Odd, interesting, and totally true trivia about the arcade video games we all know and love, from old to new in random order. Kick back and enjoy and learn something new!

Ms. Pac-Man is the best selling arcade unit in US history, selling over 119,000 machines. It was not, however, created by Pac-Man creators Namco but rather by an American company called General Computer Corp. Originally made as an add-on kit for Pac-Man called Crazy Otto, GCC approached Bally Midway for permission to market the kit, only to find themselves the creators of the most popular sequal game of all time.

While Universal's Mr. Do! is considered by many to be a clone of Namco and Atari's Dig Dug, it actually outsold the more famous game. Over 30,000 Mr. Do! kits were sold in 1983 compared to under 13,000 Dig Dug machines.

Eugene Jarvis, creator of the classic 1980 hit Defender, is responsible for several other hit games even decades later, including Robotron: 2084, Narc, Cruisin USA, Smash TV, Target: Terror, and Big Buck Hunter Pro.

The working title for Q*bert was originally "Snots N Boogers" and would have featured projectiles from the characters nose.

Licensing to both Atari and Bally Midway in the early 1980s, Namco offered up two games for licensing in 1982. One was Mappy, a cutesie chase game with a cartoon mouse and the other was Pole Position, a racing game. Midway had first choice and picked Mappy, leaving Atari with Pole Position. Mappy was a coin box flop for Midway, however Pole Position went on to be a huge hit for Atari and the best earning arcade game of 1983. Both Pole Position and Pole Position II remained in the Top 30 earners in Play Meter magazine's charts for years and years to follow.

Even though Galaga was a sleeper arcade hit following it's December 1981 release, no home version of the game was released until the Atari 7800 version in 1987.

The 1980 AMOA trade show saw new games Pac-Man and Defender predicted to be industry flops. Instead, they were the top two earning arcade games of 1981.

Atari, Midway, and Williams battled for the biggest share of the video arcade game market in the early 80s. Ironically, by the mid-90s all three arcade companies were one and the same as Midway bought out their competitors.

While countless arcade games have been spun off into home versions for decades, several games originally created for home use had arcade versions made of them later, including Choplifter, Tetris, Lode Runner, Pitfall II, and Cosmic Chasm.

Popular demand for additional Galaga machines in the marketplace caused Midway to put the game back into production in 1983, releasing 3,000 additional arcade units. This brought the total production of the classic Galaga machine to a total of 40,000 copies. This is actually less than the game Galaga was a sequel of, Galaxian, which sold 50,000 units from 1979-1980.

The original name for the Mario character in Donkey Kong was "Jumpman" in 1981. The character's name was later dubbed Mario after the landlord of Nintendo of America's warehouse, who looked a lot like him. In 1983, Mario's brother Luigi was named for the Mario Bros. game after a popular dining spot in Redmond, WA named "Mario and Luigi's".

Apple CEO Steve Jobs was at one time an employee in the early days of Atari in the 1970s. Working on a computer design at his home, he offered Atari head honcho Nolan Bushnell a 1/3 stake in his idea. Bushnell turned down what would have been a large stake in Apple Computers, Inc.




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