Timeline of Arcade Game History

This article contains a timeline of notable events in the history of arcade gaming:

Contents

1971

  • Computer Space, the first ever coin-operated arcade video game, is released by Nutting Associates.

1972

  • Atari launches Pong, the first commercially successful video game.

1975

  • Taito releases Gun Fight, the first arcade video game to use a microprocessor.

1976

  • Atari releases Night Driver, the earliest example of a first-person perspective racing game.

1981

  • DECO releases DECO Cassette System, the first standardized arcade platform, for which many games were made.

1982

  • Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom is released by Sega with the first use of scaling sprite 3D effects.

1983

  • I, Robot, the first commercially produced 3D-polygonal game is released.
  • Bally Midway releases Journey, the first game with digitized sprites.
  • Minefield was released by Stern, the first game to use parallax scrolling.
  • Crossbow, by Exidy, is released. It is the first game with fully digitized sound and graphics (previously games featured only pre-recorded cassette playback of realistic sound). It also features some of the most advanced graphics of the time.
  • Mr. Do released to worldwide acclaim and much beating of chests.

1986

  • Exidy releases Chiller, the most violent arcade game ever made until the Mortal Kombat series, and to this day considered the most gratuitously violent arcade game.
  • Sega releases Outrun.

1988

  • NARC, by Midway is released.
  • Reikai Doushi, by Home Data is released, the first digitized fighting game and the first claymation fighting game.

1989

  • Exterminator, the first game with fully digitized graphics, is released. It will have the highest quality digitized graphics until the release of Mortal Kombat 2.

1992

  • Sega releases Holosseum, a game which uses a holographic monitor.

1993

  • Mortal Kombat II is released, featuring high quality digitized graphics, and the most advanced sound system in arcades at the time, the DCS sound system which allowed for MP3 style compression to all sounds.

1994

  • Killer Instinct is released, the first arcade game with a hard disk, up to that point the game with the highest quality graphics pre-rendered by a rendering program, featuring to this day the highest quality use of the movie background technique.

1999

  • Rush 2049 is released, the last arcade game to bear the Atari Games logo. Atari Games in Milpitas is renamed Midway Games West, and closes it's coin-op product development division.

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