Making sense of early video arcades: The case of Pittsburgh, 1980-1983

Canadian Journal of Film Studies

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 19-37

  Pierson, Ryan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84904132217     PISSN: 08475911     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/cjfs.20.2.19     Document Type: Review

References (68)

1. Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window (Cambridge: MIT Press 2006), 14.
2. Jason Walker, "'Participation TV': Early Games, Video Art, Abstraction and the Problem of Attention," Convergence 10.3 (2004), 83-100.
3. Walker takes the problem of attention from Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press 2000).
4. Bob Rehak, "The Rise of the Home Computer," in The Video Game Explosion: A History from Pong to Playstation and Beyond, ed. Mark J.P. Wolf (Westport, CT̀: Greenwood Press 2008), 79.
5. See "Surgeon General Sees Danger in Video Games," New York Times, 10 November 1982: A16.
6. Timothy McCowan, "Correspondence: Space-Invaders Wrist," New England Journal of Medicine 304 (1981): 1368.
7. See City of Mesquite v. Aladdin's Castle, Inc., 455 US 283 (1982).
8. Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf, "Introduction," The Video Game Theory Reader 2, ed. Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf (New York: Routledge, 2008), 8-9.
9. Anna McCarthy, Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 9.
10. Michael Aronson, Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2008), 6.
11. See Richard Abel, "The Movies in a 'Not So Visible Place': Des Moines, Iowa, 1911-1914," in Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing, ed. Kathryn Fuller-Seeley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 107-129.
12. See Dmitri Williams, "The Video Game Lightning Rod: Constructions of a New Media Technology, 1970-2000," Information, Communication, and Society 6.4 (2003): 523-550.
13. "Supermarket Shopper: Pass Up Video Games," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (hereafter PPG), 9 June 1982: 22.
14. "Cosetti Wants a Cut on Bingo, Peep Show," PPG, 4 April 1971: 20.
15. The purpose of this ordinance is to put a limit on the number of units in the community." See "Mt. Lebanon to Regulate Games," PPG, 2 February 1982: PG South 4.
16. "Bid to Open Arcade Faces Fight," PPG, 8 July 1978: 1.
17. For another example, see "Police Crusade against Pornography," PPG, 8 July 1972: 6.
18. "Airport Visit a Real Trip," PPG, 29 December 1977: PG North 7.
19. Arcades are also mentioned in passing in "All Roads Now Lead to Kennywood Park," PPG, 27 April 1978
20. PG North 17 and "Coast into Thrills at Cedar Point Park," PPG, 28 July 1978: 19.
21. "Come As You Are to Uncle Charlie's," PPG, 22 December 1977: PG North 19.
22. "The Game's Over: City Losing $108,000 in License Fees, Cracks down on Video-Game Owners," PPG, 27 March 1983: A1.
23. "Pinball Craze Bounces into Hearts of Wide Mix Seeking Fun, Escape," PPG, 13 March 1978: 2.
24. "Video Games Rocket Pinball Arcades into Boom Business," PPG, 23 October 1980: 24.
25. Patricia Marks Greenfield, Mind and Media: The Effects of Television, Video Games and Computers (Cambridge: MIT Press 1984), 99.
26. Walker, 89.
27. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation (Cambridge: MIT Press 1995), 90.
28. David Myers, "The Video Game Aesthetic: Play as Form," in The Video Game Theory Reader 2, ed. Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf (New York: Routledge, 2008), 47.
29. "Video Games Rocket Pinball Arcades," 24.
30. Greenfield, 98.
31. "Games that play people," Time, 18 January 1982: 51.
32. David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 100.
33. Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper and Brothers 1911), 45.
34. "Video-Game Chiefs Bemoan Business," PPG, 27 March 1983: A8.
35. Johann Friedrich Geist, Arcades, History of a Building Type (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), 28.
36. See Mark J.P. Wolf, "Arcade Games of the 1970s," in The Video Game Explosion: A History from Pong to Playstation and Beyond, ed. Mark J.P. Wolf (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008), 37.
37. Depthcharge Owner's Manual (Gremlin Industries 1977), 7.
38. "Game Operators Push Panic Button over Fees," PPG, 3 March 1982: City/Area 4.
39. Some examples: "Shannon May Limit Video Games," PPG, 14 January 1982: PG South 2
40. "Avalon Raises Video Game Fee," PPG, 28 January 1982: PG South 4
41. "Braddock Increases Video Game Fee," PPG, 11 March 1982: PG East 13
42. "Edgewood Sets Video Game Fees," PPG, 25 March 1982: PG East 4.
43. "Moratorium on Game Rooms," PPG, 14 May 1982: 5B.
44. "Pac-Man: No Quick Path to Riches," PPG, 11 March 1982: PG South 1.
45. "Arcades Are Drug Hotbeds," PPG, 16 March 1982: 2.
46. "Video-Game Players Risk 'Arcade Arthritis,'" PPG, 15 June 1982: 25.
47. "Teens of the '80s Need Their Video Game Fix," PPG, 21 October 1982: A2.
48. See Lee Grieveson, "Cinema Studies and the Conduct of Conduct," in Inventing Film Studies, ed. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 3-37.
49. See Art Buchwald, "The War against the Asteroids," PPG, 30 November 1981: 15.
50. C. Everett Koop, "Violence as a Public Health Problem" (sound recording: Western Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Guest Lecture Series), 9 November 1982.
51. Koop, "Statement by C. Everett Koop, Surgeon General," from the C. Everett Koop papers in Profiles in Science, http://profiles.n1m.nih.gov/ps/ access/QQBBCF.pdf (accessed 26 June 2011).
52. J.C. Herz, Joystick Nation (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1997), 184, emphasis added. Bolter and Grusin use Herz as their reference point of an official stance on games in Remediation, 49.
53. See also Desmond Ellis, "Video Arcades, Youth, and Trouble," Youth and Society 16.1 (September 1984): 47.
54. "Massage Parlor, Store Will Get New Façade," PPG, 11 December 1981: 14.
55. "Triangle Arcade OK'd as Board Had No Out," PPG, 8 October 1982: 4.
56. Michelle Madoff, Municipal Record of the City of Pittsburgh 141.39 (11 October 1982), 1103-letter sent to Council 7 October.
57. Municipal Record 141.39, 1076.
58. "Council Considers Arcade Curbs," Pittsburgh Press, 14 January 1983: A1.
59. Council member Robert Stone paraphrased the Solicitor's opinion in Municipal Record 117.9 (28 February 1983), 318.
60. Robert Stone, Municipal Record 117.5 (31 January 1983): 163.
61. Eugene DePasquale, Municipal Record 117.5, 161.
62. Joe Flaherty, Municipal Record 117.5, 162-3.
63. Bill Robinson, Municipal Record 117.9, 317-8.
64. "A PTA Fights Video Games," PPG, 29 July 1982: PG East 10.
65. See "Video Games Go Crunch! As the Christmas season nears once thriving makers struggle for survival," Time (17 October 1983): 64-65.
66. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 92.
67. "Bank Machines Turning up in Ever More Unusual Spots," PPG, 5 October 1982: 17.
68. See Alexander Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 14.