Play Meter Magazine, a trade magazine for the arcade industry, held an Operators Poll for the Top Game Winners of 1981. This was an opinion poll, not based off of just arcade game sales or earnings, but arcade game operators opinions for that year overall.

Given that 1981 was the peak year for video arcade games in the US, we felt it would be interesting to share this list. To add some quick notes for those who'll wonder, 1981 classics such as Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Galaga came out too late in 1981 to make this list as they came out in the fall of that year. Pac-Man was by far the overall sales leader, outselling the winner Defender 100,000 units to 55,000 units. Play Meter Magazine stated the gap between Defender and Pac-Man for the top spot was "hair-thin".

The Winners for 1981 - Operator Voting Results from the December, 1981 Play Meter Magazine

1. Defender (Williams)
2. Pac-Man (Midway)
3. Asteroids (Atari)
4. Centipede (Atari)
5. Scramble (Stern)
6. Phoenix (Centuri)
7. Gorf (Midway)
8. Galaxian (Midway)
9. Berzerk (Stern)
10. Asteroids Deluxe (Atari)
11. Monaco GP (Gremlin)
12. Missile Command (Atari)
13. Wizard of Wor (Midway)
14. Astro Blaster (Gremlin)
15. Star Castle (Cinematronics)
16. Omega Race (Midway)
17. Crazy Climber (Nichibutsu)
18. Armor Attack (Cinematronics)
19. Rally X (Midway)
20. Carnival (Gremlin)
21. Battlezone (Atari)
22. Venture (Exidy)
23. Moon Cresta (Gremlin)
24. Pleiades (Centuri)
25. Super Cobra (Stern)

Other notable awards given in this same polling:

* Best Artwork on a Video Game: Phoenix by Centuri (runner up was Williams Defender)

* Best Technical Improvement on a Video Game: Defender by Williams for it's on-screen diagnostics system (runners up were Berzerk by Stern and Wizard of Wor by Midway for allowing service access from the front of the machines)

* Best New Features in a Video Game: Defender by Williams for the "detailed" explosions, flight simulation, planet materialization features, and long range scanner (runner up was Sega's Astro Blaster for it's high fidelity speech)

And just for completion purposes, we decided to include the Top Video Game earning charts from this same issue, since many favorites released in 1981 came out too late in the year to have an impact on the awards shown.

Top Earning Videos - Play Meter Magazine - December 1, 1981

1. Vanguard (Centuri)
2. Omega Race (Midway)
3. Defender (Williams)
4. Centipede (Atari)
5. Pac-Man (Midway)
6. Super Cobra (Stern)
7. Phoenix (Centuri)
8. Venture (Exidy)
9. Pleaides (Centuri)
10. Asteroids (Atari)
11. Wizard of Wor (Midway)

The main earnings charts rankings at the time showed the games that had "above average earnings" during that period, hence the odd 11 game ranking. They also included "Provisional Ratings" for games that were earning above average, but were not owned at that time by more than 25% of the operators participating in the earnings poll (usually due to recent releases and test pieces)

Provisionally Rated Videos - Play Meter Magazine - December 1, 1981

1. Qix (Taito)
2. Donkey Kong (Nintendo)
3. Frogger (Sega)
4. Warp Warp (Rock Ola)
5. Space Fury (Sega)




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