Reconstruction Vol. 14, No. 1

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Innovation, Imitation, and the Continued Importance of Vintage Video Games / Brendan Gaughen

Abstract “Innovation, Imitation, and the Continued Importance of Video Games” frames the development of the video game industry as one defined by a dialectic of innovation and imitation between arcades and home gaming. These complexities are simplified if not completely overlooked in the numerous game compilations, emulator collections, and plug and play devices, all of which have an effect on the nostalgia of players. The industry experimented with innovations in graphics and immersive gameplay throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, at which point compilations of classic video games (generally speaking, pre-1983) started being released for home consoles and in arcades. The revitalized interest in classic games during this time might be seen as a reaction to the technological arms race occurring in the shrinking pool of arcades.

Retro arcades, which began appearing by the late 1990s, are approximations of the arcades of 20 or 30 years ago in terms of game availability but little else. The arcade, once primarily a space of commerce and a showcase for technical sophistication, has shifted primarily to being a space of nostalgia. Manufacturers of full-size emulator collections promise authentic game play in their marketing but their built-in joystick and buttons alters the experience of games that were originally played with different controls. An ever-diminishing supply of original arcade games is steadily being replaced by emulators and compilations of classic games for home consoles that, playing on nostalgia, emphasize authentic experiences but largely fail to deliver on that promise because the games, the spaces in which they are played, and the players themselves have changed.

Finally, communities of players and enthusiasts have generally documented and archived video game culture better than institutions, though the best of these preservation efforts can only recreate the spatial context of classic video games, not the temporal.

Keywords Arcade, Video Games, Media, Museums & Archives, Place & Space, Science & Technology, Visual Culture

<1> The relationship between video game arcades and home gaming has been long and often contentious, even though the companies producing games have often been the same for both spaces. The connection between these two separate but interconnected realms has always been defined by a dialectic of imitation and innovation, with each attempting to offer gaming experiences unavailable elsewhere. While video games have become increasingly more sophisticated over the years, fascination for the first two decades of video games remains entrenched. However, there are more options for playing vintage game titles now than ever before: in addition to remaining arcade machines and console cartridges, there are emulated versions for both home and arcade, plug and play units with prepackaged selections of games, and arcade compilations available for home consoles. This increased availability raises several key issues about the ways classic video games are played—especially considering the versions of the games and controls are different as well as the spaces in which they are often played. Retro arcades and emulators often promise authenticity but offer gaming experiences different from what was available in the industry’s first two decades, and the nostalgic look at classic games through arcade compilations, emulation, and plug and play devices has had a tendency to overlook the patterns of innovation and imitation that continue to drive the video game industry and reduce its history to a series of successes. Arcades have over the past few decades shifted from being spaces of entertainment and technical sophistication to spaces of nostalgia, and communities of players and enthusiasts have done a much better job documenting and archiving video game culture than many museums. An ever-diminishing supply of original arcade games is steadily being replaced by emulators and compilations of vintage games for home consoles that, playing on nostalgia, emphasize authentic experiences but largely fail to deliver on that promise because the games, the spaces in which they are played, and the players themselves have changed.

<2> Following the work of Fred Davis, Marita Sturken, Svetlana Boym, and others, nostalgia, both on collective and individual levels, is inherently positivistic and blocks out negative aspects of the past. This act of partial remembering provides comfort, continuity, and sameness, especially during times of rapid change and uncertainty. In the context of video games, the conscious forgetting of nostalgia is one reason game compilations, emulators, and especially plug and play collections contain certain titles and exclude others [1]. While Davis believes nostalgia can only involve directly lived experiences, which in the context of playing video games would exclude later generations of players too young for the arcades of the 1970s and 80s, Boym suggests one can “[long] for a home that no longer exists or has never existed” (xiv).

