Electro-mechanical arcade games

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

In the mid-20th century, electro-mechanical arcade games (EM games) were a staple of amusement arcade venues across the world. As the name suggests, these are commercial products, typically using simple electric circuits to move physical objects in order to simulate a game - an evolution of slot machines, pinball tables and Pachinko machines (as well as purely mechanical games), and which rose to prominence after the end of World War II.

Numerous amusement companies designed and manufactured coin-operated EM games between the early 1950s and late 1970s. Sega began producing games in the early 1960s, with the the 1966 release of Periscope emerging as their first successful EM venture. Until the mid-1970s, the company structured itself around this market, however with the advent of more complex and reliable "video games" - those which use a combination of solid state electronics to draw a picture on a television screen, Sega became less focused on its EM operations, ending with the release of Plinker's Canyon in 1976.

In the late 1960s, "video projection" electro-mechanical games began appearing, with the likes of Sega's Duck Hunt (1968) dropping physical moving targets in favour of projected animated images, helping to set the tone for the first half of the 1970s. However, due to a reliance on physical moving parts (and by extension, high maintenance costs), all types of electro-mechanical arcade games are difficult to find outside of museums, with most being taken out of service in the early 1980s.

History

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]

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.^[2][1][3] 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.^[3] 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 1968.^[4][5][6]

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.^[7][1] The gradual shift was not abrupt, as early arcade video games were largely modelled after earlier video projection games,^[3] 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.^[8] 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]