Collectors call them “boards.” Technically they’re printed circuit boards — PCBs — and understanding how they evolved from custom one-off hardware into a standardized, swappable format is essential if you’re buying, selling, or troubleshooting arcade electronics. Before Standardization Early golden-age…
Centipede, released by Atari in 1981, stands out from its golden-age peers for two reasons: its trackball-driven gameplay was genuinely different from the joystick shooters surrounding it, and it was co-designed by Dona Bailey, one of the very few women…
Space Invaders didn’t just launch a genre — it launched the arcade industry as we recognize it today. Released by Taito in June 1978 and designed almost single-handedly by Tomohiro Nishikado, the game took him and a small team over…
Buttons seem like the simplest part of an arcade cabinet, but the differences between sizes, brands, and switch types genuinely change how a game feels to play — and knowing them will save you from ordering the wrong parts twice.…
Long before online forums existed, the arcade business already had its own professional community — the route operators who owned and serviced the machines placed in bars, bowling alleys, laundromats, and convenience stores across the country. That operator culture, and…
The joystick is the part of an arcade cabinet you touch more than anything else, which also means it’s usually the first thing to wear out. Whether you’re reviving a golden-age original or upgrading a MAME build, understanding the two…
MAME — the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, first released by Nicola Salmoria in 1997 — made it possible to run thousands of arcade games on ordinary PC hardware. That single piece of software spawned an entire hobbyist industry: building your…
Namco released Galaga in Japan in 1981 as the sequel to the previous year’s hit Galaxian, and in doing so created one of the most enduring and mechanically clever shoot-em-ups of the entire golden age. Midway licensed it for U.S.…
At the peak of the golden age, arcades were an absurdly profitable business. In 1981 alone, American players fed an estimated $8 billion in quarters into arcade machines — more than the entire film and recorded music industries combined that…
Every cabinet restoration starts the same way: you find something in a garage, a storage unit, or the back room of a bar that’s closing, and it looks rough. Water rings on the base, side art peeling like sunburn, a…
