Chicago Coin was one of the early major manufacturers of pinball tables founded in Chicago, Illinois. The company was founded in 1932 by Samuel H. Gensburg and Samuel Wolberg to operate in the coin-operated amusement industry. [1] In 1977, Gary Stern and Sam Stern purchased the assets of the Chicago Coin Machine Division as it was then called to found Stern Electronics, Inc. [ citation needed ] They also produced various arcade games during the 1960s to 1970s.
Sam Gensburg founded Chicago Coin Machine Exchange with brother-in-law Sam Wolberg and third partner Lou Koren, a company which had a business of trade-ins for coin-operated games. In 1931, Sam Genburg's brothers Louis Gensburg, David Gensburg, and Meyer Gensburg had founded Genco as an amusement manufacturer and Samuel decided to enter that business by establishing Chicago Coin Machine Exchange (later renamed Chicago Coin Machine Company). [2] The company started off by making replacement boards for early pinball games before creating the table Blackstone (1933) which was manufactured by a partner named Stoner. [1] [3] [4] In 1957, the company changed its corporate name to Chicago Dynamic Industries, retaining Chicago Coin as a label of the company. Genco would remain a competitor with Chicago Coin until the companies merged in 1959.
Though never a technologically-driven or innovative company, Chicago Coin was highly successful in the years preceding and immediately succeeding World War II. Their pinball table Beam-Lite (1935), which featured a lighted playfield, sold 5,703 units and their flipperless game Kilroy (1947) sold 8,800 units which was the highest selling pinball table up until the 1970s. [3] [4] The company also diversified in later years, creating sports tables and shuffle alleys. [1]
They later manufactured various other electro-mechanical games (EM games) for amusement arcades. In 1969, they manufactured Speedway, a licensed North American version of racing game Indy 500 (1968) from Japanese company Kasco. [5] [6] It resembled a prototypical arcade racing video game, with an upright cabinet, yellow marquee, three-digit scoring, coin box, steering wheel, accelerator pedal, [7] and pseudo-3D first-person perspective. [8] [9]
While Kasco's original Indy 500 had sold over 2,000 arcade cabinets in Japan, [5] Speedway went on to sell over 10,000 cabinets in North America, making it the biggest hit arcade game in years, [10] [11] and setting an arcade sales record that was not surpassed until the arrival of arcade video games in the 1970s. [11] Like Sega's Periscope (1966), Speedway also charged a higher US quarter price point per play, further cementing quarter-play as the standard for North American arcade games for over two decades. [5] Chicago Coin also adapted Speedway into a motorcycle racing game, Motorcycle, in 1970. [8]
Speedway had an influence on Nolan Bushnell, who as a college student worked at an arcade where he became familiar with EM games such as Speedway, watching customers play and helping to maintain the machinery, while learning how it worked and developing his understanding of how the game business operates. [12] When he founded Atari, Bushnell had originally planned to develop a driving video game, influenced by Speedway which at the time was the biggest-selling game at his arcade, but ended up developing Pong (1972) instead; Atari eventually developed a driving video game later on, Gran Trak 10 (1974). [13]
In 1973, Chicago Coin was one of the many companies who created Pong (1972) clones with TV Ping Pong (1973). In subsequent years, the company took to licensing games from other manufacturers including TV Goalee (1974) from Australian Leisure & Allied Industries, Super Flipper (1975) (originally UFO) from Model Racing of Italy, and Destruction Derby (1975) from Exidy of California. As a result of entering the video game market, in 1974 Chicago Dynamic Industries was one of the many companies sued by Magnavox regarding patents related to the Magnavox Odyssey (1972). [14]
Chicago Coin's TV Pingame (1973) was a digital video game adaptation of pinball that had a vertical playfield with a paddle at the bottom, controlled by a dial, with the screen filled with simple squares to represent obstacles, bumpers and pockets. This inspired a number of clones, including TV Flipper (1973) by Midway Manufacturing, Exidy's TV Pinball (1974), and Pin Pong (1974) by Atari, Inc. The latter replaced the dial controls with button controls. [15]
Following subsequent financial trouble, Chicago Dynamic Industries sold the assets of Chicago Coin which were incorporated into the new company Stern Electronics, Inc. [16]
Chicago Coin tables are often lesser known than those made by Gottlieb, Williams, and Bally. Nonetheless, there were several Chicago Coin tables which stood out amongst the larger market.
Pong is a 1972 sports video game developed and published by Atari for arcades. It is one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work and decided to manufacture the game. Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. In response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.
Nolan Kay Bushnell is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America". He has started more than 20 companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games. In 2012, he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software.
1972 marked an important landmark in the history of the video game industry with the releases of Pong and the Odyssey home console. The profile of electronic games rose substantially and companies began exploring the distribution of video games on a larger scale. Important mainframe computer games were created in this period which became the basis for early microcomputer games.
Exidy, Inc. was an American developer and manufacturer of coin-operated electro-mechanical and video games which operated from 1973 to 1999. They manufactured many notable titles including Death Race (1976), Circus (1978), Star Fire (1978), Venture (1981), Mouse Trap (1981), Crossbow (1983), and Chiller (1986). They were also the creators of the Exidy Sorcerer (1978) home computer platform.
