IV. Golden Age
A TIME OF Change
Owen Rubin at work programming Space Duel (1982).
While all industries have their ups and downs, few have had such meteoric rises and falls as coin-op has. Fueled by an insatiable appetite for video games, by 1982, the industry was taking in a staggering $8 billion in quarters, surpassing the revenue of both pop music and Hollywood box office sales combined. Often referred to as the "golden age," the period roughly between Space Invaders (1977), which sold a staggering 700,000 cabinets worldwide, and Dragon's Lair (1983), saw unprecedented economic and technological growth — unmatched by few other industries.
Beginning with the introduction of the microprocessor in the late 1970s, technological advances quickly opened new worlds of possibilities for game designers. Players were routinely presented with sights and sounds that made older machines obsolete almost overnight, and as market demands grew, so did the pressure to meet rising expectations. Somewhat predictably, the saturation of the market would eventually lead to an overall decline in interest starting in 1983.
"When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.”
CHINESE PROVERB
Kids fill arcade in Hollywood, California (1982).
Though this golden age was relatively brief, it proved to be an incredibly fertile period that attracted innovative designers and engineers to the industry. Many of the creative minds who cut their teeth during this time, like Eugene Jarvis and George Gomez, would go on to have lasting careers in coin-op. And though many companies like Atari, Williams Electronics and Bally Midway ultimately left the arcade space, the creative talent and groundbreaking ideas from this prolific period revolutionized gaming forever. The iconic characters and gameplay mechanics developed during this time — from Mario's acrobatic jumps to Pac-Man's maze-running adventures — have become permanent fixtures in video game culture and beloved by millions of players across multiple generations.
