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Raiford Guins, Beyond the Bezel: Coin-Op Arcade Video Game Cabinets as Design History, Journal of Design History, Volume 28, Issue 4, November 2015, Pages 405–426, https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epv036
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Abstract
This article studies the surfaces and shapes of coin-op arcade video game machine cabinets produced within the USA between 1971 and 1979 to demonstrate how design played a constitutive role in defining ‘the game’. Such a focus highlights how the cabinet designs of Nutting Associate’s Computer Space (1971) and Atari’s Pong (1972) differentiated the nascent medium from presiding forms of public amusement, namely pinball and electromechanical games, to expand the market for coin-op machines. In addition, restricting the article’s interest to a period before the arcade video game ‘craze’ hit full swing with its major ‘stars’ on the near horizon and with the design paradigms of older games still prevalent, provides a look into machines for which cabinets played a much larger role in ‘filling in the gaps’ when color monitors and multicolored graphics were not standard. My disassembly of Boot Hill (Midway, 1977) and Warrior (Vectorbeam, 1979) offers concrete examples of the cabinet’s role in shaping the game when the modified televisions behind the bezel still radiated in black and white. The article closes by drawing a brief parallel between disciplinary debates that have shaped Design History with those that are currently forming the emergent area of Game History.