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Not even close. Prior to that came:

• In 1991, Hovertank 3D
• In 1987, Driller
• In 1984, The Sentinel
• In 1983, Star Wars
• In 1981, 3D Monster Maze
• In 1980, Battlezone

Plus, the myriad flight sims throughout the mid '80s, space games like Elite, and I'm sure many others.

A Hyperball is closer. Although it has a processor like other 1980s pinball systems, it feels like a semi-mechanical version of Space Invaders.
A cannon fires many steel balls at moving light patterns, and a hit is detected when the a ball falls through one of the traps around the edge of the playfield.

See http://www.gamearchive.com/Pinball/Manufacturers/W illiams/hyperball.html

It's called Battlezone!

Atari where so ahead of the game with wire frame rendering of objects in the battle arena so that you could see the enemy approaching.

Wow! Smart stuff.
http://www.gamearchive.com/Video_Games/Manufacture rs/Atari/battlezone.html

Descent, AFAIK, was the first *real* 3D game...

Well, I'm no member of the military, but I'm quite familiar with Tempest.

What's that, you say? Oh, gravistar. Nevermind...

Chris Beckenbach

In fact, I recall about a year or two ago when I got my Dragon's Lair machine, that there were pieces available on eBay fetching extrodinary amounts.

IIRC, a board went for like $450, and side decals went for $250.

As to the OP of this thread who mentioned serial numbers, there ARE instances where the game collectors will go nuts over the 00001 machines. Somewhere on the net is a page that was put together when the very first Tempest was discovered by a collector.

There's information and pictures about that Tempest here, discovered by Brad Martinson. Some of it looks like it may have been a prototype machine or something.

Scientist 1 to Scientist 2: Stop hogging Lunar Lander! You got past level 1, now I want to play!

At one point GCC was sued by Atari for trademark infringment over some of these games, so I'm not sure who actually owns the rights to them now. GCC no longer does games. We now make laser printers. As far as I know, GCC has no plans to do anything with the old games.

If you really want to know, let me know and I can ask the CEO about it all next time I see him.

Then you haven't seen Atari's first game, Computer Space. Check out this picture of the very first (and very mod) arcade game. If the ugly word "rip-off" has to be used, CS is near the front of the rip-off line -- it's Spacewar for the arcade.

However, in an era where games quite freely, er, "shared" elements, Asteroids was rather novel at the time. I would certainly say that the gameplay, independent of the fact that it was a space game, was a revelation (of course, Robotron later took that gameplay to a new level). Check out the articl e about Asteroids from Microsoft Arcade.

DISCLAIMER: Some info on this page assumes you are from the Omaha, NE area. I apologize.......

I just got into arcade collecting/building myself, so I'll try to lend a few pointers (though most of this info will be totally region-centric)

As for what kind of cabinet you want, I recommend sticking to Jamma based cabinets (most are, but the really old ones aren't). Basically, the Jamma harness provides a uniform interface to the monitor/buttons/etc, so swapping out PCB's are pretty easy. I like old Capcom games (Strider, SF 2, Final Fight), and you can find tons of them on Ebay or perhaps purchase them from a place like Central Distributing. For the really really old ones that used dedicated hardware, there are a few sites on the net that show you how to make a Jamma harness yourself, but you'd be better off buying the whole thing in a lot of cases (if you are interested in coverting a non-jamma to jamma, check out This link.

You will also want to check the condition of the monitor. It's pretty much a given that older games will have some burn in. You'll have to watch out for that. The good news is, if you have to settle for a monitor with burn in, Happ Controls has a good selection of monitors to choose from, if you need to replace it.

Personally, I like to pick up my cabinets from local outlets (like that place Central Distributing). Usually, they are more than happy to let you mess around with it and make sure all the controls work and the monitor looks sharp and the sound works, etc. In other words, you know what you are buying. :)

Once you find yourself a decent cabinet, you can start buying just the PCB's and swap them in an out (nice thing about the Jamma harness, it makes this painless, for the most part). Like I said earlier though, older games ( Pac-Man, Gyruss era) might require a bit more work.

While I realize you don't like emulation, there is a neat cabinet from Hanaho called the ArcadePC. It gives you more of the arcade "feel", while running the games from a PC under MAME or something. Sometimes, this may be your only choice :(

Here is a list of some of my favorite sites (all can be found by searching Google with the keyword 'jamma' or 'jamma pcb' or something like that

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/games/vide oarcade/faq/

http://nexus.nanospace.com/~spo onman/neogeo/faq.htm

http://www.ntrnet.net/~braze/ arcade/tech/repair.shtml

http:/ /directory.google.com/alpha/Top/Games/Coin-Op/Arca de_Games/Collectors/ (TONS of links)

http://members.xoom.com/organian/

If you need more info or anything, feel free to email me (remove the NOSPAM) and discuss!