What made an arcade game popular?

Hyde

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 9, 2008
Messages
2,427
Reaction score
84
Location
LOS ANGELES, Colorado
That's right, what was it that made a certain machine popular "back in the day" but not another? Sure, graphics and gameplay had a lot to do with it. But look at my example regarding two of the games I have (Swimmer and Frogger):

Basically, why was a game like Frogger so successful but Swimmer was not?

Frogger and Swimmer both came out within a year of each other. Frogger, however, has much more primitive graphics and very repetitive gameplay. Swimmer, on the other hand, has very nice and appealing graphics with relatively varied gameplay (eg: 4 different stages and intermissions). Even Swimmer's cabinet artwork completely blows Frogger's out of the water.

Yet, Frogger sold thousands and thousands of machines while Swimmer probably did not break 500. I, along with guests that come over to play my games, often come back to Swimmer more than Frogger. So why did it sell so poorly?

This could apply to other games as well. (Like Pac-Man vs. Rally X, or Galaga vs. Bosconian, etc...)
 
Good gameplay, catchy music or sounds, and awesome exterior arts generally seem to factor into the equation somewhere.
 
thre fact that monitors are unfixable, ALWAYS its makes em real real popular to me right now.. stupid piece of krap..
 
popularity for arcade machines?

popularity comes from a mixture of cultural relevance, novelty, gameplay, graphics for the era, market conditions and good distribution
 
I've found many good games did not do well because they were to challenging at an early stage. If you feel the game took you money, kicked you ass and left you feeling like you got robbed you weren't likely to play again.

On the other hand if a game looks interesting and is easy enough for everyone to play at the lowest level but over time get challenging enough that most could not play too long while also allowing the player to feel they died due to their own mistakes not the game being too hard. Well there you have a classic.
 
I've found many good games did not do well because they were to challenging at an early stage. If you feel the game took you money, kicked you ass and left you feeling like you got robbed you weren't likely to play again.

On the other hand if a game looks interesting and is easy enough for everyone to play at the lowest level but over time get challenging enough that most could not play too long while also allowing the player to feel they died due to their own mistakes not the game being too hard. Well there you have a classic.

+1 on difficulty being a factor. I think for me as a kid, this and the cost of playing a game were both big factors to determine if a game was great or worth playing.

I remember playing Dragon's Lair for the first time and thinking "Why the hell did I just drop 4 quarters into this damn machine to watch about 10 seconds of animation and then my character turn into a skeleton?" Never really played it much after that. Yeah, the animation and innovation was great, but what good is it if I don't have the money to play it? Which leads me to Dan's second point...

I would have rather spent my quarters on single-quarter games like Street Fighter II, TMNT, X-Men, Neo Geo, Championship Sprint, Golden Axe, Trojan, Rastan, Willow, AvP, Double Dragon, Point Blank, etc. because they were easy games to pick up and difficult enough that you'd want to play and get better and I didn't have to spend all my money to play them.

One game I love now that I most likely wouldn't have liked back in the day would be DK. I can play for free and the challenge of learning the game and getting better through practice is awesome. However, if it were 1981 and I had to pay a quarter for every game, I would have reacted just like how I reacted to Dragon's Lair...I would have walked away.
 
Last edited:
Easy to learn hard to master. Thats what draws in people. The concept still works.

Now days( with arcade games) people are kinda sick of the over advetized pacman and galaga and they kinda think every arcade games like those.. So when people see vector games like Star wars or a game like food fight it just draws them in.

I never get old of peoples expressions when they play Gyruss for the first time. :)
 
I've found many good games did not do well because they were to challenging at an early stage. If you feel the game took your money, kicked your ass and left you feeling like you got robbed you weren't likely to play again.

See Sinistar...if you have any questions....again,see Sinistar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-XEINagmaU
 
Last edited:
Really good question!!!

I think the answer is not easlily found.

I can say some games got it and some don't but that would not be it I guess.
An example from the early 90's:
I never ever expected Mortal Kombat to be any good after Pittfighter hit us but damn in it's own right that game was awesome and an awesome alternative for the awesome and very succesful Street Fighter II.
In the early 80's why did Kung fu master get so much play, we all were Kung fu movie crazy and that game had that feel,atmosphere and spirit one sees in the kung fu movies, Yie ar Kung Fu lacked that, it was just an awesome fighting game to be the first to have multiple moves, so it got much love as well and it was really asia but not Kung Fu movie.

