50 Fun Facts About Classic Video Game

Which company released Pong in 1972?

Atari released Pong in November 1972; Allan Alcorn built it as a training exercise set by Nolan Bushnell, and the prototype proved too good not to sell.

Pong's concept was borrowed from a ping-pong game on which console, prompting a patent lawsuit?

The Magnavox Odyssey, developed from Ralph Baer's 'Brown Box' prototype, reached stores in September 1972 as the first commercial home console; Magnavox later took Pong's maker to court for patent infringement and won a licensing settlement.

What was the first commercially available arcade video game, released in 1971?

Computer Space, built by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney from the mainframe game Spacewar!, was sold by Nutting Associates in fibreglass cabinets; roughly 1,300 to 1,500 were made.

How did players of the first home console, in 1972, get colour graphics for its games?

Plastic overlays stuck to the TV screen supplied the colour: the console's hardware drew only white squares and lines, so each game shipped with a translucent screen overlay plus dice, cards and paper money.

Which Japanese company released the 1978 alien-shooting hit that started the arcade golden age?

Taito released Tomohiro Nishikado's alien shooter in 1978; by 1982 it had taken an estimated $3.8 billion in coins, and it set off the wave of arcade hits that followed.

What was Pac-Man's original title in Japan?

Puck Man, from the Japanese 'paku-paku' for munching, was the name on Namco's 1980 Japanese cabinets; Midway renamed it for America, fearing vandals would scratch the P into an F.

Which of these is NOT one of the four ghosts in the original Pac-Man?

Sue is the orange ghost in Ms. Pac-Man; the original quartet is Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde.

Which stage of Pac-Man is impossible to complete because of an integer overflow?

Level 256 is the kill screen: an 8-bit level counter overflows, the fruit-drawing routine corrupts the right half of the maze with garbage, and too few dots remain to finish the board.

Ms. Pac-Man began life as an unauthorised modification kit called what?

Crazy Otto was General Computer Corporation's unauthorised enhancement kit for Pac-Man; bound by a lawsuit settlement over an earlier kit, GCC sold it to Midway, which released it as Ms. Pac-Man in 1982.

Donkey Kong was created in 1981 to reuse unsold cabinets from which failed Nintendo arcade game?

Radar Scope had flopped in America, leaving Nintendo of America with about 2,000 unsold cabinets; president Hiroshi Yamauchi handed the conversion job to first-time designer Shigeru Miyamoto.

By what name was Mario sometimes known in the original Donkey Kong?

Jumpman was the hero's name in the original 1981 Donkey Kong's arcade materials; Nintendo of America staff nicknamed him Mario after their warehouse landlord, Mario Segale, and the name stuck.

On which Soviet computer did Alexey Pajitnov first program his falling-blocks puzzle game?

Elektronika 60, a Soviet PDP-11-compatible machine at the Academy of Sciences computing centre in Moscow, was where Pajitnov wrote the 1984 original in Pascal; it had no graphics, so bricks were drawn with bracket characters.

Which entrepreneur negotiated the falling-blocks handheld rights for Nintendo's Game Boy in 1989?

Henk Rogers flew to Moscow in February 1989 on a tourist visa and dealt directly with Elektronorgtechnica (ELORG), the Soviet licensing body, securing the handheld rights for Nintendo.

What was the console later known as the 2600 called when it launched in September 1977?

Atari Video Computer System, or VCS, was the launch name; Stella had been its development codename, and the console was renamed the Atari 2600 in November 1982 after its model number CX2600.

Which arcade conversion in 1980 became the Atari 2600's first killer app?

Space Invaders, released for the VCS in March 1980 as the first officially licensed arcade conversion for a home console, became the system's first killer app and drove a surge in console sales.

How long did Howard Scott Warshaw have to develop E.T. for the Atari 2600?

Just over five weeks: the licence was finalised in late July 1982 and the code had to be finished by 1 September to make the holiday season, leaving Warshaw barely more than a month to design and program it.

In which town's landfill were unsold E.T. cartridges confirmed buried when diggers investigated in 2014?

