Video Game History: Where Did Extra Lives Come From?

[NovaXpress]

While reading through a book on the history of gambling, I came upon the interesting note that pinball machines were actually developed as gambling devices. High scores were rewarded with cash. This was done in areas where the police had cracked down on slot machines and were usually build and distributed by slot manufacturers (such as Bally). When the slots became to hot to run, the distributors switched to pinball games disguised as simple amusement devices.

 

Then I found this FANTASTIC page about pinball history which provided more details: Pingames and Gambling

When it became public knowledge that pinball was really a gambling device, an engineer at Williams came up with a new disguise. The machines awarded high scores with free games. However there was a secret button under the machine that would allow you to cash in instead of plaing the games.

 

At this point (right around WWII) gambling pinballs only gave you one ball and were known in the trade as "oneballs". So anti-gambling crusaders began to pass laws against one-ball machines. So logically Bally began to give the player five lives. Now we're getting somewhere.

 

In 1950, the Johnson Act against gambling was passed and old-style machines were out. So we get to the next evolution . . . offering free games without a cash-out option. But still, the spectre of gambling hung over the machines.

 Actually, there was still a way that a skillful flipper game player could make a small "profit" from playing pinball, other than of course, from "side betting".  If he was able to "rack up" a large number of replays on a machine he could "sell" them to another player for him to play, instead of the second player actually putting coins into the machine.  This could, in effect, make the replays earned by the player (and subsequently sold to a second party) "something of value" which he could "win" resulting

from his initial investment ("bet") of the coin he deposited to play the game.  Based on this concept, playing flipper games in this manner could be construed by some persons, and possibly courts, as "gambling".  

 

Well, it was "Gottlieb to the rescue".  In 1960 Alvin Gottlieb, son of D. Gottlieb and Co. founder David Gottlieb, who was now working at the plant, had an idea for a new type of flipper game which did not give replays at all, but still provided a "challenge" to the player and an opportunity to "earn" something for his skill at the game.  His idea was to give "free balls", rather than "free games", for the player attaining certain scores on the machine.  After all, it would be almost impossible for a player to "sell" an extra ball to another player.

 

So that's the progression which eventually gave us the "extra life" concept in videogames. After adding the bonus life concept, pinball became extremely popular as a pure amusement game and it's gimmicks such as multiple lives and extra play for high scores were adapted to these new video amusement devices.

[highinfidelity]

Interesting: never thought about that. I actually grew up so accustomed to the 3 ships of Space Invaders, that I never asked myself why I didn't have only one (and an easier game, just to allow the average player reach the 2-3 minutes of standard playing on an arcade machine...).

 

If I had to find an answer by myself, I guess I could have postulated that extra lives can give newbies some chance to make mistakes in a very early stage and retry without being pissed off too much with the machine. If you're already gone at the first alien shot, chances that you'd put in another coin are few. But if you have some extra lives, well, you already learned how to survive, you can play a little and maybe enjoy the game.

[NovaXpress]

That's true, but it's interesting how this quality was discovered by accident. Because of the frequent attempts to disguise their gamblig machines, manufacturers accidently created a gaming format which appealed to everyone's sense of fun.

 

I'd suspect that video games had an easier time getting off the ground because they used the marketing tricks that pinball had already discovered.

 

Read that whole link if you haven't yet, there's a lot of details I left out.

[sku_u]

Early pinballs, mostly known as bagatelle machines started out in the mid 19th century and were pure games of chance. You could try nudging the machine, but your score was always a crap shoot. When the flippers were introduced to pinball machines in their current orientation, pinball machines turned from gambling games of chance to novelty games of skill. If it weren't for the flipper, pinballs would have been eventually outlawed.

 

Many old machines were disigned both with and without free games built in depending on what the laws were in your state. In NYS, for example, free games were considered an award for gambling and were not allowed, so machines were designed to enable or disable that mechanism.

[StanJr]

Very cool information! Thanks for the link and the story.

 

I always just assumed it was a natural part of the design.