Because nostalgia is intricately tied to place, the video game arcade is an especially important setting for formative memories, experiences, and identity construction [2]. Though nostalgia can appear to some as a counter-productive fixation on an unattainable past, these scholars generally agree that nostalgia can be enormously creative and productive, resulting in the preservation and recreation of artifacts and places. This is evident in the nostalgia for classic video games that has been a driving force in the relatively recent proliferation of retro arcades, homebrew, emulation, and collecting, which all actively contribute to an informal public archive of the first two decades of the video game industry.

[Innovation and imitation]

<3> The first coin-operated amusement machines with circuit boards, what would be recognized today as video games, were released in 1971 (Goldberg 24). Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, inspired by early digital computer game Spacewar (1962), built their own coin-operated Galaxy Game and set it up in the student union at Stanford University in August 1971 (Donovan 20). In November of that year, Nolan Bushnell, also inspired by Spacewar, developed a prototype for Computer Space with the assistance of Pitts and Tuck and while working for Ampex. Bushnell later marketed the idea to Nutting Associates, who produced 1500 Computer Space machines before abandoning the endeavor to focus instead on tabletop quiz games (Kurtz 6). After unsuccessful attempts to pique the interest of Bally, Bushnell formed Atari with partner Ted Dabney and began producing a game he called Pong at the end of 1972 (Kurtz 6). Pong was the first massive success in the fledgling video game industry, spawning scores of imitators from amusement industry veterans and startups alike. In 1973 alone, Williams released Paddle Ball and Pro Tennis, Chicago Coin released TV Ping Pong and TV Tennis, Allied Leisure released Paddle Battle, Amutronics released TV Ping Pong, and Chicago Dynamic Industries released four games with nearly identical gameplay based on hockey, tennis, soccer, and football. More than thirty companies produced roughly 70,000 Pong clone units by 1974 (Kurtz 7). Atari responded with Quadrapong, an updated four-player version that same year. To maintain interest, manufacturers created enhancement kits like Gyro-Pong and Super Pong consisting of different computer chips that could speed up or put a spin on the ball. While the earliest arcade games could be found in existing amusement spaces like bars and bowling alleys, it would not be long before numerous arcades opened dedicated solely to video games.

<4> Simultaneously, Pong was available on home consoles, which were quite popular despite their limited computing capacity. Though Atari would dominate the home market by the end of the decade, they faced early competition from some seventy-five different Pong clone cartridges available by the end of 1976 for various systems (Montfort and Bogost 10). The first home system, Magnavox Odyssey, was released in May 1972 and sold 100,000 units in the first year, which was followed by numerous other home consoles in the middle part of the decade. Released in August 1976, Fairchild’s Channel F (originally VES) was the first home system to use individual game cartridges that would soon be the industry standard. Channel F, though it succumbed to an industry market crash in 1979, is the system that prompted Warner Bros to acquire Atari so it could enter the market (Whalen 61). The arms race of Pong clones died down by the end of the decade, causing some companies to create more innovative products and others to quietly drop out of the market.

<5> As interest in Pong waned, arcade games became increasingly more sophisticated. By the mid-1970s, many included steering wheels such as Gran Trak (Atari, 1974), Crash ‘n Score (Atari, 1975), Wheels (Midway, 1975), and Destruction Derby (Exidy, 1975); replica guns in Qwak (Atari, 1974) and Outlaw (Atari, 1976); and movable foot platforms in Ski (Allied, 1975). One early steering wheel arcade game, Death Race (Exidy, 1976), in which players had to drive over and kill human-like figures, has the distinction of causing the first moral panic surrounding video games (Montfort and Bogost 125). Atari came out with Tank 8 (1976) and Sprint 8 (1977), each capable of entertaining eight players simultaneously. These games provided players with physical apparatuses and multi-player competition that was significantly more advanced than home consoles at the time, which almost completely relied on the handheld Pong paddle or joystick (Montfort and Bogost 41). While Magnavox did produce a light gun apparatus for the Odyssey’s Shooting Gallery (1972), they would not be widely used until the Nintendo Entertainment System more than a decade later. The vector graphics of Asteroids (Atari, 1979), Battlezone (Atari, 1980), and Tempest (Atari, 1981) were also more visually advanced than the games available on home systems of the time. Even when they did offer the same titles as the arcades, home consoles couldn’t provide the same experiences because of limitations in scale, technology, and available apparatuses, and most of the industry’s innovation during this time was found in the arcade rather than at home.

