Electro-mechanical games (EM games) are types of arcade games that operate on a combination of some electronic circuitry and mechanical actions from the player to move items contained within the game's cabinet. Some of these were early light gun games using light-sensitive sensors on targets to register hits, while others were simulation games such as driving games, combat flight simulators and sports games. EM games were popular in amusement arcades from the late 1940s up until the 1970s, serving as alternatives to pinball machines, which had been stigmatized as games of chance during that period. EM games lost popularity in the 1970s, as arcade video games had emerged to replace them in addition to newer pinball machines designed as games of skill.
Definition EM games typically combined mechanical engineering technology with various electrical components, such as motors, switches, resistors, solenoids, relays, bells, buzzers and electric lights. EM games lie somewhere in the middle between fully electronic games and mechanical games.
EM games have a number of different genres/categories. "Novelty" or "land-sea-air" games refer to simulation games that simulate aspects of various vehicles, such as cars (similar to racing video games), submarines (similar to vehicular combat video games), or aircraft (similar to combat flight simulator video games). Gun games refer to games that involve shooting with a gun-like peripheral (such as a light gun or similar device), similar to light gun shooter video games. "General" arcade games refer to all other types of EM arcade games, including various different types of sports games. "Audio-visual" or "realistic" games referred to novelty games that used advanced special effects to provide a simulation experience.
History Predecessors to electro-mechanical games
Coin-operated arcade amusements based on games of skill emerged around the turn of the 20th century, such as fortune telling, strength tester machines and mutoscopes. Normally installed at carnivals and fairs, entrepreneurs created standalone arcades to house these machines. More interactive mechanical games emerged around the 1930s, such as skee-ball, as well as the first simple pinball games. However, when pinball was first introduced, it lacked features such as user-controlled flippers, and were considered to be games of chance. This led to several jurisdictions to ban pinball machines fearing their influence on youth.
Early electro-mechanical games (1940s to early 1960s) Alternatives to pinball were electro-mechanical games (EM games) that clearly demonstrated themselves as games of skill to avoid the stigma of pinball. The transition from mechanical arcade games to electro-mechanical games dates back to around the time of World War II, with different types of arcade games gradually making the transition during the post-war period between the 1940s and 1960s.
At the 1939–1940 New York World's Fair, in April 1940, Edward Condon of the Westinghouse Electric Company displayed the Nimatron, a non-programmable electro-mechanical computer that played games of Nim, using electro-mechanical relays, buttons, and lightbulbs. The device, intended solely for entertainment, saw nearly 100,000 games during the fair, and may have inspired the Nimrod, a full digital computer programmed to play Nim at the 1951 Festival of Britain, considered as one of the precursors of the video game.
In 1941, International Mutoscope Reel Company released the electro-mechanical driving game Drive Mobile, which had an upright arcade cabinet similar to what arcade video games would later use. It was derived from older British driving games from the 1930s. In Drive Mobile, a steering wheel was used to control a model car over a road painted on a metal drum, with the goal being to keep the car centered as the road shifts left and right. Kasco (short for Kansai Seisakusho Co.) introduced this type of electro-mechanical driving game to Japan in 1958 with Mini Drive, which followed a similar format but had a longer cabinet allowing a longer road. Capitol Projector's 1954 machine Auto Test was a driving test simulation that used film reel to project pre-recorded driving video footage, awarding the player points for making correct decisions as the footage is played. These early driving games consisted of only the player vehicle on the road, with no rival cars to race against.
By the 1950s, EM games were using a timer to create a sense of urgency in the gameplay. An example of this is the boxing game K.O. Champ (1955) by International Mutoscope Reel Company. By 1961, however, the US arcade industry had been stagnating. This in turn had a negative effect on Japanese arcade distributors such as Sega that had been depending on US imports up until then. Sega co-founder David Rosen responded to market conditions by having Sega develop original arcade games in Japan.
Electro-mechanical renaissance (late 1960s to mid-1970s) From the late 1960s, EM games incorporated more elaborate electronics and mechanical action to create a simulated environment for the player. These games overlapped with the introduction of arcade video games, and in some cases, were prototypical of the experiences that arcade video games offered. The late 1960s to early 1970s were considered the "electro-mechanical golden age" in Japan, and the "novelty renaissance" or "technological renaissance" in North America. A new category of "audio-visual" novelty games emerged during this era, mainly established by several Japanese arcade manufacturers. Arcades had previously been dominated by jukeboxes, before a new wave of EM arcade games emerged that were able to generate significant earnings for arcade operators.