Gameplay??
Pac man was awesome but lady bug was a great alternative.

Attraction??
Out Run was the ultimate driving game experience, no one could ignore that game.
Space Harrier was the first fluent 3d colorfull grafix, moving sitdown, artwork, first time someone seen it it was like WOW but it did not get that much love here, most found it to an odd game.


What can it be, It's the buzz I think or the love for a machine or that a machine brought with it, people love it, play it, get into conversation about the game, I made a few friends playing Roling thunder, Shinobi and Wonderboy.
Like when you were stuck, or did not know a trick you got help, or if you knew you helped the other out.

Most awesome crowd to see was the Gauntlet crowd, They really played that machine together, it was awesome to see them be so in to it.


Still I can't tell you what it was that made an arcade game popular.
 
Last edited:
I know back then there was no arcade that didn't have a Frogger in their lineup. I don't think I ever saw a Swimmer back then. So I would say production numbers are alot higher there. Maybe Sega was an established name at that point compared to Centuri? Frogger also had marketing behind it---Buckner-Garcia song, cartoon, game ports, hell I even remember I had a Frogger watch back then!
 
I remember back in the day Id have a set amount of money to spend, so you would walk around and watch other people play, to see the graphics and get a feel of the game, and play the ones that interested you. The key, though, was that you would go back and replay the ones that gave you the most playtime for your quarter. If you dropped your coin and died 30 seconds later, you didnt go back to that machine
 
I remember back in the day Id have a set amount of money to spend, so you would walk around and watch other people play, to see the graphics and get a feel of the game, and play the ones that interested you. The key, though, was that you would go back and replay the ones that gave you the most playtime for your quarter. If you dropped your coin and died 30 seconds later, you didnt go back to that machine

There seemed to be a few factors that made or broke games BITD. The above quote was one of them. One of the others was, if I was stupid enough to drop another quarter in, did I do any better? And how many quarters did it take to get good at it? Easy to learn, difficult to master.

Another factor was the coolness factor. Was there somebody that was a pro at that game playing it when you came in the arcade? If there was, when he left that game, there was a ton of kids lined up to play. Everybody wanted to be THAT guy.

The final and most telling factor for games was how well the controls felt especially when the game went into insane mode. If you felt like there was a lag in the controls between when you pressed the button or moved the joystick, you weremuch less likely to drop a quarter back in. If you have ever played Pacman (or Ms Pacman) where one of the directions was misadjusted or slow to respond you know what I am talking about.

ken
 
There seemed to be a few factors that made or broke games BITD. The above quote was one of them. One of the others was, if I was stupid enough to drop another quarter in, did I do any better? And how many quarters did it take to get good at it? Easy to learn, difficult to master.

Another factor was the coolness factor. Was there somebody that was a pro at that game playing it when you came in the arcade? If there was, when he left that game, there was a ton of kids lined up to play. Everybody wanted to be THAT guy.

The final and most telling factor for games was how well the controls felt especially when the game went into insane mode. If you felt like there was a lag in the controls between when you pressed the button or moved the joystick, you weremuch less likely to drop a quarter back in. If you have ever played Pacman (or Ms Pacman) where one of the directions was misadjusted or slow to respond you know what I am talking about.

ken

Hmm.. those are actually some pretty good points. I like the "coolness" factor one. That means that a game could have been super popular in one location but not so much in the next.
 
Hmm.. those are actually some pretty good points. I like the "coolness" factor one. That means that a game could have been super popular in one location but not so much in the next.

I would think that some good games actually wouldn't make it to the public then... I guess thats where CAX comes in.
 
+1 on the coolness factor.

Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, I can remember BITD knowing what games were where (since they were in all kinds of crazy places) and generally who at school had the high score and on which machine.

There would be a buzz anytime a new game came out and everyone would talk about high scores, tricks, or locations. If you had a relatively obscure game like Swimmer that wasn't in every retail shop and arcade, there was no buzz and by default, no chance of becoming a beloved classic years later.
 
+1 on the coolness factor.

Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, I can remember BITD knowing what games were where (since they were in all kinds of crazy places) and generally who at school had the high score and on which machine.

There would be a buzz anytime a new game came out and everyone would talk about high scores, tricks, or locations. If you had a relatively obscure game like Swimmer that wasn't in every retail shop and arcade, there was no buzz and by default, no chance of becoming a beloved classic years later.

and.. then It goes back down to the money factor...
 
Back
Top Bottom