Pac-Man, originally called Puck Man in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called "Power Pellets" causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points.
An amusement arcade, also known as a video arcade, amusements, arcade, or penny arcade, is a venue where people play arcade games, including arcade video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers, or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables. In some countries, some types of arcades are also legally permitted to provide gambling machines such as slot machines or pachinko machines. Games are usually housed in cabinets.
Missile Command is a 1980 shoot 'em up arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and licensed to Sega for Japanese and European releases. It was designed by Dave Theurer, who also designed Atari's vector graphics game Tempest from the same year. The game was released during the Cold War, and the player uses a trackball to defend six cities from intercontinental ballistic missiles by launching anti-ballistic missiles from three bases.
Q*bert is an arcade video game developed and published for the North American market by Gottlieb in 1982. It is a 2D action game with puzzle elements that uses isometric graphics to create a pseudo-3D effect. The objective of each level in the game is to change every cube in a pyramid to a target color by making Q*bert, the on-screen character, hop on top of the cube while avoiding obstacles and enemies. Players use a joystick to control the character.
Donkey Kong Jr. is a 1982 arcade platform game that was released by Nintendo. It is the sequel to Donkey Kong, but with the roles reversed compared to its predecessor: Mario is now the villain and Donkey Kong Jr. is trying to save his kidnapped father. It first released in arcades and, over the course of the decade, was released for a variety of home platforms. The game's title is written out as Donkey Kong Junior in the North American arcade version and various conversions to non-Nintendo systems.
Twin Galaxies is a social media platform and video game database. Twin Galaxies is the official supplier of video game records to Guinness World Records.
Bump 'n' Jump is an overhead-view vehicular combat game developed by Data East and originally released in Japan as Burnin' Rubber. Distributed in North America by Bally Midway, the arcade version was available as both a dedicated board and as part of Data East's DECO Cassette System. The goal is to drive to the end of a course while knocking enemy vehicles into the sides of the track and jumping over large obstacles such as bodies of water.
Nibbler is an arcade snake maze game released in 1982 by Chicago-based developer Rock-Ola. The player navigates a snake through an enclosed maze, consuming objects, and the length of the snake increases with each object consumed. The game was the first to include nine scoring digits, allowing players to surpass one billion points.
The U.S. National Video Game Team (USNVGT) was an American esports team in the early 1980's. It was founded in July 1983 in Ottumwa, Iowa, United States by Walter Day and Jim Riley as part of the Electronic Circus tour, with Steve Sanders as the first captain. After the Circus folded, Day re-established the team with himself as the captain, taking the team on a bus tour. The team challenged the players of arcades across the country and attempted to challenge other countries through visits to foreign embassies. In the years that followed the team ran numerous competitive contests.
Scott Safran was an American video gamer noted for setting the world-record score, which stood for 27 years, on the arcade game Asteroids.
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a 2007 American documentary film about competitive arcade gaming directed by Seth Gordon. It follows Steve Wiebe in his attempts to take the high score record for the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong from Billy Mitchell. The film premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival and was released in U.S. theaters in August 2007. It received positive reviews.
Todd Rogers is an American video game player who has been described as the first professional video game player. In 1986, he was invited to be part of the U.S. National Video Game Team. He had claimed to be recognized by Activision for having achieved many record-setting high scores, but many of his records were later disputed for a lack of verifying evidence or found to be impossible to achieve. In January 2018, the Twin Galaxies record database removed all of his scores from their leaderboards and banned him permanently, and Guinness World Records stripped his records.
David Nelson is an American arcade video game player who holds world record high scores listed in the 2008 Guinness World Records-Gamer's Edition.
William James Mitchell Jr. is an American video game player. He achieved fame throughout the 1980s and 1990s through claiming numerous records on classic video games, including a perfect score on Pac-Man. Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records recognized Mitchell as the holder of several records on classic games, and he has appeared in several documentaries on competitive gaming and retrogaming. However, in 2017, the legitimacy of a number of his records was called into question, leading to Twin Galaxies stripping Mitchell of his records.
The International Video Game Hall of Fame (IVGHoF) is a planned museum to be operated in Ottumwa, Iowa, United States.
Dragster, released in 1980 for the Atari Video Computer System, is one of the first video games developed by Activision.
The Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show is an annual pinball and arcade game festival held in Tacoma, Washington, United States.
Players have competed for the highest score for the video game Donkey Kong since its release in 1981. The competition became more prominent after it was covered in the 2007 documentary The King of Kong.
Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler is a 2015 documentary film directed by Andrew Seklir and Tim Kinzy. The film premiered on September 27, 2015, at Fantastic Fest Film Festival, followed by a Canadian premiere on April 17, 2016, and a worldwide release on June 24 of the same year. The film follows players as they try to accumulate a billion points on the 1982 arcade game Nibbler, a feat first achieved by Tim McVey in 1984.
Quincy Place Mall is shopping mall located in Ottumwa, Iowa. The mall is managed by Lexington Realty International. The mall's anchor stores are Harbor Freight Tools, Dunham's Sports and Dollar Tree. There are 2 vacant anchor stores that were once Herberger's and JCPenney.
