More Tales From the Arcade Factory Floors

Thought it was about time we did another one of these. Looking through my archives, I found a bunch of arcade production line photographs that to my knowledge, haven’t been shared before.

I originally posted some arcade factory pictures exactly a decade ago here – which is also worth checking out if you missed it. (Holy smokes, is the blog really over 10 years old now?)

We’re going to jump around a bit, and these images are in no particular order, but let’s start at the fledgling early years of the arcade industry with a newspaper clipping from late 1972 which shows and details Atari’s Pong production facility in Santa Clara, CA.

You can click on each image below to view its full size:

And fast forward to March 1974. This image shows Atari’s Quadrapong being built at the same factory. It was a groundbreaking four-player version of Pong developed and designed by Steve Bristow, and was famously recognized as the first arcade game to be housed in a cocktail table cabinet:

Let’s cross over to Japan and take a look at Taito’s production line for this great shot:

Taito’s Super Speed Race Junior is an interesting one. Never seen one before, but it was designed to teach kids about road and traffic safety. Check out this video of the gameplay:

Here’s the flyer for Taito’s Wyvern F-0 which shows a better picture of the cabinet:

And if you’ve never seen a Taito MA1 cabinet, here’s a pair of them:

Atari of course were the masters of arcade cabinet production throughout their active coin-op years. Here’s a series of shots that I thought were interesting:

Just down the road at Sunnyvale, California, less than a mile away were one of Atari’s competitors, Exidy:

In 1986, Sega Japan’s primary corporate headquarters and arcade cabinet production base was located in Ōta Ward, Tokyo, near Haneda Airport (specifically at 1-2-12 Haneda, Ōta-ku). This location served as the epicenter for both their corporate operations and global game production during the arcade boom:

Sega’s R360 made its public debut at a press event in Shibuya, Tokyo on July 3, 1990. It officially launched in Japanese arcades in November 1990, with a wider international rollout following in early 1991. The machine was notoriously built more like an amusement ride than a standard cabinet. It required dedicated on-site attendants and utilized a floor space capable of supporting its massive, 360-degree hydraulically spinning gyroscopic sphere. Most cabinets were loaded with a modified version of the flight combat game G-LOC: Air Battle. Here’s a shot taken at Sega’s production facility

The summer of 1981 saw Taito America build a new corporate headquarters in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, right next door to Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It was a 60,000 square foot facility, housing a modern factory and administrative offices:

I’ve got some Bally Williams factory production footage to share in a future post, but meantime here’s a never seen before shot of Joust cocktail tables being constructed at their factory in Chicago (note: I digitally tided up this pic and added some colour as the original was very poor):

The Joust cocktail cabinet was engineered by Leo Ludzia, and features a unique side-by-side seating arrangement rather than the traditional opposite-end layout, which allowed Williams to use the exact same ROM chip as the upright version:

Finally, here’s a collage of shots from the Atari factory taken during Xevious‘ production run in February 1983. 5,295 cabinets were produced for the North American market:

I hope you enjoyed this trip to the arcade factory floors of the 70s, 80s and 90s. I’d appreciate if you would consider sharing this article on the socials!

Thanks for reading this week. More cool stuff is in the works!

Tony