Enjoy Classic Arcade Games

Most gaming enthusiasts cherish the time when they had luxury to spend hours playing their favourite arcade games. The old arcade games have undergone major makeovers but have not lost their charm. They have a huge appeal among children and teenagers. Asteroids, Phoenix, Space Invaders and Pac-Man remain some of the sought after classic games.

Asteroids are one of the classic examples of arcade games that are widely recognized in the gaming world. This sci-fi fantasy was released by Atari in the age of Star Wars. It had one screen, five buttons, a spaceship, few UFO's, and several ship-smashing asteroids The pounding sound effects and simple graphics make it addictive. Over time it has been adapted in our popular culture. Even today, Asteroids' clones and ports are popping up as Java applets, or in current releases for modern game systems such as the Sega Dreamscast.

Phoenix is like many of the other arcade games of that era, which had outer space as its theme. In this game, the player controls a spaceship that moves horizontally at the bottom of the screen, firing upward. Enemies appear above the player's ship on the screen, periodically shooting at it while trying to bang on it. The spaceship is equipped with a shield to destroy an alien attempting to crash on it and the shield restricts the player's movement. Phoenix along with Galaxian was one of the first color arcade games.

Space Invaders was designed and programmed by Taito, Japan in 1978 and remains one of the most popular arcade games ever made. The game has a history associated with it; aliens were initially soldiers who had to be killed by the player but soldiers were replaced by aliens in the later versions .Space Invaders was the first arcade game before Pinball machines and slots. The game became so popular in Japan that it caused a coin shortage until the country's Yen supply was quadrupled. Many incidents of juvenile crime surrounded the release of this game.

There are numerous arcade games in use today, right from online games that run on flash player to advanced version of the classic ones. Some remain unchanged while many have undergone modifications to pace up with the current demands of the younger generation. The golden era of many arcade games might have come to an end but the newer versions with more variations have brought them back alive. With the enormous success of the early classic games, many game developers started manufacturing video arcade games. Some games explored new genres and brought in new concepts while others simply followed the footsteps of the successful ones like Galaxian, Galaga and Galpus. Some classics like Pac-Man surpassed numbers in the popularity chart and therefore entered the popular culture of that era. It later came to be known as Pac-Mania. The video arcade games have led to the development of strategy guides that discussed patterns and modulations for each game. So while you cherish the childhood memory of "Space Invaders", pass on the classic arcade games to the future.