Earliest persistent arcade high score list?
May 31, 2018 6:44 PM   Subscribe

When coin-op arcade games first started featuring high score lists, they didn't have any sort of writable media, and so the high scores were simply kept in volatile memory, to disappear when the machine was turned off. When did this change? What was the first arcade machine to write scores to something more durable than RAM, and when did it become common?
posted by baf to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (10 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Not an arcade nut (but I dabbled in repairing them for a while in the mid-80's): Earliest one I recall seeing was Defender II, which came out in 1981. It had battery-backed SRAM (3 x AA's), but the batteries were rarely fitted in service.

I don't recall seeing any with no-power NVRAM (or EEPROM) used for the HST, but I had stopped repairing them by 1987 or so.
posted by Pinback at 7:17 PM on May 31, 2018


Space Invaders
posted by Rob Rockets at 7:29 PM on May 31, 2018


Bonus: The Space Invaders song by Uncle Vic. He's hooked, He's hooked, his brain is cooked
posted by Rob Rockets at 7:33 PM on May 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Pinball games dating back to 1977 had a battery-backed static RAM chip to save high scores (you can buy a modern replacement that doesn't need batteries)

Space Invaders popularized the idea of a video game high score but I think it was stored in volatile RAM. Atari's Asteroids (I think) was the first to let you enter initials, but they were also gone upon reset (unless you have a mod)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:37 PM on May 31, 2018


Best answer: A quick search through the MAME database reveals Atari's Triple Hunt as a 1977 video game that saved a score to battery-backed RAM. But if you're talking about a full leaderboard stored to SRAM, Stern's Berzerk or Williams' Defender are the earliest I've found. Maybe there are a couple even earlier.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:52 PM on May 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Atari's Asteroids (I think) was the first to let you enter initials

Scratch that -- Exidy's Star Fire was first (also stored in volatile ram).
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:00 PM on May 31, 2018


I forgot about Berzerk & the original Defender although I don't think either stored a full leaderboard - which seems to be confirmed by a quick squiz at the manuals - just a single highest score. But Defender II (originally Defender Stargate, which contrary to the internet timeline I'm pretty sure was already called that by the time it appeared here) had a full non-volatile leaderboard.

Space Invaders - at least the original uprights - definitely didn't have any kind of non-volatile storage.
posted by Pinback at 12:42 AM on June 1, 2018


In December 1976 Bally Pinball took the end of the factory run of Freedom and cut over to the first production version of their solid state system. (An earlier test was done in 1974/1975 with 17 copies of Bow and Arrow, but the prototypes did not keep high score)

Freedom kept a single high score in memory and that was it. Pins didn't get multiple high scores and initials until character displays showed up (1985's Chicago Cubs Triple Play if you're a purist, 1981's Hyperball if you are not)
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:16 AM on June 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


And just as a side piece of history: There were coin-operated devices in 1955 that had electronic memory.

Seeburg's line of jukeboxes used "Tormat" (aka "magnetic-core") memory to eliminate the complicated system of levers and solenoids that kept track of customer song selections. One bit per side of a 45.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:24 AM on June 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: To clarify: I'm specifically interested in finding out about coin-op video games. I realize now that "arcade games" is ambiguous. Feel free to keep talking about the history of pinball machines with non-volatile memory -- it's a fascinating topic! But be aware that it's not answering the question I meant to ask.
posted by baf at 12:12 PM on June 1, 2018


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