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Arcade & Classic Games · 88

Fixed screens force designers to make every object count because there is nowhere else for the action to hide. That connects nicely with a historical detail: Cabinet artwork mattered before the first second of play. Side panels, marquees and control layouts had to sell an experience from across a noisy arcade. The cabinet may be forty years old; the frustration of missing by one pixel remains completely current.

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Arcade

PAGE 88 / 97

The fun-history drawer

Arcade joysticks and buttons are brutally simple interfaces, but experts can develop incredibly precise muscle memory. The cabinet looks like furniture until someone plays it at championship speed. A separate bit of trivia: Missile Command arrived in 1980 during the Cold War and gives the player no final victory,only increasingly difficult waves until the cities are lost. That bleak structure is unusually honest for a game about stopping incoming missiles.