The coin-operated amusements industry, which developed jukeboxes, pinball machines, slots, gumball machines, and later video game cabinets, had its roots in gambling, a controversial industry in America. Most states had laws against or heavily regulated gambling, but the slot companies quickly found ways around the prohibitions.
Gumball machines, for example, were used to sidestep state gambling laws against cash payout machines by offering gum as a prize, leading to widespread and long-standing distrust of vending machines by would-be regulators. From the beginning, pinball machines were a subject of municipal debate revolving around one main question: whether or not pinball machines were "games of chance," which by definition meant that they were gambling devices.
As early as , operators, game manufacturers, and distributors argued — most often unsuccessfully — that pinball was a game of skill, and not inevitably connected to gambling. It was true, of course, that some early pinball machines manufactured by companies like Bally and Williams did offer a cash payout and also that early machines, which lacked bumpers and flippers, were largely luck-based endeavors.
The first full-fledged and highly publicized legal attack on pinball came on January 21st, , when New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia banned pinball in the city, ordering the seizure of thousands of machines. The ban — which would remain in effect until — was the culmination of legal efforts which had started much earlier, and which could be found in municipal pockets all over the country.
LaGuardia, however, was the first to get the job done on a large scale. A native New Yorker of half-Italian, half-Jewish ancestry, LaGuardia despised corruption in all forms, and the image of the stereotypical Italian gangster was one he resented. During his long, popular tenure as mayor of New York City, he shut down brothels, rounded up slot machines, arrested gangsters on any charge he could find, and he banned pinball.
For the somewhat puritanical LaGuardia, pinball machine pushers were "slimy crews of tinhorns, well dressed and living in luxury on penny thievery'' and the game was part of a broader "craze" for gambling. On the first day of the ban, the city police confiscated more than 2, pinball machines and issued nearly 1, summons.
Pinball, a "pointless game," was attractive to children, and this worried parents and "concerned citizens. On the one hand, he says, "they successfully made the case that pinball was a type of gambling," but under the surface was a much more temperance-fueled, nearly religious belief that pinball was a tool "from the devil," which corrupted youths. At the time, it was easy to make the case that pinball was morally corrupting, at least insofar as it was a gateway to gambling, as well as a complete waste of time.
The pinball manufacturers proved highly adaptable and innovative, however. The invention of the flipper by Gottlieb in helped to launch pinball more firmly into the "game of skill" category, and manufacturers began to aggressively pursue a family-friendly image. Like so many things which are illicit, though, the attraction of pinball only increased in the prohibition years following World War II, and, by the s, the quickest route to proving your rebel status in America was to be seen within a few feet of a pinball machine.
In many municipalities and towns where pinball was not illegal, a required paid licensing system which made the machines taxable at rates of up to 50 percent was put into effect, limiting the number of machines in one location. Most machines now bore an ominous sign reading, "For Amusement Only," to make it clear there that the money changed hands in one direction only.
Pinball flourished where it could, even while its reputation with the concerned citizens and parents of America was overwhelmingly horrific. Mothers and small PTA groups formed bands which demonstrated at candy stores and tiny arcades where their young ones were whiling away hours and cash in lieu of doing their homework.
Much like their later counterparts with video games, parents feared "zombified," disconnected children unable to "think logically" as the pinball racket "bleeds millions of dollars from youngsters each year.
The period between the late s and the introduction of a new type of arcade game in the early s — the video game — was one of continued controversy, growing attraction of games for young people, and innovation for the machines. The Supreme Court in California overturned the pinball ban in , and on May 13, , the City Council in New York City voted 30 to 6 to overturn the ban on pinball after nearly 35 years.
Sharpe recalls that the demonstration lasted about fifteen minutes. His aim in the demonstration was to prove, once and for all, that pinball was a game of skill, and he was successful. Times had changed, seemingly in favor of pinball, and arcades dedicated just to games were once again a realistic business proposition. Unfortunately for pinball, something new was on the horizon. It was a world he knew well by the time he graduated from the University of Utah in with a degree in electrical engineering.
Bushnell had spent his summers working at Lagoon Amusement Park in Farmington, Utah, and had unsuccessfully applied for a job at Disney after gradution. I think that you kind of get the carnival ideas into your blood. In summers I was working in the arcades," he says. I knew how much it had to earn. I really understood the economics of the coin-operated game business, and I think that I was perhaps the only person that had those two experiences, which allowed me to synthesize it. This game, Bushnell says, "got all his juices going.
It was Dabney and Bushnell who created the Spacewar! Computer Space was the first commercial arcade game released by Palo Alto-based Nutting Associates in The complicated game failed to catch on with the "guy with the beer in the bar," and Nutting was ultimately disappointed with sales of Computer Space. But Pac-Man was the real game changer. By the mid eighties the popularity of video arcades had begun to wane, a result of the availability of personal computers and home gaming consoles like SEGA Genesis and Nintendo.
By arcade game revenue in the U. With American youth experience only becoming more insular, it seems the arcade is relegated to the memory of aging pre-millennials and nostalgists.
But for grown children of a certain age the jingling quarters, sticky plastic surfaces and crunchy carpeting of the arcade will always conjure deviant yearnings for those glowy-dark sanctuaries our mothers always warned us about. The roots of the American arcade can be traced back to the dime museums, exposition midways, and amusements parlors of the 19th century.
At the end of that century, parlor owners filled their establishments with such new novelties of the Industrial age as opens in a new window phonographs , opens in a new window kinetoscopes , and mutoscopes. These inventions provided parlor goers with the magical experiences of listening to recorded sounds and watching moving images. Everything you destroy gives you points.
Players earn lives with points, but losing all lives ends the game. You control a spaceship the Galaxip at the bottom of the screen, and shoot descending attacking aliens from different directions.
Features like a selectable soundtrack and nonlinear gameplay really set it apart from other games on the market at the time. Dips and curves in the road make it more challenging by concealing obstacles like traffic. Any sort of collision slows the car down. Reach a destination within the time allocated, otherwise the game ends.
Time is extended by reaching checkpoints. You must choose one direction at a junction, which leads to different surroundings.
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