Back in the day, long before the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii, teens spent their hard-earned money at on arcade games at pizza parlors, miniature golf courses and malls. It’s now been 40 years since the arcade game was introduced to popular culture. “Firefly” star Nathan Fillion talks about his favorite arcade games in this exclusive video interview.

In celebration of the 40^th anniversary of arcade games KontrolFreek, makers of the Rcade Freek, a sleek, high-polished dome that attaches to the joysticks of Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 controllers to emulate the arcade experience, conducted a national survey to determine America’s all-time favorite arcade games.

The online survey, conducted by IBOPE Zogby and KontrolFreek, found that America’s favorite game of all time is Pac-Man, followed closely by two other beloved classic games Donkey Kong and Space Invaders.  Asteroids, Frogger, Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede, Pong, Mortal Kombat, and Galaga round out the top 10 list and the complete survey results are available at KontrolFreek’s website.

Fun Arcade Game Facts:

The first known coin-operated arcade video game, The Galaxy Game, made its debut on the campus of Stanford University

The IBOPE Zogby and KontrolFreek survey found that 57.4 percent of republicans preferred blasting Asteroids versus 48.1 percent of democrats

Centipede was the first game that was designed by a woman

Of those surveyed by IBOPE Zogby and KontrolFreek, 7.1 percent of married people included Punch Out as their favorite game versus 20.9 percent of singles and 26.3 percent of divorced respondents

According to Guinness World Records Williams’ Blaster cockpit is the most valuable arcade machine with an estimated worth of $12,000

The fastest perfect Pac-Man score was achieved in 2009 by David Race who completed the game flawlessly in 3 hours, 41 minutes, and 22 seconds

Pac-Man, Dragon's Lair, and Pong are all on permanent display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C

According to Wikipedia, Pac-Man  revenues equaled 10 billion quarters by the late 1990s

About the Author

John Gaudiosi

Editor-in-Chief

John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Forbes.com, NVISION, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Geek Monthly, PrimaGames.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. and has produced videogame documentaries for The History Channel and Starz Entertainment. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.