The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade : 1983

1983: The year of the video game crash, and, of course, Return of the Jedi!  Home computing, for me at least wouldn’t start for another year. On my cousin’s rubber keyed Spectrum, Horace Goes Skiing didn’t do it for me, and the Arcade was still very much king, the cutting edge of the gaming industry.

The arcades, at this point, had almost completely taken over my life. I never really had a passion for anything else. Sure, I got a buzz out of the latest Star Wars or Action Force figures, but the Arcades gave me the immersion, the dizzying adrenaline hit,  and a comforting home from home.

Video game crash or not, 1983 was the best year for arcade gaming so far, if not ever.  Not just stand out games, but stand out experiences, emotions, surprises and events. Gaming was now coming of age, maturing, whilst upping the fireworks tenfold.

10-Yard Fight

A low-key entry you might think, but 10-Yard Fight got me from two different angles. Firstly the American Football theme, something I indulged in since becoming an avid fan of the Chicago Bears back in the day. Second, and even in comparison to last year’s offerings, a whole new level of complexity and tactics.  With its convincing package of bright, colourful graphics and authentic animations and sounds (Hut, Hut!), this was certainly the first sports video game where I could actually believe I was on the pitch.  You were free to deploy whichever running or passing plays you wished, from the big pass into the end-zone, to muscling through for a 1st down with your running backs, or even sneaky quarterback runs through the defensive line. 10 Yard-Fight gave you the freedom to be creative and play how you wanted.

Best of all, 10-Yard Fight was a very fair game. I didn’t just gobble up your 10p’s. If you kept the 1st downs and touchdowns coming, you progressed, making it veer more towards a sports simulation than an arcade game, but keeping the tight-controls and larger than life fun factor of the latter.

10-Yard Fight was, all in all, a package that was hard to criticize. True, it may have been hard to grasp for non-American Football fans, but once you started to string a few plays together you’d be hard pushed to find a better arcade buzz at the time.

Elevator Action

Tight gameplay. That’s what Elevator Action was all about. There was nothing special about it both graphically or sonically (apart from maybe the cool secret agent them), but just the simple pleasure of negotiating, stairs, lifts, floors avoiding/engaging the shadowy bad-guys in a firefight was all it really needed. Of course, it also paved the way for classics such as Rolling Thunder etc but that never had quite the same purity or focus.  Jumping or ducking over bullets, whilst sliding down escalators and hiding in doorways has never been such fun. Then or since.

Punch-Out!! (arcade game)

As so to the first of 1983’s big Arcade moments. Punch-Out! was a defining game for Nintendo! and for the Arcade industry in general. For a kick-off it was larger than life, occupying two big screens, the main game screen and above it, another screen displaying your stats and colourful boxing opponents in all their glory.  10p eagerly inserted I took the plunge…

Punch-Out! is a classic from the very off, the initial prompt for 1 Player Start is met with a short bleep then silence, inviting you in. The confirmation press welcomes you head-first into the glittering circus that is main-event heavyweight boxing with all the confetti fanfare you’d expect, and without a breath, the first opponent scroll is unfurled. Glass Joe!

The controls couldn’t be simpler, Joystick for left and right dodges + head and body punch/guard. A button each for left and right punches, and a larger, buzzer style button for a hook/uppercut. The worried, spindly, side-parting-sporting Glass Joe can be dealt with without much effort. in fact, it’s probably more difficult to lose, but the important thing is the sheer enjoyment of engaging in a virtual boxing match in (almost) first person.

Player one is a muscle-bound, green-haired enigma,  in-game he’s a transparent wireframe bar the head and boxing gloves, which all actually seems to make sense.  Everything stands out, nothing is obscured. It’s a masterpiece in game and art design.

Once Glass Joe is dispatched with a few weighty sounding strikes to his jaw (and maybe the odd super punch when your bar fills up), it’s onto the Apollo Creed-esque Piston Hurricane.  A much quicker and aggressive opponent, but with a weakness to body shots. Next!

The scroll unfurls again, revealing Bald Bull from Istanbul.  A lump swelled in my throat, and Player 1 tasted the canvas for the first time, then the second, and after Bald Bull’s signature crouching hops followed by a monstrous uppercut. The third. Another 10p goes in. Same result, and another, and another.

Nintendo, so it seems are the masters of the difficulty curve. I wanted, needed to beat Bald Bull, I was getting closer with every attempt, learning from my mistakes, trying out new strategies, mastering the controls and the quirks of the game. Of course, the clues are there for you, watch his eye’s turn yellow, that’s when a punch is coming. Avoid and counter. But I still didn’t have my timing, I still couldn’t win. I watched other people play, also without success. Could he be beaten?

Back in those days,  it was normal to watch other people play, and often crowds of people would gather around if something big was about to happen, a level or stage unseen before etc. this was 1983, there was no YouTube.  One Saturday afternoon, refreshed, I took up the challenge once again.

