From early classics like Contact to marvels like High Speed, gaming publisher Williams dazzled arcade goers with its diverse range of quality pinball games. The age of video games catapulted the company into legend with blockbusters like Defender and Joust, and by the end of the 1980s it was the largest coin-op publisher in North America. Its acquisition of Bally/Midway began a period of hits that included Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam, as well as the best-selling pinball machine of all time, The Addams Family. The history of Williams spans nearly six decades and is filled with great games, huge gambles and technical innovations that impacted every aspect of pinball and arcade video games. With interviews from over 40 former designers and executives from Williams/Bally/Midway, as well as information from hundreds of contemporaneous news reports and documents, this book presents a never-before-seen chronology of how the small company became a coin-op juggernaut. Thirty pinball and 26 video game classics are examined in depth with direct input from the people who made them, along with the story of the events that made and shaped one of gaming's greatest publishing houses.

Before the enormously successful NES console changed the video game landscape in the 1980s, Nintendo became famous for producing legendary arcade machines like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Drawing on original interviews, news reports and other documents, this book traces Nintendo's rise from a small business that made playing cards to the top name in the arcade industry. Twenty-eight game titles are examined in-depth, along with the people and events that defined the company for more than four decades.

Few video game companies have a history as long and impressive as Sega Enterprises. Long before it took the home video game console market by storm, Sega was already an arcade powerhouse that successfully transferred its experience making coin-operated amusement machines into the video game boom of the late `70s and early `80s. The combined efforts of Sega's American, European, and Japanese branches revolutionized the arcade industry in ways that are still widely felt today. Thanks to their work, Sega has continued to innovate and lead the industry in design and quality for more than 40 years, producing some of the most famous arcade titles in history. Based on interviews with former Western and Japanese developers, as well as hundreds of English and Japanese documents, this book follows the rise of Sega in the video game industry, from its electromechanical machines of the mid-1960s to the acquisition of Gremlin Industries and the rise of its world-famous AM Studios, and finalizing with its merger with Sammy Corporation in 2003. 62 of Sega's most popular and ground-breaking games are explored in detail.

Today a multinational video game developer, Sega was the first to break Nintendo's grip on the gaming industry, expanding from primarily an arcade game company to become the dominant game console manufacturer in North America. A major part of that success came from the hard work and innovation of its subsidiary, Sega of America, who in a little more than a decade wrested the majority market share from Nintendo and revolutionized how games were made. Drawing on interviews with nearly 100 Sega alumni, this book traces the company's development, revealing previously undocumented areas of game-making history, including Sega's relationship with Tonka, the creation of its internal studios, and major breakthroughs like the Sega Channel and HEAT Network. More than 40 of the company's most influential games are explored in detail.