lode Runner (Source 7) |
Some major companies made their very first appearances during this time as well, for example Nintendo, originally a card game company in Japan who released the world-wide selling and symbolic even to this day console, the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and it went on to play ground-breaking games such as Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, some of the biggest sellers in the history of video games, even going on to selling new games in the series even today. Nintendo went on to make the Gameboy, revolutionary for being a handheld console and playing some of the most well known games such as Pokemon. (Source 4)
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| The ground-breaking NES (Source 8) |
So as we can see the 1980s-1990s was a great time for video games, major developments were made with the formation of new major companies within the industry, the end of the video game crash with ground-breaking new game genres and consoles and the increase of gaming at home. The favored way of playing a game today, i.e at home was finally being seen at this stage and in part three of my history of video games I will have a look at how this idea developed even further.
Source 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders
Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_and_video_games
Source 3: http://armchairarcade.com/neo/node/2975
Source 4: http://www.time.com/time/interactive/0,31813,2029221,00.html
Source 5: http://static.onemansblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Space_Invaders.jpg
Source 6: http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/d/donkey_kong.png
Source 7: http://www.fileguru.com/images/b/lode_runner_games_arcade_style-17487.gif
Source 8: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoEntertainmentSystem
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