A CNN feature recently celebrated the hey-day of arcades with an interview from video game record holder Billy Mitchell. The short video also featured a famous LIFE Magazine photo from Ottumwa, Iowa, that depicted the top 20 players from the era.
Mitchell describes what’s happened to competitive gaming and the video game world since the “Golden Age of Arcade Games,” making the point that games back then couldn’t rest on the laurels of breathtaking graphics and massive, multi-million dollar budgets. Instead, they had to have quick, addictive, skill-based, easy-to-learn but impossible-to-master gameplay that forced players to keep pumping quarters through the games’ slots.
Watch the video here: www.cnn.com/videos/us/2016/03/28/arcade-games-billy-mitchell-pac-man-the-eighties-orig-mss-bu.cnn/video/playlists/atv-the-eighties/.
TIME Magazine’s photo of the top arcade players during the ’80s.