My victories over Glass Joe and Piston Hurricane felt good and comfortable. A decent warm-up. As I progressed I could hear and feel growing activity around the dominating twin screened cabinet. Looking back a crowd had amassed, turning away from most of the rest of the arcade. This was the Empress Arcade, inside the famous rotunda (Dome) of the Spanish City in Whitley Bay, England. 1983.

To a hushed silence, the bell sounded.  I started cautiously, looking for the yellow eyes, dodging, not taking any chances with wild shots. This was a whole new level of video game experience. Tension, reflexes, jeopardy, with the atmosphere of the crowd behind. Bald Bull limbered up for his first hopping uppercut. I was down!  The fickle audience started to disperse, they’d seen it a thousand times before.  But I gathered myself up with renewed focus. Dodge, jab, jab. The Bulls energy was chipping away as the crowds swarmed back, encroaching on my space.

With a held breath and the slightest of taps, the big Turk was sent spinning, pirouetting and finally crashing to the canvas to the rapturous applause of the crowd. For the first time, the fight was on! I continued to play it cautious as Bull immediately rose to his feet, angrier than ever.  His onslaught got harder and harder to read as he pressed for a mistake, but I managed to get him down again with a well-timed right.

Two knockdowns to one and the win was on. I just needed to keep it together, with the expectation building around me.  Things were going well until my heart sunk, the hopping uppercut again. I was too twitchy, not loose enough to avoid it.

So this was it. Time on the clock and one knockdown required. Both our energy bars were low at this point so it could have gone either way. But this was my seminal arcade moment. Cruelly, the hops came again, my last chance, my moment. Up came the huge uppercut but this time I timed the dodge perfectly. Bald Bull was motionless, stunned. I banged in left after left unanswered as his eyes ballooned in shock until he fell for the final time and was immediately counted out,  the crowd now cheering as the undefeatable was defeated, and then deathly silence.

What now? Who’s next?  The scroll unfurled painfully slowly to cooling gasps all around.

I’d never heard of Kid Quick before, I had no idea of what to expect, no tactics, nothing.  It was a sobering experience after the huge difficulty spike of bald bull

….. And so on all the way up to Mr Sandman.

What a game. What an experience. What moment.

Spy Hunter

The Spy Hunter Cabinet features a souped-up white Lotus featuring a host of ‘optional extras’, machine guns, oil-slicks. missiles, you name it.  And that tells you all you need to know about it. It’s a teenager’s wet dream.

Gaming, for me, has always meant being able to do something you can’t do in real life, become a champion boxer, save the universe from an Alien invasion, or in this case, you get to be James Bond in my favourite car of his. the white Lotus (sort of).

Aside from the powerful marketing and theme, Spy Hunter also gave you a cool Knight-rider style steering wheel (with all the relevant weapons triggers) and proper pedals.  The game itself was rather an afterthought, you drove, used your weapons, and in an unexpected twist, converted into a super-cool speed-boat if you crash through a wooden hit at the end of a jetty into the river.  Similar to Gorf before it, it used cabinetry technology and marketing tricks to sell it.

Spy Hunter was just a very VERY cool game in which you got to be James Bond. What’s not to like about that?

Dragon’s Lair

The first time I saw Dragon’s Lair I was greeted with the beautiful artwork of the cabinet and a black, dead screen.  This was the best Disney cartoon that never was.  Dirk the Daring rescuing Princess Daphne from the evil dragon Singe, locked in the wizard Mordroc’s castle. Normally, I wouldn’t have had high hopes. Another platformer perhaps? However, even before switch-on. I knew Dragon’s Lair was something special. It was ominous and oozed quality. I just wasn’t prepared for how special.

The day finally came, I could hear it before I saw it. A fully represented score, clear speech, you name it, and absolutely cinema quality cartoon graphics, so much so that Dragon’s Lair was initially intimidating, frighteningly realistic even. I was literally shaking on my first go, for the first time playing the character in a fully realised cartoon. The player deaths were brutal. Getting eaten alive, burned to a crisp, you name it, so much so that the humour was lost this nine-year-old boy.

Avoiding lightning strikes from an evil Wizards, navigating underground tunnels in a rowing boat, or even mounting a flying horse.  Mordroc’s doom-laden black castle was a smorgasbord of pitfalls and, on the surface, a variety of gaming mechanics and new ideas.  However. the simple gameplay mechanics of memorising joystick movements, sword swings was almost an afterthought, deeply hidden away under layer upon layer of the best polish in the world,  so much so that you didn’t care. This was the latest video disk technology and a huge step forward. I was in a cartoon for god’s sake! This game, above over all others, made the home-computing machines look like toys.

Star Wars

And so to one of my favourite games of all time, possibly the greatest movie tie-in of all-time (to my favourite film of all time), and a huge leap forward for the Video Game Arcade Experience.

