Arcade Features

Arcades were the first Gaming that was available to the wide public which were reliable and really tested users gaming abilities, Arcades were huge at first as kids and adults usually found it hard to use the games consoles that were released for home as they weren't reliable or easy to setup.

Features of arcades:

-Coin operated

-Low end resolution

-Mains power supply

-Usually one player

-High scores

The image below is an average arcade game which includes all of the features above, as you can see you input the coin to gain credit, the low resolution game will then start and once completing the game or dying the game will either offer you a place on the leader board or to view the leader board depending on how well you did.

Coin Operated 


All arcades were coin operated by inserting a 20p or 50p the arcade would then spring to life and start the game, most arcades would consist of of three buttons and a joy stick to move the character around. PacMan is a good example of a joystick game you would simply move the stick in the direction you wanted him to move and the PacMan would follow your commands. Arcade gaming become very competitive with users constantly trying to beat the high score or beat there own high score.

This is a coin operated arcade below as you can have to options to insert the money or press the red button to reject the money out of the machine.




PC Emulation


Personal computers are used to game on a whole number of different levels and one is arcade, by using PC emulators which tricks the game such as PacMan into thinking its the original system by emulating the hardware needed to run it, for example when running a flash file you need the flash program to be able to run it and emulator pretends to be the software layer so it can run.

A good example of a pc emulator is the Game-boy colour emulator, this allows you to run games such as Pokemon yellow/red/blue on your desktop. The emulator has been edited for the use with mouse and keyboard inputs instead of the Game-boy colour controls.

Vector Based


Vector images are used to create digital images, they contain algorithms for the computer to read and then draw the image using these, Arcades use vector based images because they don't become pixelated when blown up and have a lower file size.

This is a vector image as you can see enlarging is possible without pixilation.

This is a raster image, the one on the right has been zoomed and as you can see it has become pixelated

Limitations of Arcades

The limitations of arcades are that you have to pay when you want to pay, resolutions are very low, arcade machines take up a lot of space and theres only one game on each arcade that you can play.