Arcade Perfect: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Other Coin-Op Classics Invaded the Living Room

Before personal computers and game consoles, video arcades hosted cutting-edge software consumers couldn’t play anywhere else. As companies like Atari, Commodore, and Nintendo disrupted the status quo, publishers charged their developers with an impossible task: Cram the world’s most successful coin-op games into microchips with a fraction of the computing power of arcade hardware.From the first Pong machine through the dystopian raceways of San Francisco Rush 2049, Arcade Perfect: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Other Coin-Op Classics Invaded the Living Room takes readers on an unprecedented behind-the-scenes tour of the decline of arcades and the rise of the multibillion-dollar home games industry.• Discover how more than 15 coin-op classics made the jump from cabinet to cartridge including Ms. Pac-Man, Street Fighter II, NBA Jam, Terminator 2, and more.• Based on research and interviews with dozens of programmers, artists, and designers. • Delve into the guts of the Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Super NES, ZX Spectrum, and other platforms to find out how they stacked up against arcade hardware.• Read bonus interviews with John Tobias (Mortal Kombat), Ed Logg (Gauntlet, Asteroids), ex-GamePro editor Dan “Elektro” Amrich, and more.