Figure 1

<6> The middle part of the 1970s was a time of exponential growth in the industry, with sales totaling 3.5 million units in 1976 – a tenfold increase from the previous year – leading some to enthusiastically predict that sales would double twice again by 1980 (Wolf 84). Despite an industry-wide slump in sales in early 1977, home systems remained enormously popular in the late 1970s and by the early 1980s the industry had grown to $1 billion per year in sales (Provenzo 9). Magnavox produced a second generation Odyssey system in 1978, and ColecoVision and Intellivision entered the market by 1982. Atari, which had seen its dominance in the arcade market erode somewhat because of increased competition, entered the home market with the Atari VCS (later renamed Atari 2600) in September 1977 as a direct competitor to Fairchild’s Channel F. It proved to be a huge success for the company, selling an estimated 30 million units before being discontinued in 1992, well after the release of more sophisticated consoles (Montfort and Bogost 137). By the early 1980s, titles created exclusively for home systems like Pitfall (Activision, 1982) and Yar’s Revenge (Atari, 1982) became huge successes without first appearing in arcades.

Figure 2

<7> By the time Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) and Asteroids (Atari, 1979) were introduced, arcade games were firmly entrenched as a permanent industry. Space Invaders was so popular in Japan, the government recognized a shortage in 100-yen coins (Kurtz 46), and Midway sold more than 40,000 units in the United States within the game’s first year of release (Kurtz 47). The next huge arcade hit was Pac-Man, released in the United States by Midway in late 1980. Like Pong seven years earlier, Pac-Man was widely copied. Midway produced nearly 100,000 Pac-Man machines, prompting bootleg versions of the game like Gobbleman (Microbyte, 1982) and Hangly-Man (Nittoh, 1981) to appear, including one version with a Popeye head that gobbled cans of spinach (Kurtz 81). Pac-Man was the first video game character to be widely merchandised, becoming a cultural sensation whose likeness appeared on the cover of Time and was the subject of a Saturday morning cartoon, a cereal, and a pop song (Montfort and Bogost 66). Despite the fondness for Pac-Man in the arcade and in pop culture, its Atari 2600 counterpart suffered from technical limitations in both graphics and gameplay (Montfort and Bogost 69). In this way the home version of Pac-Man failed to live up to expectations and is a notable example of how titles available for home consoles were often inferior versions of those appearing in arcades.

Figure 3

<8> One advantage home systems had over their full-size counterparts in the arcade was the interchangeability of games. The increasing number of titles released in the second half of the 1970s meant high turnover in the arcades as operators, often dealing with limited space, had to play a guessing game as to which units to keep in order maintain income. Industry sales literature of the time promised operators maximum profits, often by using puns involving the game play. For example, the spec sheet for Asteroids urged operators to “Blast off for higher profits”; Lock ‘N Chase (Data East, 1981) was described as “a game of cops ‘n robbers where you collect the loot!” and the flyer for Lunar Lander (Atari, 1979) contained the memorable phrase “Land in the crater of remuneration” (flyers.arcade-museum.com). Above the promises of innovative gameplay and longevity of player interest, the flashy sales brochures emphasized the profit potential of each game, though in the end many of these games failed to live up to such lofty claims. For example, the flyer for Sundance (Cinematronics, 1979) promised gameplay that would “[increase] the action as well as operator collections,” promised “continued play and continued profits,” and “added playtime [and] added collections to the operator” (flyers.arcade-museum.com). Despite these claims, Sundance was plagued by a defective carbon coating on the game’s monitor, which would shake loose if the cabinet was jostled or laid down during shipping, causing the screen to burn out upon first power-up. As a result, nearly half of all Sundance machines produced were inoperable upon delivery (zonn.com).

