Golden Age of Arcade Video Games - Gameplay

Gameplay

With the enormous success of the early games, dozens of developers jumped into the development and manufacturing of video arcade games. Some simply copied the "invading alien hordes" idea of Space Invaders and turned out successful imitators like Namco's Galaxian, Galaga, and Gaplus, though they took the shoot 'em up genre further with new gameplay mechanics, more complex enemy patterns, and richer graphics. Galaxian introduced a "risk-reward" concept, while Galaga was one of the first games with a bonus stage. Sega's 1980 release Space Tactics was an early first-person space combat game with multi-directional scrolling as the player moved the cross-hairs on the screen.

Others tried new concepts and defined new genres. Rapidly evolving hardware allowed new kinds of games which allowed for different styles of gameplay. In 1980, Namco released Pac-Man, which popularized the maze chase genre, and Rally-X, which featured a radar tracking the player position on the map. Games such as the pioneering 1981 games Donkey Kong and Qix in 1981 introduced new types of games where skill and timing are more important than shooting as fast as possible, with Nintendo's Donkey Kong in particular setting the template for the platform game genre. Namco's Bosconian in 1981 introduced a free-roaming style of gameplay where the player's ship freely moves across open space, while also including a radar tracking player & enemy positions. Bega's Battle in 1983 introduced a new form of video game storytelling: using brief full-motion video cutscenes to develop a story between the game's shooting stages. Other examples of innovative games are Atari Games' Paperboy in 1984 where the goal is to successfully deliver newspapers to customers, and Namco's Phozon where the object is to duplicate a shape shown in the middle of the screen. The theme of Exidy's Venture is dungeon exploration and treasure-gathering. One innovative game, Q*Bert, played upon the user's sense of depth perception to deliver a novel experience.