Fundamentals of Action and Arcade Game Design

What Are Action Games?

When most people hear the phrase video game, they tend to think of action games. The reason is historical: Almost all the earliest video games were action games, and some of those early games—Asteroids, Pac-Man, Space Invaders—have become iconic representatives of the action genre. However, the genre is vast and covers just about any imaginable activity that can be characterized in terms of physical challenges.

In this e-book, you’ll learn the definition of an action game, then go on to study the many subgenres of action games. Following that, we’ll look in more depth at the distinctive features of action games that set them apart from other genres.

Action games require good hand-eye coordination and usually require quick ...