I haven't done one of these in a while. This time, I'm only going to do a single year because I consider 1978 to be the last year of the "Bronze Age" (1979 was kind of a transition year).
1978
RePlay’s annual review said of
1978 "Video games…disappointed this past year. Unfortunately, they were
off in both sales and route collections in all parts of the country. It was
probably the most disappointing year in the history of this college-bred
phenomenon of the coin industry."
They also noted that the year was "less than a banner year"
for the coin-op industry in general (outside of pinball and foosball). The main
issues were over saturation and poor quality control. Video games did increase
their collections for the third straight year, but at a much slower rate than
previously. The European market for American video games was actually stronger
than the domestic one. In RePlay's
fall poll, 47% of operators said they planned on purchasing fewer upright video
games versus just 28% who planned to buy more. For cocktail video games, which
had been stung by the appearance of the "blue sky" operators, things
were even worse with just 3% saying they planned to buy more versus 90% who
planned to buy fewer. The variety of new video games continued to increase in
1978. After wowing at the 1977 AMOA show, Cinematronics' Space Wars went on to become the biggest hit of the year, topping
both the Replay and Play Meter charts. This marked the first
time a game not made by Atari or Midway was ranked #1. Indeed no non-Midway,
non-Atari game managed to rank in the 6 in any of the four previous polls
conducted by the two magazines. Space
Wars also introduced the vector display to the industry.
Pinball and Other
Coin-Op Games
The big news in the industry
continued to be the rise of pinball and especially solid state games. Replay noted that "Pinball is 'all
the rage' in virtually every type of location. It's even beating out 'King pool
table' in bars as the top coin-grabber in this year's poll ... a hard thing to
believe…" Another issue declared that "Flipper games are the darling
of the business right now." According to Play Meter average weekly collections from pinball games rose from
$44 in 1977 to $62 in 1978. Replay reported
in 1985 that 53% of income in street locations in 1978 and 42% of arcade income
came from pinball. Bally introduced seven different pinball machines during the
year that sold more than 10,000 copies, led by Playboy with 18,250 (though it wasn't released until December) and Mata Hari with 16,260. Outside of
pinball and video games, Williams released its first solid state shuffle alley Topaz. Arachnid debuted English Mark Darts (which would
eventually spark the electronic darts revolution). The AMOA allowed gambling
games on the convention floor for the first time and distributors started to
handle more than one brand of jukeboxes, breaking a long tradition.
Statistics:
#
of Different Video Games Released: ca 110
Top
Games
Replay: 1. Space Wars (Cinematronics), 2. Sprint 2 (Atari), 3. Sprint (Atari), 4. Sea Wolf (Midway), 5. Breakout
(Atari), 6. Super Bug (Atari),
7. Starship 1 (Atari), 8. Sea Wolf II (Midway), 9. Smokey Joe (Atari), 10. LeMans (Atari)
Play Meter: 1. Space Wars, 2. Sprint 2, 3. Sea Wolf, 4. Sea Wolf II, 5. Super Bug
6. Starship 1 (Atari), 7. Circus (Exidy), 8. Breakout, 9. Night Driver (Atari),
10. Sprint 1 (Atari)
Significant
Firsts:
First
Cockpit Game: Star Fire (Exidy)
First
Game To Record High Scores and Initials of Top Players: Star Fire (Exidy)
Top
machine types, average weekly earnings:
Replay: Pins $51.50, Pool
Tables $44.25, Upright Video Games $43.75
Play Meter: Pinball $62, Pool
Tables $53, Jukeboxes $52, Video Games $50
Vending Times (no figures for
jukeboxes): Pinball $48, Pool Tables $41, Video Games $36
Total
coin-op collections
Vending Times: $2.2 billion (does
not include jukeboxes)
%
of collections by game type (RePlay)
Street
locations: flippers 53%, pool tables 18%, TV games 17%
Arcades:
flippers 42%, TV games 31%, group games 12%
#
of machines on location (in thousands):
Vending Times (no figures for jukeboxes): Pinball
