80s Arcade and Video Games

As the 80s began the arcade game industry was in its golden age, with the release of Ataris Space Invaders being such a success inspiring dozens of other manufacturers to enter the market. Colour arcade games also became more popular with the arrival of titles such as the iconic Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Put it this way by 1982 the arcade video game industry had generated $8 billion in quarters, equivalent to over $18.5 billion in 2011, surpassing the annual gross revenue of both pop music ($4 billion) and Hollywood films ($3 billion) combined at that time! Wowzers!!!

Atari's first serious opponent was Mattel, who introduced the home videogame system; Intellivision, which included games such as Bomb Squad, B-17 Bomber, Space Spartans, Tron: Solar Sailer, and World Series Major League Baseball. Atari's success continued with the release of the home version of Asteroids, while Sega released a home version of Frogger. In the UK we had the great ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, BBC Microcomputer and later the Amstrad CPC which gave us classic games such as Manic Miner, Quackers and Boulder Dash.

However in 1983, the video game business suffered a severe crash and commercial disaster with a flood of consoles, low quality video games by smaller companies (especially for the 2600), industry leader Atari hyping games such as E.T. that were poorly received, and a growing number of home computer users caused consumers and retailers to lose faith and interest in video game consoles.

Thankfully though in '85 Japanese company Nintendo released their breakthrough Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), with its breakout hit game Super Mario Bros. Nintendo's success revived the video game industry and new consoles were soon introduced in the following years to compete with the NES. Sega released no less than three major consoles before the end of the 1980s, the Master System, the Mega Drive and finally the Genesis. Sega and Nintendo also launched accessories such as steering wheels, 3-D glasses and laser guns. The rest as they say is history!

Take a look below and play some of your favourite 80s arcade games right here on your PC, marvel at how times have changed but most of all revel in the simplicity of the older graphics whilst they still provide you with hours of FUN!!!