Alamogordo, New Mexico: in April 2014 a documentary crew excavated the town landfill and unearthed E.T. and other cartridges dumped there in September 1983, confirming a story long dismissed as urban legend.

By roughly what percentage did US home video game revenue fall between 1983 and 1985?

A fall of about 97%: US home video game revenue dropped from roughly $3.2 billion in 1983 to around $100 million in 1985 as a glut of poor-quality games and consoles swamped the market.

Which Atari 2600 game contains the first widely known video game Easter egg?

Adventure (1980) hides a secret room displaying 'Created by Warren Robinett'; he planted it because the company refused to credit programmers, and Ready Player One's climax is built around it.

In the text game Zork, what eats players who wander in the dark without a light?

A grue, a lurking creature Dave Lebling borrowed from Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, eats anyone who moves about in darkness; it replaced the bottomless pits of early versions, which made no sense in an attic.

How many cabinets did Williams' Defender sell, making it the company's best-selling game?

About 55,000 Defender cabinets were sold, a Williams record; it was the first video game from Eugene Jarvis, who had previously programmed the company's pinball machines such as Firepower.

Which 1981 Atari arcade game, co-designed by Dona Bailey, was one of the first widely played by women?

Centipede, co-designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg and released in 1981, used a trackball to shoot a centipede winding through a mushroom field; its pastel look and Bailey's involvement drew an unusually large female following.

How many cities does the player defend in Missile Command?

Released in June 1980 at the height of the Cold War, it used a trackball and three missile bases.

How much time does Pitfall Harry get to hunt for treasure in Pitfall!?

20 minutes is the limit: a timer counts down from 20:00 while Harry hunts 32 treasures across 255 screens; David Crane built the 1982 Activision game around a running-man animation he had made first.

What was the NES called in Japan, where it launched in July 1983?

Famicom, short for Family Computer, launched in Japan on 15 July 1983; Masayuki Uemura led its design, and the redesigned NES version went on to revive the American market after the 1983 crash.

What was R.O.B., bundled with early NES sets to reassure toy stores?

A toy robot: R.O.B., the Robotic Operating Buddy, watched the screen and moved pieces for Gyromite and Stack-Up, letting Nintendo pitch the 1985 Deluxe Set as a toy rather than a video game console.

Steve Wozniak built the prototype hardware for which 1976 arcade game in under a week?

Breakout was the job: Steve Jobs, then working for Nolan Bushnell, brought in his friend Wozniak, who designed a working prototype within days using far fewer chips than the company's engineers expected.

The Legend of Zelda first launched in Japan in 1986 on which add-on?

Famicom Disk System: Zelda was a launch title for the floppy-disk add-on on 21 February 1986; Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka developed it alongside Super Mario Bros., and Link gathers eight Triforce fragments to beat Ganon.

On which NES game did the Konami Code first appear?

Gradius, the 1986 NES port, was the first: programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto added the code to give himself a full power-up set while testing and forgot to remove it; Contra later made it famous with 30 lives.

Which puzzle game was bundled with the Game Boy in North America and Europe?

Tetris came in the box with every North American and European Game Boy from 1989; Nintendo chose the puzzle game over a Mario title to reach adults as well as children, and the cartridge sold about 35 million copies.

How many shades could the original Game Boy screen display?

Four shades of grey-green on a reflective, unlit 160×144 LCD: the 1989 Game Boy traded colour and backlight for battery life, running for many hours on four AA batteries.

Which SNES feature let games fake 3D perspective, as in F-Zero and Mario Kart?

Mode 7 is a background mode of the SNES graphics hardware that can rotate and scale a single layer every scanline, producing the tilted racetracks of F-Zero (1990) and Super Mario Kart (1992); Super FX was a separate cartridge chip.

Sonic the Hedgehog was designed by Naoto Ohshima after he won what?

An internal Sega character contest in 1990 sought a mascot to rival Mario; Naoto Ohshima's spiky hedgehog won, programmer Yuji Naka built the game around it, and the developers renamed themselves Sonic Team.

How many copies did the original Sonic sell on the Genesis, where it was the pack-in game?

15 million copies of the Genesis version were sold, a figure helped by its role as the console's pack-in game from mid-1991, when it replaced Altered Beast in the box.