<9> Almost from the beginning, arcades dealt with the issue of limited square footage. One attempt to mitigate the problem by maximizing the utility of arcade space was the Tournament Table (Atari, 1978), which offered twelve different Atari games in a single cabinet including Breakout, Basketball, and Quadrapong (Kurtz 67). Switching out games could be a complex task and led to the problem of what to do with the unprofitable arcade game. To partially solve this problem, some video game manufacturers such as Taito and Sega produced cabinets with generic side panels that operators could easily convert to new games by switching in new circuit boards and marquees. By the mid-1980s, most manufacturers produced conversion kits that enabled arcade operators to switch out games more economically. With a new circuit board, marquee, and side panel decals, operators essentially had a new arcade game without the high cost of an entirely new cabinet. In this way, the interchangeability of circuit boards in arcade cabinets mimicked a key characteristic of game cartridges for home consoles.

[Crash and revival]

<10> The industry experienced a massive recession in the early 1980s, dropping from $3.2 billion in 1981 to $100 million by 1985, a drop of nearly 97% (Ernkvist 182). The effects were most pronounced in the U.S. home gaming sector, which was crippled by competition from home computers and a glut of shoddy products in a flooded market. The video game industry had recently focused more on licensing rather than innovation or game design, hurting the overall quality of available games (Montfort and Bogost 134). Titles like Chase the Chuck Wagon (ICOM), Kool-Aid Man (Mattel), and Tooth Protectors (DSD), all released in the crash year 1983, were little more than advertisements masquerading as games. Excess game cartridges crammed store shelves, resulting in retailers canceling orders from cartridge manufacturers with less desirable products. Once these companies began to go bankrupt with cartridges that couldn’t be returned, retailers unloaded their stock for a fraction of the cost of games produced by companies like Atari, who had to respond with lower cartridge prices, severely cutting into profits (Wolf 58).

<11> Of the companies that survived the crash, Atari fared particularly poorly due in large part to their Pac-Man 2600 cartridge. Despite being an enormous success in the arcade and in popular culture, Atari’s version suffered from poor design and was criticized for its lackluster gameplay. Though it was Atari’s most popular 2600 game, its seven million cartridge sales fell well short of the company’s expectation of twelve million sales – overly optimistic considering the fact that only 10 million Atari consoles had been sold by that point. Millions of cartridges sat unsold in retail stores, marked down, unshipped, or were returned by distributors (Kent 237-239). Worse still, Atari’s high profile failure of their release ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, which had been rushed out in time for the 1982 Christmas season, eroded confidence in the quality of the company’s products and contributed to a precipitous decline in their stock prices. Atari reported a $350 million loss in 1983 alone, taking the stock of parent company Warner Communications down with it. While there has been some debate on the precise details, it is widely believed that Atari ended up dumping several million unsold Pac-Man and ET cartridges in a New Mexico landfill in September 1983 (Donovan 109). These two examples in particular demonstrate that success in the arcade did not necessarily carry over into home consoles, though this segment of the industry revived in the second half of the 1980s in large part because of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System. Like earlier consoles, they offered the same titles available in arcades as well as exclusive games, many of which were hugely successful. The NES sold 34 million consoles in North America alone during its commercial availability and the Super NES and Sega Genesis each sold about 23 million consoles. Like Atari, both Nintendo and Sega were already well-known names in arcades. Nintendo entered the arcade market in the mid-1970 and produced the enormously popular Donkey Kong in 1981 while Sega had seen numerous successes including Pengo and Zaxxon (both 1982). Nintendo (who ceased developing arcade games around this time) and Sega would come to dominate the home console market by the late 1980s and this focus on home gaming proved to be a key factor in the disappearance of the arcades of the 1970s and 80s.

