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 (50 page)

Pete Kauffman, chairman of Exidy, was the bad boy of arcades. His pedestrian demolition game,
Death Race
, inspired a feature on the television news magazine
60 Minutes
, and he later created a game called
Chiller
that was so amazingly morbid that most American arcades refused to carry it.

Ed Rotberg, creator of
Battlezone
, left Atari shortly after working on the military version of the game.

Parent-activist Ronnie Lamm appeared on the television talk show
Donahue
to warn about the evils of video games.

In 1981, Tournament Games held the world video-game championships in Chicago. The attendance was low, and the checks given to the winners bounced.

In 1981, video arcades were as common as convenience stores, and arcade games could be found just about anywhere.

In 1981, the arcade business started its long collapse and sights like this, the recently closed arcade at Honolulu International Airport, became all too common.

Toru Iwatani (pictured here between Yasuhiko Asada, Namco president, and Kazuo Ito, Namco general manager) only made one famous game before being bumped up to management. However, that sole game was
Pac-Man
, the most popular arcade game in the world.

Though it did not do particularly well in the international market,
Ms. Pac-Man
was the most successful game ever released in American arcades.

The arcade business’s brightest star, Namco’s
Pac-Man
appeared on Saturday morning cartoons, breakfast cereal boxes, and the cover of
Time.

Minoru Arakawa, president of Nintendo of America, had to battle to break into the U.S. market, then struggled again to revive the home game market.

Seattle attorney Howard Lincoln convinced Arakawa not to surrender when sued by Universal Studios over
Donkey Kong.
Arakawa was so impressed that he made Lincoln vice president of Nintendo of America.

This doodle, created by attorney John Strauch, played a large role in a court decision that cost Nintendo $250 million in the Alpex case. The decision was later overturned. (See pages 394–395.)