Relevant Time Period
Former Pro Video Game Referee/Scorekeeper Walter Day places it as lasting from January 18, 1982 to January 5, 1986. Technology journalist Jason Whittaker, in The Cyberspace Handbook, places the beginning of the golden age in 1978, with the release of Space Invaders, which he credits for bringing an end to the video game crash of 1977, sparking a renaissance for the video game industry, and starting a video game revolution.
Video game journalist Steven L. Kent, in his book The Ultimate History of Video Games, places it at 1979 to 1983. The book pointed out that 1979 was the year that Space Invaders – which he credits for ushering in the golden age – was gaining considerable popularity in the United States, and the year that saw the advent of vector graphics technology which in turn spawned many of the popular early arcade games. However, 1983 was the period that began "a fairly steady decline" in the coin-operated video game business and when many arcades started disappearing.
The History of Computing Project places the golden age of video games between 1971 and 1983, covering the “mainsteam appearance of video games as a consumer market” and “the rise of dedicated hardware systems and the origin of multi-game cartridge based systems”. 1971 was chosen as an earlier start date by the project for two reasons: the creator of Pong filed a pivotal patent regarding video game technology, and it was the release of the first arcade video game machine, Computer Space.
Other opinions place this period's beginning in the late 1970s, when color arcade games became more prevalent and video arcades themselves started appearing outside of their traditional bowling alley and bar locales, through to its ending in the mid-1980s. The golden age of arcade games largely coincided with, and partly fuelled, the second generation of game consoles and the microcomputer revolution.
Read more about this topic: Golden Age Of Arcade Video Games
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