Brief history of arcade video game display technologies

— From CRT display technologies to real time graphics —

Abstract

Arcade video games, whose market expanded in 1970s, evolved in its own way by the adoption of various display technologies. TTL logic was applied at the beginning, bitmapped display was applied for the huge hit “Space Invaders,” “sprite display technology” originally developed in arcade game field enlarged the market, and very fast numerical operations such as DSP were incorporated into “real time polygon display.” As described above, arcade video games introduced, developed, and utilized new display technologies a few years earlier than other industries. These arcade game technologies led to the development of many other new entertainment systems, such as home console games, mobile phone contents, and even network (downloadable) karaoke. This paper describes the evolution of arcade game display hardware technologies and its background.