Electro-mechanical arcade games

Periscope, an example of an early Sega electro-mechanical arcade game.

Electro-mechanical arcade games (often abbreviated EM games) are what arcades used to have before the arrival of arcade video games (which use solid-state electronics like transistors, integrated circuits, printed circuit boards, and microcontrollers, along with a video display). An electro-mechanical game is any coin-operated game that has neither a microprocessor (nor an approximation of one with logic gates like SHARK Jaws, Computer Space and others used), or a proper display monitor. An electro-mechanical game is run through switches, relays, motors, and lights. Any electronic circuitry in the machine were usually very simple. Evetually, the late 1960s saw the emergence of video projection EM games, which used projection displays for visuals (like Duck Hunt, Jet Rocket and Killer Shark) and ocassionally solid-state electronics for sounds (like Night Rider), laying the foundations for arcade video games.

The most common type of electro-mechanical games were pinball machines—all of them up to the late seventies were either mechanical or electromechanical (the industry switched to microprocessors around 1978 or so). Other electro-mechanicals include most early slot machines and Pachinko machines, although the earliest ones were completely mechanical.

Besides pinball, there were many other types of electro-mechanical games, ranging from sports games to light-gun shooting games. Usually, rather than displaying the objects on a screen, they were physical objects that were either static or moving, often inside a showcase. Eventually, from the late 1960s, there were electro-mechanical games that used video projection displays, giving them the appearance of later arcade video games.

These games had one big problem: they broke down all the time. This is why you never see any electro-mechanicals anymore (aside from a few really old Skee Ball machines). The mean time between failures on most of these machines could be measured in days. Some were more reliable than others, but in general the more complex ones were constantly failing. Any individual game may have hundreds of moving parts, which were often subject to abuse. This makes functioning electro-mechanicals very rare today.

Electro-mechanical golden age

EM games were popular during the electro-mechanical golden age of the 1960s and 1970s, but video games eventually overtook them in popularity during the golden age of arcade video games that began with Space Invaders in 1978.^[1]

The electro-mechanical golden age began with the 1959 arcade hit Mini Drive, a racing game where the player used a steering wheel to control a miniature car across a scrolling conveyor belt inside an arcade cabinet. It was manufactured by Kasco (Kansei Seiki Seisakusho) and became a hit in Japan.^[1]

Periscope, released by Namco in 1965,^[2][3] and then by Sega in 1966,^[4] was an early submarine simulator and light gun shooter,^[5] which used lights and plastic waves to simulate sinking ships from a submarine.^[6] It became an instant success in Japan, Europe, and North America^[7] where it was the first arcade game to cost a quarter per play,^[4] which would remain the standard price for arcade games for many years to come.^[7] Periscope revived the North American arcade industry in the late 1960s.^[8] The game was cloned by Midway as Sea Raider (1969) and Sea Devil (1970). Midway later adapted it into an arcade video game, Sea Wolf (1976).^[9]

In 1967, Taito's EM arcade game Crown Soccer Special was a two-player sports game that simulated association football, using various electronic components, including electronic versions of pinball flippers.^[10] Sega's 1970 multiplayer EM shooter game Gun Fight was a direct precedent to Taito's 1975 arcade video game Gun Fight, which in turn was influential on shooter video games.^[11]

Video projection games

In the late 1960s, Japanese arcade manufacturers Kasco and Sega introduced a new type of electro-mechanical game, video projection games. They looked and played like later arcade video games, but relied on electro-mechanical components to produce sounds and images rather than a CRT display. They used rear video image projection to display moving animations on a video screen.^[12][1][11] Video projection games became common in arcades of the 1970s. They combined electro-mechanical and video elements, laying the foundations for arcade video games, which adapted cabinet designs and gameplay mechanics from earlier video projection games.^[11] They also ocassionally used solid-state electronics for sounds (like Night Rider).

Starting with Duck Hunt in January 1969, Sega introduced video projection games. It used rear image projection in a manner similar to an ancient Chinese zoetrope to produce moving animations on a display screen. Duck Hunt was the first arcade game with animated targets displayed on a screen, in contrast to earlier electro-mechanical arcade games that displayed actual physical static targets. This gave Duck Hunt the appearance of a video game, several years before the first true video games arrived in the arcades (such as Computer Space and Pong). Duck Hunt thus anticipated the kind of light-gun shooter video games that would later appear in the 1970s, and was the first arcade shooter to display a first-person perspective on a screen.

After Duck Hunt, Sega produced more video projection games. In 1969, Sega released Grand Prix, a first-person driving/racing game projecting a forward-scrolling road on a screen. The same year, they released Missile, a first-person vehicle combat simulation that had a moving film strip project targets on screen, and a dual-control scheme where two directional buttons move the player tank and a two-way joystick with a fire button shoots and steers missiles onto oncoming planes, which explode when hit. In 1970, the game was released in North America as S.A.M.I.

In 1970, Sega released Jet Rocket, a first-person combat flight sim with cockpit controls that could move the player aircraft around a landscape displayed on screen and shoot missiles onto targets that explode when hit. In 1972, Sega released Killer Shark, a first-person light gun game known for appearing in the 1975 film Jaws.

These eventually influenced Nintendo to produce similar light-gun shooting electro-mechanical arcade games. In 1974, Nintendo's arcade light gun shooter Wild Gunman used similar technology, but improved it even further by using full-motion video projection to display live-action cowboy opponents on screen.

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