[Innovations in the arcade]

<12> Arcade game manufacturers, which had seen declining revenues due to the popularity of home gaming, experimented with graphics to create experiences that couldn’t be replicated by the limitations of home consoles and had a short-lived flirtation with laser disc video games. While the graphics of other games were rough and pixilated by comparison, laser disc graphics were crisp with smooth animation. The two most successful early titles, Dragon’s Lair (Cinematronics, 1983) and Space Ace (Cinematronics, 1984), were an important milestone in video game graphics but offered limited gameplay—because the graphics were already rendered onto the disc, the player could only choose from a predetermined set of options in any situation (Wolf 105). Additionally, games cost 50 cents per play, double the going rate of other games. The fad soon ended because of the high cost and fragile components, though a small number of laser disc video games were released over the next decade. Other examples of attempts to supersede the limited graphics of home consoles came from Atari, who experimented with polygon graphics with I Robot (1983) and Hard Drivin’ (1989), and Sega, who released Time Traveler (1991), the industry’s first holographic video game (Kurtz 207). These titles had graphics that far exceeded the capabilities of 8-bit home consoles, providing players with experiences unmatched by the NES or Sega Master System.

<13> Another way manufacturers sought to create unique gaming experiences was by designing arcade games with immersive or interactive environments, something far more sophisticated than could be experienced at home. Sit-down cockpit arcade games, which had been around since the late 1970s, became much more common during the 1980s. Discs of Tron (Bally Midway, 1983) offered the only immersive stand-up cabinet, and the sit-down cockpit driving game TX-1 (Atari, 1983) featured a panoramic triple-screen view of the road. The deluxe arcade version of Hang-On (Sega, 1985) featured a motorcycle that tilted from side to side and S.T.U.N. Runner (Atari, 1989) simulated a futuristic equivalent. Galaxy Force (Sega, 1988) featured a circular moving cockpit, while their R-360 simulator cabinet (1991) had two movement axes, allowing the player, who would be strapped in with two seatbelts, to move the cabinet in any direction including upside down. Cockpit driving games such as Final Lap (Namco, 1987), which could link up to eight players to compete against each other in the same race, also provided an experience not available at home. These games were increasingly more sophisticated and also more expensive, contributing to the closure of some remaining arcades during the 1990s that couldn’t afford to keep up in this technological arms race.

[Early nostalgia for early games]

<14> Almost at the same time that arcade game manufacturers were experimenting with products that far outmatched home gaming such as elaborate moving cockpits, holography, and virtual reality, the industry seemed to take a backward glance at its relatively short history by releasing compilations of decade-old titles for home systems. One major reason for the resurgence of interest in classic (pre-1983) video games during this time is their diminishing supply. Unable to rising cost of increasingly more expensive arcade games or compete with the growing number of home console sales, many small and medium sized arcades closed. This had been occurring steadily since 1982, when the number of video game arcades peaked at about 10,000 (Wolf 105). One trade publication survey estimated the 1,000,000 video games in arcades in 1988 had shrunk to less than half that number by 2000 (Wolf 135). Older home consoles like the Atari 2600 and Intellivision were being discarded in place of newer systems, which began releasing compilations of older titles and sequels that never appeared in arcades. In 1996, Sega released a Genesis cartridge called Arcade Classics, which contained three pre-1983 industry crash titles, Pong, Missile Command, and Centipede. Super Nintendo offered several sequels to arcade games like Paperboy 2 (Tengen, 1991), Q*Bert 3 (Realtime Associates 1992), and numerous Pac-Man titles. Notably, the last game released for SNES was Frogger in 1998, seventeen years after the arcade original. These releases suggest the industry was beginning to cater to consumers who grew up playing video games and would make purchases based on nostalgia, as well as saving money in game development during some lean years in the industry. With the closure of many arcades, these compilations became the easiest (and for many people the only) option for playing games they grew up with.