Which 1985 Sega arcade game was played on a rideable motorcycle-shaped cabinet?

Hang-On, Yu Suzuki's 1985 motorcycle racer, shipped in a deluxe cabinet shaped like a full-size bike that players leaned to steer; Sega's later Out Run used a similar motion cabinet shaped as a car.

Which US ratings body was created largely in response to Mortal Kombat, Night Trap and Lethal Enforcers?

The ESRB, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, was set up by the industry in September 1994 after Senate hearings led by Joe Lieberman over the gore of Mortal Kombat, Night Trap and Lethal Enforcers.

How did id Software distribute Doom in December 1993?

Shareware, with the first episode free: id uploaded Doom to a University of Wisconsin FTP server on 10 December 1993; the nine-level 'Knee-Deep in the Dead' was free to copy, and players paid for the other two episodes.

Which 1993 puzzle-exploration game was the best-selling PC game for nearly a decade?

Myst, built by Rand and Robyn Miller in HyperCard for the Macintosh, held the PC sales record from its 1993 release until The Sims passed it in 2002.

Jordan Mechner rotoscoped his 1989 Persian platformer's animation from footage of whom?

His brother David performed acrobatics in white clothes; swashbucklers like The Adventures of Robin Hood filled in the sword fights.

Why did publishers initially refuse Will Wright's SimCity?

It had no way to win: publishers in 1985 could not see a game without an ending, so Wright and Jeff Braun founded Maxis in 1987 and released it themselves in 1989 with Broderbund's help.

How many copies did GoldenEye 007 sell, making it the third-best-selling N64 game?

Eight million copies, behind only Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 on the console; an inexperienced Rare team led by Martin Hollis spent about two and a half years building it before its August 1997 release.

Which restaurant chain did Atari founder Nolan Bushnell go on to create?

Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre opened its first restaurant in San Jose in 1977, pairing pizza with animatronic shows and a room full of arcade cabinets; Bushnell bought the concept back from Warner after selling them the company.

Galaga (1981) is the sequel to which earlier Namco arcade shooter?

Galaxian (1979) was Namco's breakthrough shooter: its aliens broke formation to swoop down at the player's single fighter, and Galaga added a tractor-beam boss that captures a fighter, which can be rescued for dual-fighter firepower.

How many frogs must the player guide home to clear a level of Frogger (1981)?

Five frogs must reach the five homes at the top of the screen to finish a level; developed by Konami and released in North America by Sega/Gremlin in 1981, Frogger's home versions had sold 20 million copies by 2005.

Q*bert (1982), the pyramid-hopping arcade hit, was developed under what project name?

Jeff Lee designed the character and Warren Davis built the game; Q*bert's 'swearing' came from a grawlix speech balloon and synthesised gibberish.

In Dig Dug (1982), how does the player defeat underground enemies?

Pumping them up until they burst is the main method: Taizo Hori inflates Pookas and Fygars with his air pump, or drops rocks on them; Namco marketed the 1982 game as a 'strategic digging game'.

Asteroids (1979) reused arcade hardware Atari had built for which earlier game?

Lunar Lander (1979) introduced the Digital Vector Generator display; Asteroids, released months later on the same vector hardware, was so much bigger a hit that Lunar Lander production was halted and some early Asteroids shipped in Lunar Lander cabinets.

On which planet is the original Metroid (1986) set?

Zebes is the Space Pirates' base planet where Samus Aran hunts Mother Brain; produced by Gunpei Yokoi in 1986, the game rewarded fast finishes with endings that revealed Samus as a woman.

Which former Disney animator provided the animation for the LaserDisc game Dragon's Lair (1983)?

Don Bluth, who had left Disney in 1979 with a group of animators, drew the film-quality footage in which knight Dirk the Daring rescues Princess Daphne from the dragon Singe; the LaserDisc played clips, limiting actual control.

Which Namco racer was North America's top-grossing arcade game in both 1983 and 1984?

Pole Position (1982) was Namco's rear-view racer set on the Fuji Speedway, with a qualifying lap before the race; descended from the company's electro-mechanical F-1 of 1976, it even spawned a 1984 Saturday-morning cartoon.