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 introduction of arcade video games (which use solid-state electronics like transistors, integrated circuits, printed circuit boards, and microcontrollers, along with a video display monitor). 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 Grand Prix, Missile and 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 Grand Prix, Missile and Night Rider).

The first video projection games were Kasco's Indy 500, released in the late 1960s,^[1] and Sega's Duck Hunt, released in January 1969.^[13][14]

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 moving 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 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. It also printed out the player's score on a ticket, and had sound effects that were volume controllable.^[13]

Kasco's Indy 500 was a rear-projection driving/racing game designed by Kenzou Furukawa. It used rear image projection to display a first-person scrolling track on a video screen, along with rival cars the player needs to avoid crashing into, while the controls consisted of a steering wheel and accelerator pedal. It became a hit in Japan, selling 2,000 cabinets there, and inspired several clones in 1969, including Sega's Grand Prix and Chicago Coin's Speedway, which became an even bigger hit in North America, selling 10,000 cabinets there and winning a prize.^[1] Sega's clone Grand Prix also had a first-person view, electronic sound, a dashboard with a racing wheel and accelerator,^[15] and a similar forward-scrolling road projected on a screen.^[16] Indy 500 laid the foundations for racing video games.^[1]

In 1969, Sega released Missile, a first-person vehicle combat simulation that featured electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen. It was the earliest known arcade game to feature a joystick with a fire button, which formed part of an early dual-control scheme, where two directional buttons are used to move the player's tank and a two-way joystick is used to shoot and steer the missile onto oncoming planes displayed on the screen; when a plane is hit, an animated explosion appears on screen, accompanied by the sound of an explosion.^[17] In 1970, the game was released in North America as S.A.M.I.^[18]

In the late 1960s, Sega developed Jet Rocket, which eventually released in 1970, and was cloned shortly after by three Chicago manufacturers.^[8] It was a first-person combat flight simulator with cockpit controls that could move the player aircraft around a landscape displayed on screen and shoot missiles onto targets that explode when hit.^[19] It featured shooting and flight movement in a 3D environment from a first-person perspective, a precursor to first-person vehicle combat video games such as Battlezone (1980) and Hovertank 3D (1991), and the first-person shooter video game genre.^[20]

In 1972, Sega released Killer Shark, a first-person light gun game known for appearing in the 1975 film Jaws.^[12]

In 1974, Nintendo's arcade light gun shooter Wild Gunman used full motion video (FMV) projection from 16mm film to display live-action cowboy opponents on screen.^[21] It was the first interactive movie game, and the first game to use full motion video (FMV).^[20] The quick time event (QTE) mechanic also has origins in Wild Gunman. Alternate film footage was played depending on the player's quick draw reaction. It paved the way for later QTE laserdisc video games.^[11] In the 1970s, Kasco released a hit electro-mechanical arcade game with live-action FMV, projecting car footage filmed by Toei.^[1]

In 1975, Kasco released the first holographic 3-D game, Gun Smoke, a light gun shooter. It was a hit in Japan, selling 6,000 cabinets there, but only 750 cabinets were sold in the US.^[22] It was followed by two more holographic Kasco gun games, Samurai and Bank Robber, released between 1975 and 1977, as well as a 1976 Midway clone, Top Gun. They predated the first holographic video games, Sega's Time Traveler (1991) and Holosseum (1992).^[23]

One of the last successful electro-mechanical arcade games was F-1, a racing game developed by Namco and distributed by Atari in 1976.^[24] This game appeared in the films Dawn of the Dead (1978)^[25] and Midnight Madness (1980), as did Sega's Jet Rocket in the latter film.

Over the course of the 1970s, following the release of Pong in 1972, arcade video games began competing with electro-mechanical games in the arcades.^[26][1] The gradual shift was not abrupt, as early arcade video games were largely modelled after earlier video projection games,^[11] which continued to thrive up until the 1978 video game Space Invaders,^[1] which dealt a powerful blow to the popularity of electro-mechanical games.^[27] Kasco, one of the biggest electro-mechanical arcade manufacturers at the time, declined due to its reluctance to make the transition to arcade video games. The 1978 release of Space Invaders marked the end of the electro-mechanical golden age, and the beginning of the golden age of arcade video games.^[1]