EARLY ARCADE MACHINES WERE INSANE

Arcades aren't a thing like they once were.

Nowadays, you can't move in an arcade without tripping over the piles of tickets that spread from machines, as eager youths punt coin after coin into slots, in a desperate race to claim a deformed Spider-Man pencil-topper from a sullen arcade worker.

Early in the life of arcade gaming, games existed for fun alone, but nobody quite knew what the machines should look like.

Here's a selection of batshit insane early arcade machines, before they settled into their later, iconic, form.

CHAMPIONSHIP PING-PONG

Growing up, I had a neighbour called Mr Benson. He'd been a make-up artist for theatre, and his house was like one of those hoarder's homes, piled high from floor to ceiling with stuff.

Except... in among the stuff which made up most of his collection of rubbish were items he'd pilfered from various stage productions he'd worked on; costumes, and scenery, and his front room contained two huge dragon heads, which I thought were the coolest things ever.

Apropos nothing, one time he pooed his bed, and when my mum went in to help change his sheets she found an original copy of White Christmas by Bing Crosby. He also used to skin rabbits and hang them up in his kitchen... 

Anyway, I was always fascinated with his telly, which was one of those really, really old sets in a massive cabinet, but with a tiny, black-and-white, screen. That's what this arcade machine reminds me of; a time when all consumer electronics were wooden.

PUB-PONG

More Pong, more wood-effect formica. And you can always rely on the Australians to cater specifically to a hard-drinking audience; this rip-off of Atari's Pong did so by including the word "Pub" in its title. Also, that formica was probably quite easy to clean spilled drinks and vomit off.

BARREL-PONG

Another machine catering to a pub crowd, this time an official version of Atari's Pong, housed - inexplicably - in a wooden barrel, with a knee-protecting padded front. I sort of like it, but then I see where the controls are positioned, and just the thought of it gives me tendonitis.

STAR TREK 

It's weird to look back on what people in the 1970s consider to be futuristic, and how of its time it now seems. 

For-Play's Star Trek was a clone of Computer Space, and doubled down on its IP-infringement by not only stealing the title of Gene Rodenberry's 60s sci-fi TV series, but also by plastering the Starship Enterprise all over the cabinet. 

Fortunately, despite being only the second coin-op arcade game ever released, the game was fairly unsuccessful, and thus wasn't worth the time for anybody to sue over.

ELEPONG

Upon reflection, I'm guessing that the title of this chunky Pong clone was a contraction of "electronic" and "Pong". However, had I played this at the time I'd have been profoundly disappointed at the lack of elephants.

GOTCHA

Not every game that came out in the 70s was a Pong clone; Atari also produced this sexual assault simulator, which initially contained its joysticks in a pair of soft, pink, domes, intended to represent breasts.

It had been designed by Allan Alcorn, the creator of Pong, as a way to separate Atari from its competitors, who at the time were mostly just ripping off Atari's own Pong.

​It certainly did that.

Despite the furore which greeted this inexplicable decision - backed up by the above flyer artwork which seems to portray a scantily-clad young woman being manhandled by a young David Icke - and a later version, sans the booby-domes, which holds the distinction of being the first colour arcade game, Gotcha was a flop.

RALLY

Aside from being hideous in almost every respect, the feet that this machine is standing upon look like a health and safety nightmare. One overzealous twist of those controllers and you'd end up with a crushed child.

WATERGATE CAPER

Yes: they actually made an arcade game based upon the Watergate conspiracy. Rather than having to expose the conspiracy, or somehow prevent it, the game placed you in the role of conspirator, trying to crack the code to the Democrat National Committe's safe.

"You've watched it on TV... you've seen it in the papers... Now discover the secret combination and break into The Watergate yourself!" imported the accompanying literature.

"Watergate stimulates the larceny in all of us!"

Actually, I can stimulate my own larceny, thanks.
​
It's a bit like someone releasing an arcade game called Wikileaks, where you play Julian Assange. Actually, I'd probably play that.

PUPPY PONG

Over the course of its early life, Atari had a bit of a weird obsession with making products for the health industry.

Puppy Pong and Dr Pong were unaltered versions of Pong - beyond the fact they were free to play - which were designed for doctor's waiting rooms.

In the case of Puppy Pong, it was housed in a replica dog kennel, aimed at appealing to ailing children. Initially, Atari had approached Charles Schulz with a view to using his Snoopy character, but the Peanuts creator declined. 

"Going to see Dr Pong" is now my go-to euphemism for visiting the lavatory. 

MANEATER

Steven Spielberg's Jaws was credited with starting the summer blockbuster movie phenomenon, but it had another discernible effect on the global psyche; alongside dying in a nuclear war, the main thing 1970s people feared was being eaten by a big shark.

It didn't matter where you were - the bath, the park, a high street; we were all on edge, believing that an unscheduled shark attack could occur at any second.

Inevitably, this spilled over into arcade games, with cabinets such as Maneater, capitalising shamelessly on the global shark obsession. To be fair, the biggest risk this machine posed wasn't being eaten, but slicing your forearms to ribbons on those fibreglass teeth.

SHARK

Shark was a four-player, Pac-Man-style, maze game in which players assumed the role of the not-in-any-way-Jaws-inspired shark. Oddly, the game eschewed a joystick in favour of a directional button interface, which would later be perfected by the iconic Nintendo d-pad.

That's about all I've got to say about Shark.

Shark!

Where?!?

CONSOLETTE

During the first decades of gaming, there were many troubling attempts to get video games to appeal to women and girls, and Atari's Consolette was one of the first.

Smaller and more delicate than the chunky cabinets that were the norm at the time, the Consolette also stood atop a pair of slender legs. You know: like a lady's supposed to have, apparently.

Worryingly, however, Atari chose to sell the purpose of the machine to potential customers with a stylised Consolette character with breasts:

All images from the Arcade Flyer Archive.