10.Galaxian (1979)
In 1977, the world received the gift of Star Wars, and the movie inspired people around the world. One person who was very inspired by the film was Kazunori Sawano, the designer of Galaxian. The Namco / Midway classic is heavily inspired by Star Wars. It introduced numerous innovations that would ultimately inspire an entire genre of video games. In Galaxian, the player takes control of a Galaxip starfighter as they defend Earth from alien ship formations. When the game was first designed, the enemies looked like TIE Fighters from Star Wars, but this was changed to more insect-like aliens. Galaxian was designed primarily to combat rival company Taito’s success with Space Invaders, and it was incredibly successful.
Galaxian broke new ground as it was one of the first games to feature RGB color graphics. You could also animate multi-colored sprites as you scroll across the screen, making it incredibly more complex than the competition. The success of Galaxian led to its sequel Galaga in 1981. It has also inspired numerous games that followed, including 1941, Time Pilot, and almost any game in which a player controls a ship fighting enemies.
9.Lunar Lander (1979)
A decade after humanity (perhaps) landed on the Moon, Atari released a game that allowed people to try the same thing, albeit with less at stake. Lunar Lander is a vector game that shows a lunar lander as it descends towards the surface of the Moon. The player turns the module and burns fuel through a thruster to land softly in specific areas. Whether you’re successful or not, the scenario resets to a different terrain, allowing players to keep trying until the fuel runs out. A new quarter buys additional fuel, making it possible to keep playing (for a price). The game was groundbreaking in that it employed a feature that made the game more profitable for arcade owners. By allowing players to keep playing at the cost of another quarter, the game proved that it was possible to win more money with anyone who was willing to keep playing. This was long before it was possible to save a game, so it marked a significant change for games. Also, the physics used to control the lunar module was incredibly well done. It offers a realistic approximation of the real thing, something few games were capable of in the 1970s.
8.Breakout (1976)
Nolan Bushnell created Pong, but wanted to further explore the concept, so he co-created Breakout in 1976. Breakout is very similar to Pong, but it is a single player game that uses the same paddle controller. Instead of hitting a ball to try to score against an opponent, the player hits it to knock bricks out of a wall. He enlisted the help of Steve Jobs (who was working at Atari at the time) to design the game. Jobs brought in Steve Wozniak from Hewlett-Packard. They worked hard to put it together with as few chips as possible. The goal was to combat the numerous Pong clones that flooded the market, and it practically worked. Breakout was incredibly successful for Atari, but more than that, it created a new genre of games. Technically, 1974’s Clean Sweep came first, but it was Breakout that made screen cleaning something gamers wanted to do, and that influence led to tons of similar games. I can thank the success of Breakout. If you want to take a look at it, all you need to do is go to Google.com, search for “Atari Breakout” and hit “I feel lucky.”
7.Sea Wolf (1976)
At a time when most video games involved looking at a monitor, Midway decided to do something different. Sea Wolf is a shooter game that places the player inside a submarine. They then watch a screen with ships moving along the sea line and firing torpedoes to destroy them. Rather than just looking at a screen, Sea Wolf had a rotating periscope that moved left and right. Its horizontal movement created a realistic targeting range for the player to find ships and destroy them. While the graphics weren’t impressive, the gameplay was entertaining and immersive. Sea Wolf was also one of the first games to incorporate a saved high score, which is a feature that became prevalent soon after. It also pushed people to try to beat their friends to get the highest score, which made the game relatively profitable through competition. Many gamers remember this game more for its innovative and beautifully designed cabinet than for its actual game. Its success led to a colored sequel a couple of years later. It also helped influence the design of the 1980 Battlezone, which employs a similar screen / periscope.
6.Zork (1977)
When programmers were racking their heads trying to find new and innovative ways to display images on a computer screen, a group of four MIT students were working on a text-based game. Although not the first and based on the innovations made in the 1976 Colossal Cave Adventure, Zork became one of the most important games of the 1970s. Before Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork, the games did not tell a story. They involved some minor action and player control, but there was no coherent storyline of any kind. These games changed all that by creating immersive worlds through descriptive text, and not a single image was rendered. In Zork, the player controls the story by entering directions and actions that they want their adventurer to take. The objective is to return from the “Great Underground Empire” with the specific treasures necessary to complete the adventure. Zork’s success proved that there were gamers who wanted to play fascinating story-driven adventures. Other text-based games emerged from Zork, but eventually evolved into modern video game RPGs that continue to dominate the industry to this day.
5.Space Invaders (1978)
In Space Invaders, the player controls a small cannon that moves horizontally across the screen. It is protected by four green barriers, degrading when hit by friendly or enemy fire. A fleet of insectoid spaceships descends towards the player, becoming faster as they approach as the flying saucers hover above the screen. The game is relatively simple but dynamic and difficult for players to master. It was not the first game that allowed you to shoot down alien spaceships, but it was one of the first in which those same ships fired at the player. The game featured several innovations that would become common throughout the industry. Most notable was the inclusion of a continuous background soundtrack, which was a simple repeating series of bass notes played in a loop. Space Invaders was one of the most successful video games ever developed. Taito sold so many units that new arcades were built to focus on the game, it was that popular. It even caused a shortage of coins in Japan until the government quadrupled the supply of yen.
4.Asteroids (1979)
Atari Asteroids may seem like a simple game, but it is anything but simple. The game allows the player to control a spaceship trapped in an asteroid field. As you try to destroy and avoid the asteroids, the flying saucers appear and attack. The player can remain stationary or move using their thrusters or by jumping into hyperspace to a random location. Like most games of the time, the more you play, the more difficult it becomes. Asteroids is definitely one of the most challenging games of the time. It is also considered one of the first successful arcade cabinets to come out during the Golden Age of Arcade Games. Asteroids was comparatively simple to what followed, but it influenced a ton of programmers. Asteroids were ridiculously popular when it launched. You can see it in the background of numerous movies and TV shows of the time. It quickly surpassed Space Invaders in sales, with more than 70,000 units shipped to arcades around the world. It broke records and became the best-selling Atari game of all time. While Atari took home about $ 150 million ($ 490 million in 2021) from sales, arcade owners saw more than $ 500 million ($ 1.6 billion in 2021) from all the fallen quarters in the year. market. coin slot in the late 1980s.
3.Computer Space (1971)
Few people these days have heard of Computer Space despite its place in history. The game was developed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney (the future co-founders of Atari) in 1971. It became the first arcade video game and the first commercially available video game in the world. The most notable feature of the game was not the gameplay. or the graphics; it was the cabinet. The sleek fiberglass cabin was curvy and out of this world. He even made a cameo appearance in 1973’s Soylent Green, as it looked incredibly futuristic. Computer Space was a redesigned version of the 1962 computer game Spacewar !, but with the ability to accept coins. It featured a starscape where the player controlled a ship that fired at two computer-controlled UFOs. It was relatively simple but innovative. Computer Space sold 1,500 units, but it was not a great financial success. It showed that there was a market for coin-operated arcade games, but it never took off in popularity. Bushnell and Dabney formed Atari soon after, and in June 1972, they launched Atari with the much more successful game Pong. The most significant Computer Space brand in history was the standard setting of arcade games cabinets that would be seen in all subsequent cabins.