<15> Once compact discs became the industry standard with Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, arcade compilations became more and more widespread. Most were grouped based on the original game publisher or manufacturer such as Midway, Namco, and Taito, and the first ones tended to focus on games from before the 1983 video game crash. The second half of the 1990s saw the release of Williams Arcade Greatest Hits (1996), Capcom Generations (1998), and Arcade Party Pak (1999) and by the early 2000s entire series of classic game compilations were released including the Capcom Classics Collection series, the Midway Arcade Treasures series, and the Namco Museum series. For the most part, these compilations have contained video games that first appeared in arcades rather than exclusively on home consoles, though the exhaustive Atari Anthology (2012) collected 80 games from both the arcade and 2600 library. While these compilations offer a large selection of titles, the more limited ones tended to focus only on the most popular, ignoring more obscure (but no less playable) games. Their conceptions of nostalgia were also somewhat odd. For example, Sega Classics Arcade Collection, released in 1992 for the Sega-CD system, contained no video game older than 1989, despite the promise of “Classics” in the title. Midway Arcade Treasures 1 (2003) series featured menu screen navigation resembling the inside of an Egyptian pyramid, perhaps emphasizing an archaeological aspect to the collection. The menu screen for Intellivision Lives! (1999) depicts a 1980s pizza parlor, an odd choice considering the titles were only available on Mattel’s Intellivision home console [3]. The proliferation of arcade compilations suggests a community of nostalgia-driven vintage video game enthusiasts has existed since the mid-1990s in large enough numbers for the industry to take notice.

Figure 4

[Nostalgia in/for the arcade]

<16> Almost the same time that arcade collections were first released on home systems, they also began appearing in arcades. Namco was the first company in the industry to reissue their titles back into the arcade, doing so in two machines that each contained three games. All six games compiled in Namco Classic Collection Vol. 1 (1995) and Vol. 2 (1996) (Galaga, Xevious, Mappy, Pac-Man, Rally-X, and Dig Dug) were originally released between 1980-83, making them twelve to fifteen years old when they were re-released back into the arcade [4]. Namco followed these collections in 2001 with an arcade game containing both Galaga and Ms Pac-Man to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their arcade debuts [5]. Next came a 25^th anniversary Pac-Man game in 2005 and Pac-Man’s Arcade Party (2010) which included twelve titles including Galaxian, Dig Dug, and Galaga ‘88 and several iterations of Pac-Man. Taito released its own arcade collection in 2006, Taito Coin-Op Classics 20-in-1. Though the titles may have been slightly different, these arcade compilations were essentially full-size versions of compilations available for the home market.

<17> By the time these compilations began appearing in the mid-1990s, the number of arcades had been steadily declining, largely due to the tens of millions of console units sold over the previous decade. A few years later, a handful of admission-based retro arcades appeared that catered to fans of older games. Whereas video game arcades once attracted customers by showcasing the newest games, retro arcades presently target a small but devoted clientele interested in playing games of the past in their full-size format. These particular arcades typically charge a small admission fee of a few dollars, after which all games operate on nickels rather the quarters, though the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Chicago’s western suburbs charges a $15 entrance fee in exchange for unlimited play. Bars with the aesthetic of vintage arcades such as Barcade (Brooklyn, Jersey City, Philadelphia, and Manhattan), Emporium (Chicago), Ground Kontrol (Portland), and Hi-Scores Bar-Arcade (Henderson NV) have been successful at attracting an adult clientele. However, these spaces are still primarily specialty bars that deviate significantly from the arcades of the past, which were frequented primarily by children and teenagers and did not serve alcohol.

[Emulation]

<18> Original vintage arcade games, by now more than twenty or even thirty years old, have become increasingly difficult to find. Many remaining arcade game companies have significantly downscaled since the 1990s or have focused on reissuing their back catalogs to arcade compilations for home consoles. Recognizing the demand for older titles, the remnants of the arcade industry began licensing their titles to companies who manufacture cabinets built around a computer running MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), which reproduce the experience of playing the original games in full-size standup format [6]. These emulators have proliferated in the past decade with numerous collections in production, both licensed and unlicensed. Some emulator producers emphasize sheer quantity. Jamma Boards, who produces several multigame circuit boards and cartridges to upgrade existing cabinets into arcade collections, makes a floor model emulator with 276 games, and the Guangzhou Winsun Amusement Company makes an emulator with over 1,000 titles (sunamusement.com). Having so many games in one unit all but eliminates the serendipity of stepping into an arcade and discovering an unexpected or long-forgotten game, and it suggests playing these titles is a solitary activity to be pursued away from the arcade – these emulator collections can only accommodate one or two players simultaneously as opposed to the arcade, which can entertain dozens of players at once across several machines.