(573), Pool Tables (184.9), Video Games (164.6)
Play Meter: Pinball (737.6),
Arcade Games [includes video games] (469.4), Jukeboxes (447), Pool Tables
(268.2)
Total
dollar volume of collections, by machine type (in millions):
Vending Times: Pinball $1,430,
Pool Tables $394, Video Games $308
%
of total equipment, by type (Play Meter)
Pinball:
33%, Arcade/Video: 21%Phonographs: 20%
#
of new machines bought per operator, by type (Play Meter)
Pinball:
21, Video Games: 12, Phonographs: 5, Foosball: 5
Preferred
Video Game Manufacturer (Play Meter)
Atari
69%, Bally/Midway 27%, Exidy 1%, Others 3%
Most
popular game types (Replay)
Taverns:
1. Pinball Machines, 2.Pool Tables, 3. Shuffle Alleys, 4. Video Games
Restaurants:
1. Pinball Machines, 2. Upright Video Games 3. Wall Games and Cocktail Video
Games (tie)
Summing it All Up - The Bronze Age
By the
start of 1979, it was clear that video games had brought about major changes in
the coin-op industry. When Pong made
its debut in 1972, the industry was in many ways not far removed from its penny
arcade roots. It was an old-fashioned industry that was often difficult for new
firms to enter and sometimes closed to new ideas. It was also an industry that
was struggling. Sales were flat. Jukeboxes were in decline. Top pins were
selling in the neighborhood of 5-6,000 units. In 1969, Chicago Coin's Speedway sold the "amazing"
total of 10,000 units. The rise of video game technology and the phenomenal
success of the games themselves would transform the industry and force it to
modernize. In 1978, Play Meter editor
Ralph Lally wrote "The introduction of video games will probably rank as
the decade's number one innovation. No one can doubt the vast number of new
locations and players they brought to this industry" (though he noted that
the introduction of solid state pinball ran a close second).
The
opening of new locations to coin-op games may have been video games’ greatest
impact, not only because of the new revenue it generated, but because of the
positive impact it had on the industry’s image. In an article in the October,
1976 issue of RePlay titled "TV
Games and Respectability", industry veteran and video game skeptic Louis
Boasberg explained.
[Louis
Boasberg] …I will shout it to high heaven that all of us in this great industry
owe a debt of gratitude to video games and the developers of same, for they
have given us respectability and above
all entree. I emphasize entree because video games have allowed
operators to operate in thousands of locations where any kind of coin operated
amusement game was taboo, unacceptable, and not permitted to operate in the
past. To name a few of these locations: Such places as swank cocktail lounges,
restaurants, hotel lobbies, hotel game rooms, airports, supermarkets, shopping
malls, department stores and many others, and I might add the list is growing
all the time
Circa 2000, Industry veteran Paul
Jacobs, who worked for over a dozen company during his 35-year (and counting)
career echoed the sentiment.
[Paul Jacobs] The video game was the
greatest change that ever occurred in the coin-op business. It opened
up a whole array of new locations for operators. Our industry is now
mentioned in the same breath as the motion picture industry and the recording
industry. It is the video game that did this. The industry is not
viewed in the context of a smoke-filled pinball parlor anymore. We are
looked upon as a very legitimate form of entertainment. The video game
has had such an impact on our industry that those who view our industry today
refer to it as the video game business, not the coin-op business.
For those familiar with
the video game banning controversies of the 1980s or the seemingly endless
campaign against video game violence, these comments may seem paradoxical, if
not outright false. Prior to Pong,
however, the coin-op industry had a reputation that was, I anything, even worse
than it was at the height of the anti-arcade crusades of the ‘80s or
anti-violence crusades of the ‘90s. Prior to the rise of video games, many
considered the coin-op industry to be one step above organized crime and
prostitution.
