Asteroids is a space-themed multidirectional shooter arcade video game designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a single spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers, while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The game becomes harder as the number of asteroids increases.
Millipede is a fixed shooter video game released in arcades by Atari, Inc. in 1982. The sequel to 1981's Centipede, it has more gameplay variety and a wider array of insects than the original. The objective is to score as many points as possible by destroying all segments of the millipede as it moves toward the bottom of the screen, as well as eliminating or avoiding other enemies. The game is played with a trackball and a single fire button which can be held down for rapid-fire.
Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. Designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, it was one of the most commercially successful games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of the first with a significant female player base. The primary objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede that winds down the playing field. An arcade sequel, Millipede, followed in 1982.
Battlezone is a first-person shooter tank combat game released for arcades in November 1980 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a tank which is attacked by other tanks and missiles. Using a small radar scanner along with the terrain window, the player can locate enemies and obstacles around them in the barren landscape. Its innovative use of 3D graphics made it a huge hit, with approximately 15,000 cabinets sold.
Breakout is an arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and released on May 13, 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak, based on conceptualization from Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, who were influenced by the seminal 1972 Atari arcade game Pong. In Breakout, a layer of bricks lines the top third of the screen and the goal is to destroy them all by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them. The arcade game was released in Japan by Namco. Breakout was a worldwide commercial success, among the top five highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976 in both the United States and Japan and then among the top three highest-grossing arcade video games of 1977 in the US and Japan. The 1978 Atari VCS port uses color graphics instead of a monochrome screen with colored overlay.
Lyle Rains was a senior executive at the arcade game company Atari and is sometimes, with Ed Logg, listed as a co-developer of the video game Asteroids. In fact, Rains called Logg into his office and said "Well, why don’t we have a game where you shoot the rocks and blow them up?". Rains also served as Executive Producer for a large number of Atari coin-op games. An avid gamer, he wrote a popular online FAQ for the Atari coin-op game KLAX.
Gauntlet is a 1985 fantasy-themed hack-and-slash arcade video game developed and released by Atari Games. It is one of the first multiplayer dungeon crawl arcade games. The core design of Gauntlet comes from 1983 game Dandy for the Atari 8-bit computers, which resulted in a threat of legal action. It also has similarities to the action-adventure maze video game Time Bandit (1983).
The golden age of arcade video games was the period of rapid growth, technological development, and cultural influence of arcade video games from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The release of Space Invaders in 1978 led to a wave of shoot-'em-up games such as Galaxian and the vector graphics-based Asteroids in 1979, made possible by new computing technology that had greater power and lower costs. Arcade video games switched from black-and-white to color, with titles such as Frogger and Centipede taking advantage of the visual opportunities of bright palettes.
The following article is a broad timeline of arcade video games.
San Francisco Rush 2049 is a 1999 futuristic-themed racing video game developed and manufactured by Atari Games for arcades, later ported to home systems. It is the third game in the Rush series as the sequel to San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing and Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA as well as the last to be set in the city of San Francisco. An updated version with fixes and more tracks was later released subtitled Tournament Edition. The game was notably also the last coin-op title rooted to the original Atari arcade business and Atari brand, 27 years after Pong.
Dona Bailey is an American video game programmer and educator. Bailey, along with Ed Logg in 1981, developed Atari, Inc.'s arcade video game Centipede.
Freeway is an action video game written by David Crane for the Atari 2600 and published by Activision in 1981. In the game, one or two players control chickens who cross a ten-lane highway filled with traffic. The goal is to set a high score in an allotted time. Every time a chicken gets across a point is earned for that player. Depending on the difficulty mode, a chicken is forced back a lane or sent back to the bottom of the screen when hit by a vehicle.
Super Breakout is a sequel to the 1976 video game Breakout released in arcades in September 1978 by Atari, Inc. It was written by Ed Rotberg. The game uses the same mechanics as Breakout, but allows the selection of three distinct game modes via a knob on the cabinet—two of which involve multiple, simultaneous balls in play. Both the original and sequel are in black and white with monitor overlays to add color. It was distributed in Japan by Namco and Esco Trading.
Xybots is a 1987 third-person shooter arcade game by Atari Games. In Xybots, up to two players control "Major Rock Hardy" and "Captain Ace Gunn", who must travel through a 3D maze and fight against a series of robots known as the Xybots whose mission is to destroy all mankind. The game features a split screen display showing the gameplay on the bottom half of the screen and information on player status and the current level on the top half. Designed by Ed Logg, it was originally conceived as a sequel to his previous title, Gauntlet. The game was well received, with reviewers lauding the game's various features, particularly the cooperative multiplayer aspect. Despite this, it was met with limited financial success, which has been attributed to its unique control scheme that involves rotating the joystick to turn the player character.
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.
Carol Shaw is one of the first female game designers and programmers in the video game industry. She is best known for creating the Atari 2600 vertically scrolling shooter game River Raid (1982) for Activision. She worked for Atari, Inc. from 1978 to 1980, where she designed multiple games including 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe (1978) and Video Checkers (1980), both for the Atari VCS before it was renamed to the 2600. She left game development in 1984 and retired in 1990.
Dandy is a dungeon crawl maze video game for Atari 8-bit computers published by the Atari Program Exchange in 1983. It is one of the first video games with four-player, simultaneous cooperative play. Players equipped with bows and unlimited arrows fight through a maze containing monsters, monster spawners, keys, locked doors, food, and bombs in search of the exit leading to the next level. If a player dies, they can be revived by finding and shooting a heart. The game includes an editor for making new dungeons.
Lunar Lander is a single-player arcade game in the Lunar Lander subgenre. It was developed by Atari, Inc. and released in August 1979. It was the most popular version to date of the "Lunar Lander" concept, surpassing the prior Moonlander (1973) and numerous text-based games, and most later iterations of the concept are based on this Atari version.
Atari Vault is a video game collection developed by Code Mystics and published by Atari Interactive for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux via the Steam client. Atari Vault contains titles from Atari, Inc. and Atari Corporation published on the Atari 2600 and arcade cabinets. dating from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The games, where possible, have been updated to include modern-day features such as local and online multiplayer and online leaderboards.
The 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards was the 15th edition of the Interactive Achievement Awards, an annual awards event that honored the best games in the video game industry during 2011. The awards were arranged by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) and were held at the Red Rock Casino, Resort & Spa in Las Vegas, Nevada on February 9, 2012. It was also held as part of the Academy's 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit, and was hosted by stand-up comedian Jay Mohr. It would be the final year that it would be called the Interactive Achievement Awards.