<19> The marketing for these arcade-size emulators emphasizes the nostalgia factor, making promises about gameplay faithful to the original versions, even to the point of duplicating certain technical limitations of vintage games like lag time and kill screens. Team Play released two emulator collections with games from 1980-1982 which include a game of their own creation called Let’s Go Bowling, that “also has the look and feel of the early 1980s” (teamplayinc.com). Chicago Gaming Company offers arcade compilations containing up to 130 games, promising “legendary arcade games, authentic in every detail,” but are also emphatic that these machines, which all come with permanently deactivated coin doors, are for home use only. Though these emulators may in fact faithfully reproduce the images, sounds, and gameplay, the experience of playing them in a noisy and dark arcade cannot truly be replicated if they are restricted from commercial use. Boulder Classic Games offers two different emulator collections that the company claims “look great and play the great games you loved from the early ‘80s exactly the same way you remember them” (boulderclassicgames.com). Global VR makes an emulator with 80 titles with “authentic controls and cabinet design” that transports players “back to the hay-day of video arcade” [sic] (globalvr.com). Yet one wonders how authentic the experience of playing an emulated version of Paperboy (Atari, 1984) can be with a joystick instead of the game’s distinctive handlebar controls or Arkanoid (Taito, 1986) without the dial knob control.

<20> It is worth mentioning that fans of pinball have a history of collection and preservation because pinball machines cannot be replicated or emulated like video games. The Professional & Amateur Pinball Association (PAPA), founded in the mid-1980s, hosts tournaments and events in their 30,000 square foot facility that holds more than 450 pinball machines (www.papa.org/about). Pinballz, which opened in late 2010 in Austin, Texas, is a 13,000 square foot space that holds more than 100 pinball machines and around 25 standup arcade machines at any given time along with several ticket redemption games. Pinballz claims to have the largest collection of playable pinball machines in Texas, most of which are for sale, offering collectors and enthusiasts the opportunity to replicate part of the arcade experience at home (www.pinballzarcade.com). Because they offer visitors the opportunity to play vintage pinball machines, other spaces such as the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, California, Seattle Pinball Museum, and Silver Ball Museum in Asbury Park, New Jersey blur the lines between arcade and museum.

[Plug and play]

<21> In the home gaming market, self-contained game systems with pre-selected titles called plug and play (PNP) games have become increasingly popular. Though the concept is not new (the very first home video game systems of the early 1970s operated similarly), these plug and play games have increased in popularity over the past decade. The Jakks Pacific Atari Joystick (2003), which contains ten games in a single unit resembling Atari 2600 joystick, particularly connects itself visually to the nostalgia factor. These PNP units have been successful because of cheap licensing, cheap hardware, distinctive retro packaging, and widespread availability (Payne 58). However, the games available for PNP, like MAME, are only close approximations of the games [7]. And unlike MAME, which according to Matthew Payne fosters community and collective memory, PNP’s pre-packaged titles eliminate the opportunity to add or subtract games, and its “revisionist history replays only economic successes, ignores marginal texts, and frames classic gaming as a cheap and kitschy, easy-to-use novelty” (62).

<22> While the game selection is fairly limited on PNP units, hundreds of vintage video games are available for download on Wii Virtual Console, PlayStation Store, and Xbox Games Store. However as Montfort and Bogost point out, these downloaded emulated games look very different on modern screens than a 25 or 30 year old television (140). The selections available for download, like those appearing on prepackaged arcade compilations and PNP, typically represent only the most successful titles, collapsing years of innovation and progress in game history and making classic video games easy to package and consume, “decontextualized for their economic replay value” (Payne 64). In addition, the availability often changes; some titles disappear if they aren’t purchased as frequently as others. Those who prefer the vintage home gaming experience have increased options in game availability with the proliferation of secondhand video game shops and online retailers specializing in secondhand games and consoles.

