Evolution of Arcade Games

Early 1970's saw the emerging of games on the online platform for the first time. Since then, these online games have become a part and parcel of our day to day lifestyle. These games have evolved from simple rectangular blips to rich-textured, full-color graphics with excellent sound and complex interaction between the players and the system. Many video game systems have built-in special effects that have features like unique lighting or texture mapping in real time. An arcade game is a coin-operated machine installed in restaurants, video arcades, public places and entertainment centers.

The most popular arcade games were the shooting galleries, ball toss games, or coin-operated machine that tells a person their fortune. The first commercial arcade game, the Computer Space was introduced in 1971 by Nutting Associates. In 1972, Atari introduced Pong to the arcades. Interestingly, Atari and Computer Space were both formed by Nolan Bushnell. In 1975, Atari brought in the home version of its popular arcade game Pong. Pong was sold exclusively through Sears and also carried the Sears logo. Pong being a huge success opened doors to home video games.

In 1976, Fairchild Channel F released the first removable game system. In its footsteps, Atari too introduced the Atari Computer Space, 2600 which became a huge success. It used removable cartridges, permitting a multitude of games to be played using the same hardware. The complicated 2600 hardware contained a MOS 6502 microprocessor with 128 bytes of RAM and 4-kilobyte ROM-based game cartridges. Stella, a custom graphic chip controlled the synchronization to the TV and other video processing tasks. Games were encoded on ROM chips housed in plastic cartridges. The ROM was wired on a PCB that contains series of metal contacts along the edge. When power was supplied, it would sense the presence of ROM and load the software into the memory.

Although systems like Atari 2600 gained interest among the players, but it faded with time due to poor arcade standards. It was due to this fact, that in 1985, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) by Nintendo was introduced that changed the picture of online video gaming forever. The NES introduced three concepts in its gaming console:

• A pad controller instead of a joystick.
• Authentic reproduction of arcade video games for the home playing system
• Used the hardware as a loss leader by pricing it too high, then making profit on the games themselves.

This strategy paid off and Nintendo is still expanding to new horizons in the field of online video games.

Make sure you make the best of your online gaming consoles!!

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