Learning from the Arcade Classics

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 23, 2011

There are a pair of great articles from Ben Garney and Eric Hartman about learning game design from the old arcade games (via MAME) . These are pretty insightful articles — at least they were for me. They made me think a little. They could be narrowly interpreted to only include action games, but I think that there are general lessons that can apply far more universally than this.

Learning From the 3000 “Classics”

Mame Mine: Wacky Sports

One of the great things about the arcade era is that it was a time of great experimentation. Yeah, it was a time of incredible cloning and derivative gameplay too – that’s never changed. But the games were (relatively) inexpensive to make and had a a popular distribution method – virtually every shop that had a bubblegum machine also had an arcade game in the corner.

You know what that’s kinda like? Sounds a little like indie games today, huh?

Anyway, this wildly experimental arena with entire generations of games coming out in less than a year meant there was a lot of lessons learned in rapid succession. While game design today is largely built on the foundation built by this Darwinian dogpile, a lot of the details have been obscured by time and tradition. I think there’s still a lot to be learned from these old games, even if they were built in the infancy of the craft.

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