In addition to the new locations, video games also bought
a host of new manufacturers and operators into the industry. While many older
operators complained that they didn't know how to service the newfangled video
games and solid state pins, many new operators found them much easier to
maintain. Servicing gun games and pinball required work and more than a little
experience. Balls had to be cleared from playfields (which required removing
the top glass), stuck relays had to be unstuck, and moving parts broke
frequently. With video games, however, all an operator often needed to do was
wipe down the glass and collect the coins. While servicing broken video games
often required the assistance of technicians, the games didn't break down nearly
as frequently as their electro-mechanical predecessors.
Of course, we don’t want to overstate the impact of video
games on the coin-op industry either. Looking back from the 21st
century when video games are as ubiquitous as toothpaste, it’s all too easy to
read our modern opinions back into 1978. Video
games, for instance, did not render pinball obsolete overnight as some have
written. Far from it. In fact, in the years 1976-78, it was the pinball game,
not the video game, that ruled the roost in the coin-op henhouse. And the
biggest reason was the introduction of the solid-state pin.
[Ed Adlum] During
that time, the biggest event was the birth of the electronic pinball machine.
It caused a two year pingame boom during which both the industry and the
playing public fell absolutely in love with this updated version of the classic
game. Bally dominated the market while all the remaining pin makers like
Williams and finally Gottlieb got into the act.
In 1978, for example, while arcade video games generated
almost $400 million, pinball generated $1.4 billion – over three times as much.
Pinball controlled 53% of the coin-op market and it wouldn't be until 1980 that
video games overtook them. According to Play
Meter there were 738,000 pinball tables on location in 1978, compared to
514,000 video games and electromechancial arcade games (Vending Times gives very different numbers: 573,000 pinball games,
165,000 video games, and 9,500 arcade games). All three major trade magazines (RePlay, Play Meter, and Vending Times) agree that in terms of
average weekly earnings, pinball games outranked video games in 1978. While
video games may not have spelled the death of pinball – at least not in the
1970s, a better case can be made that they displaced electro-mechanical arcade
games, ball bowlers, and wall games, which went into sharp decline around 1976
and had largely disappeared by 1978 (though they would later make a comeback). While
video games had drawn new manufacturers into the industry, many of them left
almost as fast as they entered. By 1979, the list of video game manufacturers
that had disappeared or been absorbed by other companies included Digital
Games, Electromotion, Meadows Games, Amutech, PMC, Mirco Games, Innovative Coin
Corp., Fun Games, Electra Games, Computer Games, Amutronics, Brunswick, Ramtek,
PSE, and Chicago Coin. The influx of new operators was even more chaotic and
would eventually prove more of a curse than a blessing.
In the years immediately after Pong's release, many in
the industry simply ignored video games and even those who didn't saw that as
little more than a novelty
[Ed Adlum] I remember
an upstate operator named Millie McCarthy who wouldn't put a sit-down cocktail
video game into any of her places for fear of someone dropping a beer mug onto
the TV monitor...what we call the picture tube. In the beginning, video looked
like just one more way to play a game. Even Nolan Bushnell himself once asked...and
I was there when he did. . ."What else do you think we can do with this
other than play tennis or soccer or hockey?"
By 1978, few still considered the games a mere fad, but
neither was it clear that they were the wave of the future and many operators
remained leery of video games or saw them as just one of many options in the
coin op world. It was still possible
(though barely) for an operator in 1978 to ignore the games entirely. Pong had been all the rage in the early
‘70s but its reign was relatively brief and the game quickly faded from memory.
By 1978, few adults could name a single arcade video game other than Pong. In 1979 that would change. On the
other side of the globe, a different kind of video game was taking Japan by
storm and video games would once again become a national craze – one that would
make the glory years of Pong seem
tame by comparison. The golden age of video games was about to begin.
Pictures
From Electronic Games, August, 1982
From January, 1984:
Some Kiddie Ride/Video Game Combos from the early 1980s:
Intermark's Poker Machine (Play Meter, March, 1979)
