Arcade amusement machines have enjoyed phenomenal popularity ever since the late 19th century. Visitors to malls, drug stores, hotel lobbies, boardwalks, amusement parks, and arcade halls could get a variety of services and diversions for their hard-earned pennies, nickels, and dimes. Shopkeepers considered them “silent salesmen” that not only lured patrons into their stores, but also earned them a nice additional income, all for the price of some light machine maintenance.
Early, pre-electronic arcade machines came in many different forms. People could use a penny scale to learn their weight, or receive a printed truism from a fortune teller machine. Strength testers encouraged friendly physical competition, while automatic musical instruments and early jukeboxes allowed to set the mood for a price. Some machines sold postcards and stamps, ball gum, hot peanuts, or cigarettes. Others combined several popular functions, such as scales that would also tell your fortune, or earn you your penny back should you have guessed your weight correctly. And let’s not forget slot machines or the early electro-mechanical pinball games either.
The imagination of manufacturers seemed limitless, and hundreds of new machines were released every year in North America and Western Europe. Some, such as the Mills Novelty Co. out of Chicago or the Caille Bros. in Detroit, had decades of great financial success, while countless others had to close shop after selling only a handful of their first design. So why mention 1934 in particular? Because of two machines that are documented to have been released this year, which more than those before them remind us of the arcade videogames that would start to appear almost 40 years later: a racing game and a flight simulator.
Based in Paris, France, manufacturer Autoreflex made their debut with a machine called Le parcours automobile, which quite possibly is the first racing game ever created. The machine’s cabinet housed a roll of paper, painted with a road and obstacles. A small model car was mounted on a rod that ran across on top of it. The car could be moved left and right by turning a big steering wheel mounted in front. After inserting a coin, the paper roll would start turning, and the player had to move the car to keep it on the road and avoid any obstacles. The same, simple principle was implemented by the early racing videogames.
It is not currently documented if or how the machine determined how well the player was driving, if there was any feedback or consequences when leaving the road or hitting obstacles. A few machines are said to still exist and be in the possession of collectors though. In any case, the groundwork for one of the earliest and most enduring videogame genres was laid. Autoreflex even released a sequel called Autoroute sportive three years later, which operated on the same principle and definitely recorded how many accidents a driver got themselves into.
Another one of the early, enduring genres is that of the flight simulator (although these games have, due to their complexity, always been more popular on home systems and home computers than in the arcades). Not much is known about Learn to Fly, a rather complex arcade machine released by an unknown manufacturer, also in 1934. Instead of a toy car, a small airplane was suspended in a glass box. A joystick, a throttle lever, and rudder pedals provide the realistic controls. When a coin was dropped, the glass box actually turned into a miniature wind tunnel, which remained active for a certain amount of time. The player controlled the plane according to instructions on the machine, with the plane said to have reacted realistically.
Apart from being the first flight simulator game designed for the public, Learn to Fly was quite possibly also the very first joystick-controlled game in general.
« Return to Part I — Prehistory
References
- Le parcours automobile (1934) at Arcade History and the International Arcade Museum.
- Autoroute sportive (1934) at Arcade History and the International Arcade Museum.
- Learn to Fly (1934) at Arcade History.
- Find more information on classic arcade amusement machines at Arcade History and the International Arcade Museum (previously KLOV – The Killer List Of Videogames).
- Picture: Library of Congress (Public domain)