Periscope, a submarine simulator and light gun shooter,Brian Ashcraft (2008) Arcade Mania! The Turbo Charged World of Japan's Game Centers, p. 133, Kodansha International was released by Nakamura Manufacturing Company (later called Namco) in 1965 and then by Sega in 1966. It used lights and plastic waves to simulate sinking ships from a submarine,Steve L. Kent (2001), The ultimate history of video games: from Pong to Pokémon and beyond: the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world, p. 102, Prima, and had players look through a periscope to direct and fire torpedoes, which were represented by colored lights and electronic sound effects. Sega's version became an instant success in Japan, Europe, and North America, where it was the first arcade game to cost a quarter per play, which would remain the standard price for arcade games for many years to come. The success of Periscope was a turning point for the arcade industry.
Periscope revived the novelty game business, and established a "realistic" or "audio-visual" category of games, using advanced special effects to provide a simulation experience. It was the catalyst for the "novelty renaissance" where a wide variety of novelty/specialty games (also called "land-sea-air" games) were released during the late 1960s to early 1970s, from quiz games and racing games to hockey and football games, many adopting the quarter-play price point.
As Japan's arcade industry grew rapidly, a new category of "audio-visual" novelty games began being manufactured in the late 1960s from Japanese arcade manufacturers, with the four largest being Sega, Taito, Nakamura Manufacturing, and Their "audio-visual" games were exported internationally to North America and Europe, selling in large quantities that had not been approached by most arcade machines in years. This led to a "technological renaissance" in the late 1960s, which would later be critical in establishing a healthy arcade environment for video games to flourish in the 1970s.
The success of Periscope led to American distributors turning to Japan for new arcade games in the late 1960s, which in turn encouraged competition from traditional Chicago arcade manufacturers. American arcade firms such as Midway Manufacturing, Chicago Coin and Allied Leisure responded by cloning the latest novelty games from Japan, establishing a clone market in North America. Japanese manufacturers responded by releasing new game concepts every few months to stay ahead of the clone competition, but the American clones gradually succeeded in driving Japanese firms out of the North American market in the early 1970s. Despite this, Japan continued to have a thriving local market with more than 500,000700,000 arcade machines by 1973, mostly consisting of EM shooting and driving games from Japanese manufacturers alongside pinball machines imported from the United States.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, when he was a college student, worked at an arcade where he became familiar with EM games such as Chicago Coin's Speedway (1969), watching customers play and helping to maintain the machinery, while learning how it worked and developing his understanding of how the game business operated.
Shooting and simulation games
Periscope established a trend of missile-launching gameplay during the late 1960s to 1970s, with the game's periscope viewer cabinet design later adopted by arcade video games such as Midway's Sea Wolf (1976) and Atari's Battlezone (1980). In the late 1960s, Sega began producing gun games which somewhat resemble first-person shooter video games, but which were in fact electro-mechanical games that used rear image projection in a manner similar to a zoetrope to produce moving animations on a screen. They often had vertical playfields that used mirrors to create an artificial sense of depth. It was a fresh approach to gun games that Sega introduced with Duck Hunt, which began location testing in 1968 and released in January 1969. It had animated moving targets which disappear from the screen when shot, solid-state electronic sound effects, and awarded a higher score for head shots.
Missile, a shooter and vehicular combat game released by Sega in 1969, had electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen. A two-way joystick with a fire button was used to shoot and steer the missile onto oncoming planes displayed on a screen, while two directional buttons were used to move the player's tank; when a plane is hit, an animated explosion appears on screen, accompanied by the sound of an explosion. According to Ken Horowitz, it may have been the first arcade game to use a joystick with a fire button. Missile became a major arcade hit for Sega in the United States, inspiring a number of manufacturers to produce similar games. Midway later released a version called S.A.M.I. (1970) and adapted it into the arcade video game Guided Missile (1977). Midway also released the submarine-themed missile-launching games Sea Raider (1969) and Sea Devil (1970). Joysticks subsequently became the standard control scheme for arcade games.