WMS Industries, Inc. was an American electronic gaming and amusement manufacturer in Enterprise, Nevada. It was merged into Scientific Games in 2016. WMS's predecessor was the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded in 1943 by Harry E. Williams. However, the company that became WMS Industries was formally founded in 1974 as Williams Electronics, Inc.
Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies. Stern Electronics, Inc. manufactured arcade video games and pinball machines from 1977 until 1985, and was best known for Berzerk. Stern Pinball, Inc., founded in 1986 as Data East Pinball, is a manufacturer of pinball machines in North America.
Night Driver is an arcade video game developed by Atari, Inc. and released in the United States in October 1976. It's one of the earliest first-person racing video games and is commonly believed to be one of the first published video games to feature real-time first-person graphics. Night Driver has a black and white display with the hood of the player's car painted on a plastic overlay. The road is rendered as scaled rectangles representing "pylons" that line the edges.
1976 was a mixed year for the expansion of the video game industry. While the consumer market in the United States for dedicated home consoles saw significant growth, the coin-operated video game market saw a decline despite individual hits. The year also marked the availability of some of the first computer game software for microcomputers, growing out of the hobbyist market.
1974 saw the expansion of technology and public awareness of video games. A proliferation of companies creating commercial video games in the coin-operated market attracted attention from the mainstream press. Coin-operated games began to diversify in content beyond Pong derivatives. The first three-dimensional games were developed for linked graphical terminals which would not be widely commercialized. Some of the first efforts to create video game consoles after the release of Magnavox's Odyssey became available in the United States and Europe.
The year 1973 saw a substantial increase in the number of video games created and distributed. In coin-operated games, a craze for Pong-style games ignited the first fad for video games both in the United States and other countries such as Japan and the United Kingdom. Time-sharing networks saw greater proliferation of popular programs through type-in listings. The PLATO computer located at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign played host to some of the earliest massively multiplayer games.
Gran Trak 10 is an arcade driving video game developed by Atari through its subsidiary Cyan Engineering, and released by Atari in May 1974. In the game, a single player drives a car along a race track, viewed from above, avoiding walls of pylons and trying to pass as many checkpoints as possible before time runs out. The game is controlled with a steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedals, and a gear stick, and the car crashes and spins if it hits a pylon.
Centuri, formerly known as Allied Leisure, was an American arcade game manufacturer. They were based in Hialeah, Florida, and were one of the top six suppliers of coin-operated arcade video game machinery in the United States during the early 1980s. Centuri in its modern inception was formed when former Taito America president Ed Miller and his partner Bill Olliges took over Allied Leisure, Inc. They renamed it "Centuri" in 1980.
Gotcha is an arcade video game developed by Atari and released in October 1973. It was the fourth game by the company, after the 1972 Pong, which marked the beginning of the commercial video game industry along with the Magnavox Odyssey, and the 1973 Space Race and Pong Doubles. In the game, two players move through a maze, which continually changes over time. One player, the Pursuer, attempts to catch the other, the Pursued; if they do, a point is scored, and the players reset positions. The game emits an electronic beeping sound, which increases in pace as the Pursuer gets closer to the Pursued, and each game lasts a set amount of time.
Space Race is an arcade game developed by Atari, Inc. and released on July 16, 1973. It was the second game by the company, after Pong (1972), which marked the beginning of the commercial video game industry along with the Magnavox Odyssey. In the game, two players each control a rocket ship, with the goal of being the first to move their ship from the bottom of the screen to the top. Along the way are asteroids, which the players must avoid. Space Race was the first racing arcade video game and the first game with a goal of crossing the screen while avoiding obstacles.
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry.
Speed Race is a 1974 arcade racing video game developed and manufactured by Taito and released under the titles Racer and Wheels in North America by distributor Midway Manufacturing in 1975. Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, the gameplay involves the player using the attached steering wheel to maneuver a car alongside a fast vertical scrolling road. The objective is to score points by driving past other cars without colliding with them; more points are awarded for driving faster. Players must do this under a 90-second time limit, which ends the game when it runs out. The gameplay concepts were adapted from two earlier driving electro-mechanical games: Kasco's Mini Drive (1958) and Taito's Super Road 7 (1970).
Electro-mechanical games are types of arcade games that operate on a combination of some electronic circuitry and mechanical actions from the player to move items contained within the game's cabinet. Some of these were early light gun games using light-sensitive sensors on targets to register hits, while others were simulation games such as driving games, combat flight simulators and sports games. EM games were popular in amusement arcades from the late 1940s up until the 1970s, serving as alternatives to pinball machines, which had been stigmatized as games of chance during that period. EM games lost popularity in the 1970s, as arcade video games had emerged to replace them in addition to newer pinball machines designed as games of skill.
An arcade video game is an arcade game where the player's inputs from the game's controllers are processed through electronic or computerized components and displayed to a video device, typically a monitor, all contained within an enclosed arcade cabinet. Arcade video games are often installed alongside other arcade games such as pinball and redemption games at amusement arcades. Up until the late 1990s, arcade video games were the largest and most technologically advanced sector of the video game industry.
An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games or merchandisers.