[The undead arcade]

<23> The video game arcade has seen numerous iterations—locations in storefronts, amusement parks, family fun centers, pizza restaurants, and malls, and newer permutations such as Dave & Buster’s, the vintage arcade, and bar-arcade (Kocurek 206). The arcade space still exists, but it would be foolish to expect an identical gaming experience from those of 25 or 35 years ago. Fueled by nostalgia (and the potential profits in catering to gamers’ nostalgia), arcades with vintage games are the closest thing to what 1970s and 80s players experienced, but can never be more than approximations. For example, these spaces do often provide a similar sensory aesthetic as the arcades of thirty years ago, but are no longer considered sites of deviance or harbors for juvenile delinquency (Kocurek 198). Because of the diminishing supply of arcade games that are reaching the end of their lifespan (whenever that may be), the easiest and most common option (perhaps eventually the only option) for experiencing vintage video games will be playing their simulacra. Even if these copies happen to be indistinguishable from the originals and even if they are played in the space of the arcade, the players themselves have changed – no longer teenagers, many are well into middle age with several decades of life experience and hazy memories of what arcades used to be like.

<24> As institutions like museums begin to realize the cultural value of video games (something players, homebrew enthusiasts, and collectors have known for years), questions emerge about how to archive, preserve, and display them. In an interview about his Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife, Raiford Guins describes the difference between two different approaches to preserving Pac-Man. At MOMA, Pac-Man is “stripped bare of everything except a controller and a plasma screen turned into a frameless picture affixed within a dark gray wall” which “sucks the life out of the game” (5). Its display suggests the game is a mere curiosity, not art, and doesn’t invite interaction. MOMA may have preserved the game as an artifact, but they have completely removed it from any context. At the Strong National Museum of Play, however, Pac-Man is displayed in its full-size arcade cabinet, playable “alongside other machines in a recreated arcade,” much closer to the way the game is remembered. Also on display are an Atari Pac-Man cartridge and various handheld versions acknowledging there is much more than just the game itself. As Guins states, “these material forms matter, and I feel that one is only receiving a small part of the story of Pac-Man when playing ‘the game’ reduced to a screen cut into a wall” (5). The meticulous approach of the Strong National Museum of Play is commendable and likely the best possible institutional display, but it still can only recreate the spatial context of Pac-Man, not the temporal. As Ilya Zeremsky points out in her discussion of a 2013 video game preservation panel put together by Stanford archivist Henry Lowood, “it’s impossible to save the culture of a game, which is really the most important part” (killscreendaily.com).

<25> Though there are still old video games located in arcades catering to fans of vintage games, it is becoming more and more common to play the close approximations of these games on emulators or downloaded on the most recent generation of home video game consoles. However, the driving force behind the current generation of home consoles is games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, not downloaded versions of games from the 8-bit era. Yet despite decades of increasingly powerful graphics and complex storylines, nothing seems to have diminished fervor for the comparatively simpler games of the first two decades of the video game industry, even among those who weren’t even alive at the time. Whether the appeal of vintage video games is located in playing the games themselves or finding oneself immersed in the space of the arcade, the nostalgic experience of playing video games from the 1970s and 80s, like the past itself, can never be completely replicated, no matter how much it may be desired.

Notes

[1] Payne describes the ways this occurs in plug and play games.

[2] Davis posits adolescence being the most formative time for memories that are later looked back upon fondly, making the arcade space a particularly productive space for identity formation and nostalgia.

[3] The sequel, Intellivision Rocks (2001), contained unreleased games that never made it past prototype stage.

[4] This may seem like a short time span until one considers that the film American Graffiti was a nostalgic look back at 1962 from the perspective of only eleven years later. It also seems reasonable when taking into account the video game industry’s focus on technological innovation. Games had changed considerably over those 12-15 years.

[5] Also on the marquee were the phrases “20 Year Reunion” and “Class of 1981.”

[6] Numerous emulator platforms have been available on the internet since the late 1990s.

[7] It is worth mentioning that even the PNP units that are created to resemble archaic game controllers are in fact much more advanced with additional features.

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