Idaho Arcade - history factoids needed

IdahoFarmer

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I'd like to add brief but interesting facts / history about early 80's era arcades.

i.e.

The cockpit Missile Command at Grinkers is one 13 known to still exist. Its serial number is 007, the lowest serial number on record.

The enemies in Space Invaders were modeled after the octopus-like aliens from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The original working-name for the game was "Space Monsters".

etc.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Centipede was the first game designed by a chick. Forgot the chicks name.

Donkey kong - first apppearance of Jumpman, later became Mario.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. Below is what I have so far. Need about 10 more:

The enemies in Space Invaders were modeled after the octopus-like aliens from the 1953 film "The War of the Worlds". The original working-title for the game was "Space Monsters".

In the 1983 movie "War Games" the main character David Lightman is shown playing the game Galaga. Before filming, the studio had a Galaga machine delivered to Broderick's home where he practiced for two months prior to shooting.

The Missile Command cockpit at Grinkers is one of only thirteen Missile Command cockpit games known to still exist. Its serial number is 007. This is the lowest serial number on record and is likely the earliest example of this game still in existence.

There is a secret spot in Pac-Man where you can "hide" and none of the ghosts Blinky, Pinky, Inky or Clyde can catch you. Google this, replicate the trick at Grinkers and a get a free Grinkers magnet on your first successful attempt.

The game "Donkey Kong" translates to "Stubborn Guerilla" in English. The good guy in Donkey Kong was known as Jumpman. He is the first introduction of the character now known as "Mario" from the "Mario Bros" saga.

All of the music played at Grinkers is vintage 80's. Want to request a new song? Want to know the name of a song we played. Request a song or get the knowledge at Grinkers.com.

Donna Bailey was the only female software engineer at Atari in 1980. She created Centipede.

Arcade revenues exceeded $10.5 billion in 1981, three times the amount spent on movie tickets.

Ms. Pac Man was originally created as a game called Crazy Otto. The game was an unlicensed modification of Pac-Man and was created by a company called General Computer Corporation. After being sued by Atari, GCC sold its Crazy Otto rights to Midway which held Atari's development and distribution rights in the USA. Midway rebranded and released the game as Ms. Pac-Man.

Some Track and Field games came with a trackball instead of buttons. The trackball version was lame. Its all about the buttons. If you need a pencil just let any staff member know and we'll hook you up.
 
You could clue people into the 'no fire' trick on Galaga.

Pinball Wizard Steve Ritchie helped come up with the name for Robotron: 2084 (kind of... the story's pretty cool)


You could talk about the famous split screen in Pac-Man and why that happens

There's a trick in Donkey Kong Jr. where if you hit the water (and die) at the same time you hit the baddie falling off the chain (and die) the cpu gets confused and doesn't take away a life. So if you do it every time, on a two player game, the first player can play forevvvvvverrrrrrr.

(Might not want to make that one public... although it's almost impossible to pull off consistantly)

I don't know what your pins look like, but if you've got a High Speed, or a Black Knight, Steve Ritchie helped invent modern pinball on those two titles. There's all kinds of 'firsts' on those ones. High Speed has a cool story behind it where Steve got pulled over by a cop for speeding one day, and got the idea for the machine.

(check to make sure) Wizard of Wor uses that special speech chip of course, but at the time it cost around a grand, per word, to write code for it... which makes the Wizard's extended vocabulary that much more impressive. It's also of course the same speech chip in Gorf and Q*Bert.

In Q*Bert, instead of programming the chip to say specific words, the programmers just made it trigger random phonetics, giving Q*bert his unimatable voice. And of course you could mention the knocker in the bottom of the cabinet.
 
OH! I don't know if you have a "Punch-Out", but Shigeru Miyamoto said a few years ago that the reason the game has two monitors.... was because Nintendo had a standing contract with Sanyo to buy a certain amount, and stock was piling up, so he purposefully designed a game with two monitors so he could get rid of all the backstock.

Also Larry Holmes was champ when the arcade was released, so he appeared at the press conference for the game when it was presented. When the NES version rolled around, Mike Tyson was the champ and got the endorsement deal for the home version.

Here's a link, fascinating story:

http://www.nintendo.co.za/NOE/en_ZA/news/iwata/iwata_asks_punch-out_16793_17189.html#top
 
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