It is difficult for today's generations to know what we are talking about when we mention the names of Space invaders, Tetris, Bubble bubble, Outrun, Maniac mansion, ZcMckraken, Donkey kong. Just to name a few of the most famous. Born with the PlayStation (arrived at number 5) and with the Xbox, those who are no more than 30 today are unlikely to have known the era of bar video games, born more or less in the late seventies and exploded completely in the following decade with the release of legendary titles that kept swarms of kids glued to a 28-inch screen. Football, car racing, threatening aliens, war theaters, punches, Olympic games: there was everything in a time when little was expected and just as much was enough to have fun, lacking today's computer technology. The graphics were primordial (the pixels were as big as a coffee bean) but the absolute novelty, therefore in every venue - who doesn't remember the legendary Pinocchio in via Tuveri in Cagliari among the forties? - there was a queue to try their hand at the latest game made available by the owners, who sold hundreds of tokens (now a post-war remnant) at the modest price of 100-200 lire and they did the day.
The expansion of the market
More advanced and modern media would follow with the publication of thousands of titles and the definitive passage from the bar to one's home between the mid-eighties and the mid-nineties thanks to the then very modern Commodore 64 and Amiga, its evolution: evolved consoles compared to the legendary Atari and to the primordial Magnavox, Bandai, Emerson, ZX Spectrum. From that moment the climb has been unstoppable, the video game market has proved to be a gold mine and the manufacturers have churned out more and more advanced supports year after year, with better screens and more complex games: the Sega, the Game Boy, the Nintendo, the Neo geo. Up to the PlayStation revolution and the Xbox, where the Joyped (heir of the antiquated joystick) is used and the player almost becomes part of the game, and the Wii, whose pointing system towards the screen makes it essential to move the arms to to play. Different levels compared to twenty years before for quality, complexity, duration, graphics. Very recent studies on "Gaming & Esports" have calculated that starting from 2020, the year of the pandemic with swarms of kids (and not only) locked up at home, the electronic sports sector has generated a turnover of 175 billion dollars. revenues and participation of 2.7 billion players worldwide. A pharaonic market, nothing comparable with the pioneers of the seventies.
Mame
Yet those who have lived through the golden age of the Arcade still feel nostalgia for it and go in search of the right supports to go back in time. In the magical world of the internet you can find a bit of everything but often the indications of size and reproductive efficacy are deceiving: often on the web the proposals stop at mini-sizes, a few centimeters high and at a disproportionate cost. Not a few exploit the Mame, software capable of reproducing old games on various platforms without the need to run them on the original support, which could be the Commodore 64, the Amiga, the arcade cabinets. It is also the useful tool to revive and pass on ancient titles otherwise destined to be forgotten and lost. Today it is estimated that in the great sea of the Net there are over 7 thousand of them available to fans and nostalgics. A welcome return for those who are truly nostalgic for that period.
Years ago, even a thousand games from the 1970s and 1980s were made available to Internet users free of charge by the Internet Archive: you could connect to the web address from your PC and start playing. Today there are those who come to buy real bar cabinets refurbished and in operation by experts in the field, who go in search of these supports to arrange them and resell them. An expanding market also in Cagliari. The cost is not particularly low, but the result - it is to be believed - is extraordinary. A 180 cm high machine with two levers, from four to six original keys, the possibility of using various emulators (from bar classics to the Amiga, the Commodore, the Siga, the Nintendo, the Super Nintendo and so on) and a library thousands of titles most of which, perhaps, will never be used.
Back to the past
However, how to remain indifferent to names such as Ghostbusters, Space Invaders (the first video game in history, 1978), Pac-Man (perhaps the most famous of all), Mario Bros (iconic plumber), Tetris, Frogger, Street Fighter (the mythical fighting game), Bubble Bobble, Impossible mission (forerunner of the Mission: Impossible of the cinema with Tom Cruise), Wonder boy, Ghost-n Ghoblins? But the list is much longer and also includes, among others, Arkanoid, Armalyte, Conan the barbarian (Barbarian 1-2-3), Batman 1989, Bionic commando, the legendary Boulder Dash, Bruce Lee, Commando, the extraordinary Emlyn Huges soccer, International Karate +, the very famous Kick off and the predecessor Microprose soccer, Out run, the Turrican saga and that of The last Ninja, R-Type, Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the alien mindbenders. In short, a godsend for those with a nerd soul. But even those who do not have it, or do not know they have it, in front of a library of this kind would have difficulty not succumbing to temptation.