When I first clapped eyes on the sit-down enclosed cabinet of Star Wars, I literally couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was all there, Han, Obi-Wan, Luke, Darth Vader, X-wings, Tie-fighters, the Millenium Falcon, you name it. All official, authentic, just like my favourite film.

Utterly gobsmacked, I peered in,  expecting another style without substance Gorf or Spy Hunter, only to have the melted honey of the Star Wars score poured through my earholes directly to my racing heart. I was now in the cockpit of an X-wing, surrounded, assaulted, aurally and visually, by all things Star Wars.  The Classic score, quotes from the characters. Never before had gaming felt so real, so immersive.

Star Wars was one of those rare, showstopping experiences (I hesitate to call them games) where just sitting in the cabinet was a joy.  This is also a timely reminder of what games have become. Sure, we now have VR etc, but nothing can rival the all-encompassing experiences we had back in the Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade.  I digress.

So does the game itself deliver? For the first time for a game of his type, on every single count!

Star Wars employed the new technology of colourful vector graphics. A masterstroke against the blackness of space, and the template for many a subsequent space shooter, including the legendary Elite which came a year later, and only in monochrome. Star Wars was indeed way ahead of its time.

Being James bond in Spy Hunter was great, but imagine being Luke Skywalker in the final assault on the Death Star sequence!  That’s exactly what Star Wars did, way back in 1983.

All of Star Wars’ elements come together to make, what I believe to be the perfect game and arcade experience. The scene in Star Wars where Luke hits the exhaust port, I get to do that myself, and get the same buzz out of seeing the Death Star explode, time after time. It never gets old.

Coin inserted, you’re met with the reassuringly familiar voice of Obi-Wan “Use the Force Luke”.  I go for the easy difficulty, of course, I don’t want my first ever go to be a struggle. And then the uplifting score kicks in, R2D2 bleeps away, making you feel safe in your X-Wing cocoon.  The controls are another first. A steering wheel without the wheel as it were, a cut-down version of Knight  Rider’s Kitt. But with the two fire-button mounted side handles rotating on their Y-axis to give up and down control.  For 3D space combat, Just like the Fender Telecaster in the guitar world,  the designers perfected the design on their very first go.

Just like Asteroids before it, Star Wars possessed that unique Atari Magic. Cleverness, use of technology, geekiness even. You could sense the love the developers put not just into the game but into the cabinetry and controls as a package, all convincers towards the end product. Yes, I was in the midst of a Tie-Fighter dog-fight!

After the almost uncontainable adrenaline rush of the Ties comes the main event space opera of the trench run. Again. Perfectly recreated. You can almost feel R2 over your shoulder, and Ben’s comforting tones keeping you stable. The exhaust port zooms into view, the Death Star explodes and you’re the hero.

Disconnecting from the cabinet afterwards was a surreal experience. Like leaving Narnia breathless through the cupboard into the brash carpeted arcade.

No game has had a comparable impact on me before or since.

Track & Field

This almost slipped under the radar but how could we forget this all-time classic,  the grand-daddy of the button-mashers, and Joystick wagglers/killers. Track & Field featured six events: 100 Meter Dash, Long jump, Javelin throw, 110 Meter Hurdles, Hammer throw and High jump.  Controls were ridiculously simple. Left and Right buttons plus an action button for jumping, throwing etc.

However, Track & Field introduced the completely new concept of button mashing. You had to hit the left and right buttons (alternatively) as quickly as possible to build up speed, and on some events (e.g. the hurdles), also time your jumps with the action button. Of course, once you’d mastered the six event’s that was it, but just beneath the service lurked a brand new take on the high-score table. World Records!

It was on a holiday to Ostend in Belgium where I was enlightened.  The arcades over there had become trendy teenager hang-outs, as opposed to the geek dens of back home. The cool kids, unusually, brandished plastic lighters. These, it turned out were their weapons of choice and the key to the highly competitive Track & Field world record scene.  I looked on in awe as I witnessed the legendary ‘lighter button flick’ where the plastic end of the lighter was wiped horizontally across the face of the left/right buttons. There were other methods, of course, the ‘cascading fingers’ where the individual fingers on each hand hit the buttons in a sort of spidery, graceful, piano-roll movement, or the tried and tested ‘slap’, where you just whacked the buttons flat fingered as hard and fast as you could.

I then I witnessed my first ever world record in the 100 Meter Dash. Two opposing players, a flicker and a slapper. On your marks! Get set!  Go! The tension was broken with the flickerer crouched side on, wildly flicking his lighter to a blur, not even looking at the screen. The slapper was in wide-eyed focus, motionless almost bar his almost detached-looking wrists slapping down like a penguin in a hurry, and breaking his opponent and the World Record!

Along with these obvious social elements, Track & Field also introduced ‘dexterity’ into the equation of gaming, long before the impossible-to-pull-off circular movement of Street Fighter et al.

1983 then. What a year for gaming!