Early Arcade Games

Shooting Galleries

• Shooting galleries are one of the earliest forms of arcade game, according to the Arcade History website. These galleries typically consist of a booth or range, in which players fire at targets using a form of safe gun, such as an air gun. These targets can be as basic as pots on a table or --- in the case of more recent shooting galleries --- attached to dummies or wax models.

Slots Games

• These arcade games are an early form of gambling machine, in which players attempt to match three symbols of the same kind to win a financial pay-off. The original incarnation of the slot game was the Liberty Bell machine, developed by Charles Fey, which arrived in 1907 according to the Slot Tips Guide website.

  These early machines were made of cast iron, a material which was later replaced with wood to save on money, and rewarded players who matched pictures of the Liberty Bell together. Later slot games were quieter and featured particularly colorful cabinets to attract players.

Pinball Machines

• Pinball machines are arcade games in which players use mechanized flippers to knock balls around a table, attempting to score points without letting the ball drop down past the flippers. The origins of the pinball machine lie with the 19th century Bagatelle-Table machine. This pool-pinball hybrid was later developed and eventually became recognizable as what modern viewers would call a pinball table in 1931. During the 1930s, pinball tables gained automatic scoring and tilting mechanisms, and became noisier thanks to the addition of bells and buzzers.

Arcade Video Games

• Electronic video games arrived on the scene in the early 1970s, and spawned a whole industry which rapidly delivered more complex and graphically advanced entertainment. The initial wave of arcade video games included "Pong," a simplistic table tennis simulation developed by the Atari company. Atari's "Fire Truck" arrived a few years later in 1978. The latter game saw two players cooperating to control a fire rescue vehicle, working together to steer the truck and operate its ladder.