When the film Tron was released in 1982, no-one believed that the video game would go on to make more than the film did.

The previous few years had been some of the biggest in gaming, some of the games that were released are still some of the highest-grossing titles ever. Although Tron was a great game, it didn’t quite live up to the big hits in the previous years.

Tron may not have lived up to the likes of Pac-Man and Space Invaders but that didn’t stop it being a successful game. Tron the video game went on to make more money than the film even did. Tron the film made a total gross of $33 million so the video game managed to make even more than that. Tron was even introduced onto the Xbox 360 arcade in 2008.

Tron may not be one of the best games of the 1980’s but it was definitely a great one.

The post 1982 – Video Game Outshines Its Own Movie first appeared on Get2Gaming.

The first time we met Mario, he appeared in the game Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong was Nintendo’s first big hit in North America. Back when the game was released, Mario was known as Jumpman, 35 years on there have been many huge games focused on Mario.

Donkey Kong was one of the earliest and the best examples of the platform game genre. Donkey Kong was also one of the first games to have a story to it. The story in the game was that Donkey Kong had kidnapped Lady and taken her to a construction site. It was Jumpman’s job to climb up the different platforms in the construction site and save her.

Donkey Kong was originally released as an arcade machine which was one of the best-selling arcade machines of all time. The game was later released onto Nintendo’s first console, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

Since Donkey Kong was released, the success has helped the game to become a massive pop-culture icon. The game even inspired a phrase, “It’s on like Donkey Kong” which has been commonly used by millions of people over the years.

Donkey Kong is the ninth highest-grossing video game of all time making over $1.5 billion without inflation which is equivalent to almost $4.5 billion as of 2016.

Donkey Kong made a huge impact for Nintendo as it gave them the character that would give them their biggest selling franchise, Mario. Donkey Kong is not only a big game in Nintendo’s history, it changed video gaming forever.

The post 1981 – Our First Glimpse of Mario first appeared on Get2Gaming.

The start of the new decade saw the release of one of the biggest ever video games, Pac-Man. In a time that was dominated by shooter arcade games, Pac-Man managed to storm onto the scene. Pac-Man managed to create a new genre of video games, maze chase games.

Pac-Man became one of the biggest pop-culture icons on the 1980’s due to its incredible popularity. Pac-Man generated over $2.5 billion by the 1990’s making it not only one of the highest grossing arcade games of all time, but also one of the highest grossing video games ever.

As surprising as it sounds, the idea for Pac-Man came from pizza. When 27 year old Toru Iwatani decided to order a pizza for dinner, it inspired him in several ways. The pizza gave Iwatani the design for Pac-Man as he had already eaten two slices, the rest of the pizza resembled a mouth. It also gave Iwatani the idea for the game, he wanted to create a game that was based on eating. Pac-Man was developed and published by Namco when it was first released in Japan and it was then licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway.

The idea of the game was that the player controls Pac-Man and has to eat all of the pac-dots so that you could move onto the next level. Trying to stop you from eating the pac-dots were four different ghosts that would chase you, when they make contact with you, you would lose a life. Alternatively you could eat the ghosts when you got one of four power-ups which were located in each of the four corners of the maze.

When Pac-Man was first released in Japan it didn’t get the best response due to the insane popularity of Space Invaders but after a poor start it was released in the United States and soon picked up. Pac-Man went on to make over $1 billion in its first year alone. Pac-Man is the second highest grossing video game of all time making a total $12.8 billion since 1980.

The world record us currently held by David Race who managed to get a score of 3,333,360 in a total time of 3 hours, 28 minutes and 49 seconds.

Pac-Man is still to this day, one of the biggest icons in popular culture. Now just imagine if Iwatani decided not to get a pizza for dinner that night…

The post 1980 Pac-Man is Born first appeared on Get2Gaming.

In 1979 we saw the release of Asteroids which joined a list of games that were the major hits of the golden age of arcade games. Asteroids was a shooter game and had a space theme much like Space Invaders, which was released a year before Asteroids.

Although it was similar to Space Invaders, Asteroids was also very different as you had to cover yourself from every angle and there was a lot more movement involved. In the game, the player controls a spaceship that is in an asteroid field with the occasional flying saucer flying past. The player needs to shoot and destroy the asteroids and flying saucers without colliding with them. The more asteroids the player destroyed, the more points the player got.

The competitiveness of the game and always wanting to get your name up on the high-score leader board meant people spent lots of money on the game to keep playing and trying to beat their former high-score and of course beating their friends’ scores.

The total money spent on the game meant that Asteroids is in the top 10 of highest-grossing arcade games of all time. Asteroids had already made a revenue of $800 million by 1991 and selling 100,000 machines in the process.

In 2010, John McAllister broke the Asteroids world record with a flabbergasting high-score of 41,338,740 in a 58-hour livestream. Whether that score is ever beaten remains to be seen.

The post 1979 – Asteroids Debuts first appeared on Get2Gaming.