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Midway rebuilt Tomohiro Nishikado's Western Gun around a microprocessor rather than fixed circuitry, producing the first arcade video game to run software. Programmable hardware changed how games were made and what they could contain.
Software replaced soldering. That shift separated game design from electrical engineering, made libraries of titles possible on shared hardware, and set the arcade on its path from single-purpose novelties to a business of annual releases. Every later leap in arcade ambition depended on it.
Taito released Tomohiro Nishikado's game of descending aliens, which sped up as the player cleared it and kept a record of high scores. It filled Japanese arcades, spawned dedicated venues, and later transformed Atari's console.
Two industries were remade. In Japan the game established the arcade as mass entertainment and pushed Taito's competitors toward screen-based cabinets rather than mechanical ones. In the United States it turned a struggling console into a mass-market product. The high-score table also invented public competition on a machine, ancestor of every leaderboard since.
