The game was a big hit in Japan, and was licensed to Midway in the States in 1979 thousands of cabinets were sold, and the U.S. While programming the game, he realized that the animation moved faster when there were fewer objects on screen, so he incorporated that feature into the gameplay itself, making the “ticking clock” of the advancing aliens one of the game’s defining features. Tomohiro Nishikado developed the game for Japan’s Taito Corporation using a combination of hardware that he assembled and the latest microprocessors from America. But the real boom began with the arrival of Space Invaders in 1978. One early success was Pong, which was released in a cabinet in 1972 and in a home version in 1975. Video games, and indeed, home video games, had already been making inroads into American culture for some time. Return with us now to the thrilling days of Pac-Man Fever! And The Beatles of this particular invasion were a round yellow ball with an insatiable appetite for dots and his four implacable ghost antagonists. Video game characters broke out into toys, animation, and even hit songs. The reign of the video game had begun, and it was a legitimate pop culture phenomenon. But nothing that had ever come before would equal the arcade boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s. From the penny arcades of the very early 1900s to the nickelodeons on up through the pinball boom of the 1950s, Americans have loved their coin-operated amusements.

Pac man arcade