An electronic game is a game that employs electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. The most common form of electronic game today is the video game, and for this reason the terms are often mistakenly used synonymously. Other common forms of electronic game include such non-exclusively-visual products as handheld electronic games, standalone systems (e.g. pinball, slot machines, or electro-mechanical arcade games), and specifically non-visual products (e.g. audio games).

Teletype games

The earliest form of computer game to achieve any degree of mainstream use was the text-based Teletype game. Teletype games lack video display screens and instead present the game to the player by printing a series of characters on paper which the player reads as it emerges from the platen. Practically this means that each action taken will require a line of paper and thus a hard-copy record of the game remains after it has been played. This naturally tends to reduce the size of the gaming universe or alternatively to require a great amount of paper. As computer screens became standard during the rise of the third generation computer, text-based command line-driven language parsing Teletype games transitioned into visual interactive fiction allowing for greater depth of gameplay and reduced paper requirements. This transition was accompanied by a simultaneous shift from the mainframe environment to the personal computer.

Electronic Games was the first dedicated video game magazine published in the United States and ran from October 1981 to 1997 under different titles. It was co-founded by Bill Kunkel, Joyce Worley, and Arnie Katz, and is unrelated to the subsequent Electronic Gaming Monthly.

History

The magazine has its origins in “Arcade Alley”, a regular column in Video magazine that began in 1978 and was the first dedicated to video games. The column was written by Bill Kunkel along with Arnie Katz and Joyce Worley, before they went on to found Electronic Games magazine. The magazine was active from 1981, during the golden age of arcade video games and the second generation of consoles, up until 1985, following the North American video game industry crash. The magazine was briefly revived during the 16-bit era in the early 1990s, but eventually ended in 1995, at which point it was renamed to Fusion.

1st Run

2nd Run

Awards

The magazine is notable for holding the first Game of the Year Award ceremony, called the Arcade Awards, or Arkie Awards. The following games are the winners of the magazine's annual Arcade Awards. The awards for each year took place in the January of the following year. No single game was allowed to win more than one award in the same year.