Mechanical Arcade Games and Amusements
Before the 1970's, every game in every arcade or other public place was mechanical in nature; it might have used electricity, or it
might have used whatever primitive electronics were available at the time; but the gameplay was produced but means other than
microprocessors and cathode-ray-tube screens. In other words, arcade games existed long before the invention of the video game, and
in fact have a long and fascinating history. It's beyond the scope of this article to go in depth about this topic, but we can at
least touch on some of the high points.
Before Space Invaders, before Pac-Man, before even Pong, our nation enjoyed a thriving trade in mechanical devices designed to amuse us while separating us from our hard-earned coins. While a great majority of these machines can certainly be called games, many of them were simple one-trick novelties... and this doesn't even take into account the devices devoted to gambling, of which there were many.
Pinball was, of course, one of the most popular gaming types in history, and remains so among a smaller but fiercely devoted following. But there have been numerous other arcade machines, which can often be broken down into managable categories:
- Diggers or Claws, which can still be found in public places today;
- Shooting Games and Galleries, where players used rifles to fire metal pellets, or beams of light, at targets;
- Fortune Tellers, which offered players their fortunes (or a horoscope), usually in the form of a printed card;
- Driviing Games, where the player would operate a makeshift car, truck, plan, or other vehicle;
- Moving Picture Machines, where viewers could watch short films, such as with the popular Mutoscope;
- Sports Games, such as baseball (which was very popular), basketball, or bowling;
and more.
This section of the Vintage-Arcade website is going to be pretty large after we get finished uploading articles and pictures devoted to these different types of machines. In time, we may break out certain sections for their own main category, if they get enough entries to deserve it. In the meantime, this section will probably grow more slowly than the Video Game and Pinball categories, which will probably prove more popular to more people.
In any case, stay tuned! - we will be updating this section regularly.