ABSTRACT
Before video games, the arcade business consisted mostly of mechanical games in venues known as penny arcades and amusement halls. These games consisted of slot machines, strength and love testers, fortune-telling machines, and peep show machines. The original peep shows were non-pornographic machines where users would insert a coin to view various pictures, flip book-style animations (in machines called Mutoscopes), or miniature models (dioramas). Colleague Pete Sampson contributed additional programming to display stars in the background and Dan Edwards added the “influence of gravity on the spaceships”. The controllers contained flat bottoms that were best suited for placement on a surface such as a coffee table. Each controller had three knobs, including one on the right side and the two on the left side—consisting of a small knob extending from a larger knob.
