Category: Video Games

Better known for making jukeboxes and speakers, Rock-Ola continues trying to make inroads into the video game industry by releasing Fantasy in the United States. The arcade game, originated in Japan by SNK, is one of the very first coin-op games to allow players to insert additional coins to continue from the location of their previous game’s end within a set amount of time. With several screens requiring players to develop completely different strategies on the fly, Fantasy doesn’t gain much of a following; many arcade operators gut and convert their Fantasy machines into other games. (This is your webmaster’s all-time favorite arcade game.)

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Newly exposed to the rapidly expanding video game industry, Dallas businessman Patrick Roper files incorporation papers for a new video game manufacturer, Games By Apollo. Having started a video game company, Roper places ads in local newspapers seeking programmers to make games for the Atari VCS. In one year of operation, Roper – seeing the much better-funded Activision as his primary competition – overproduces all of Apollo’s nearly dozen titles, leading to a round of price cuts on the company’s products.

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Sierra On-Line releases the computer game Mouskattack. Designed by John Harris, this is one of several titles Sierra will publish to get a Pac-Man-style game on the home computer market before Atari can release an official port. It is available for the Atari home computers.

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Midway delivers the long-anticipated sequel to Pac-Man to eager arcade operators. Ms. Pac-Man – a game which originated not from Pac-Man’s creators in Japan, but from an American “enhancement kit” maker called General Computer Corporation – arrives in arcades and immediately starts to break earnings records, eventually becoming the top-earning coin-op video game in American history.

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Cupertino businessman Larry Jones incorporates Mythicon, a new video game software publisher focused entirely on providing games for the Atari VCS. With the knowledge that the market for VCS software is already becoming flooded, Mythicon’s business model involves selling games for a price point just under $10 each, and distributing them in grocery stores and drug stores rather than the usual retail chain outlets. Only three games – all three regarded as some of the worst yet produced for the VCS – are released before Mythicon closes up shop.

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Konami introduces the arcade game Loco Motion in the United States, one of its earliest self-released coin-ops (most titles had previously been licensed through Stern).

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Gottlieb introduces the arcade game Reactor in the United States, a unique trackball-driven game with thumping synthesized hard rock musical accompaniment.

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Emerson, an American radio and telvision manufacturer that has shown no previous interest in the video game boom, releases its own console, the Emerson Arcadia 2001. Intended to be a serious challenger to the Atari VCS and Intellivision, the Arcadia 2001 has limited graphics capabilities and a limited library boasting relatively generic sports games and knock-offs of popular arcade games, as well as a few incredibly obscure licensed arcade ports.

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The Stateside arm of Japanese video game maker Data East releases the arcade game Disco No. 1 in the United States, having apparently missed the memo announcing that disco is dead.

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The legendarily tough arcade game Robotron: 2084, designed by Eugene Jarvis (creator of Defender), hits arcades across America and becomes an instant hit. With its two joysticks – one for moving the player’s character, one for firing in any direction – Robotron continues Williams’ hallmark of challenging control schemes, and screws with the fight-or-flight responses of arcade gamers everywhere for years to come.

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Sega introduces the cult classic arcade game Zaxxon, significantly raising the bar for arcade graphics with its three-quarter isometric 3-D view (and making it nearly impossible to translate faithfully to home video game consoles of the era). Though this new perspective doesn’t make Zaxxon easy to play, it becomes one of the first video games that players line up just to look at.

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Better known for making jukeboxes and speakers, Rock-Ola makes one of its final attempts to break into the video game industry by releasing Eyes, a maze chase game created by Florida-based Digitrex Techstar. Since many arcades are already flooded with maze games, Eyes seems to disappear from most arcades in a blink; this is one of Rock-Ola’s final attempts to get into the game business.

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Exidy’s utterly bizarre coin-op video game Pepper II arrives in arcades, and players are given the task of guiding an angelic being on his mission to zip up a maze made of zippers while pursued by little devils. While trying to figure out if any of it makes sense, the industry spends far too much time coining phrases like “wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper II?”

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Williams Electronics unleashes an arcade favorite in the making, Moon Patrol. A rare case of a foreign game (originated in Japan by IREM) licensed for American distribution by Williams, Moon Patrol forces prospective moon buggy drivers to make split-second decisions about whether to shoot oncoming obstacles or vault over them in the moon’s low gravity. The game’s colorful graphics and inordinately jaunty music make it an instant hit.

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Konami introduces the arcade game Tutankham in the United States through licensee Stern. A running firefight through a maze, Tutankham tasks players on a deadly treasure hunting mission with a rarity for an arcade game – a definite end goal.

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Nintendo follows up on the hugely successful Donkey Kong arcade game with its first sequel, Donkey Kong Junior. Not only does the new game prove that the original’s success wasn’t a fluke, but it gives Mario his name for the first time (well, his first name) and throws in some role reversal, putting the player in the position of having to save Donkey Kong, who was the first game’s nemesis.

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Japanese arcade game manufacturer Taito introduces its latest game, Jungle King, though the game will be known by that name for all of three months. A sampled “Tarzan yell” draws the legal wrath of the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate, and Taito rushes to replace the loincloth-clad player character with a more covered-up, pith-helmeted explorer, retitling the game Jungle Hunt in the process.

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Wargame publisher Avalon Hill’s subsidiary Microcomputer Games Inc. releases the computer role playing game Telengard for the Apple II computer. It promptly consumes the webmaster’s entire summer.

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