Long before video games became a recognizable industry, the businesses that would eventually manufacture, distribute, operate, and display them already had a trade network of their own. Jukeboxes, pinball machines, vending equipment, shooting galleries, driving games, and other coin-operated amusements moved through a world of manufacturers, distributors, route operators, and trade shows that rarely attracted much attention from the general public.
One of the publications recording that world was Cash Box.
Founded by Bill Gersh in 1942, The Cash Box began as a weekly trade publication for the coin-machine industry. Its December 1, 1942 issue described the magazine as a marketplace for the coin-machine business and included Gersh’s regular industry column, alongside price information and material intended for operators. The modern Cashbox organization likewise traces the publication’s beginnings to 1942 and emphasizes that its earliest subject matter centered on vending machines, arcades, slots, pinball, and other coin-operated equipment rather than the record charts for which the magazine later became famous.
Music gradually became an enormous part of Cash Box. Jukeboxes naturally connected the coin-machine trade to the record business, and the magazine eventually became one of the major American music-industry publications alongside Billboard and Record World. Yet the amusement side never completely disappeared. That continuity would become historically important when a new kind of machine began arriving in arcades during the early 1970s.
For video game historians, Cash Box offers something more valuable than a later recollection of what happened. It allows researchers to watch the commercial video game industry form almost week by week.
Computer Space Enters the Pages of Cash Box
In 1971, the commercial video game industry barely existed. There was no established market category comparable to what would develop later in the decade, and even the language surrounding electronic games was unsettled.
Nutting Associates was preparing to sell Computer Space, the coin-operated space combat game designed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney’s Syzygy operation. The machine placed electronic action on a television-style display inside a distinctive fiberglass cabinet, but explaining the concept to amusement operators was not necessarily easy. The familiar vocabulary of the arcade business had been built around mechanical and electromechanical equipment.
The Video Game History Foundation has documented how Nutting’s promotional material struggled with that problem. Early advertising described the screen and cabinet using language that operators already understood rather than presenting the machine through the terminology that would later become standard for video games.
Then, on November 27, 1971, Nutting Associates advertised Computer Space in Cash Box.
The advertisement is now one of the most important surviving documents from the beginning of the commercial video game industry. Video Game History Foundation researcher Kate Willaert has identified it as the first magazine advertisement for a video game, while distinguishing it from later advertisements directed toward home consumers.
A week later, Cash Box carried further coverage of Nutting’s new space-combat machine. What may have looked to readers at the time like another unusual coin-operated amusement now stands near the beginning of an entirely new entertainment industry.
That is part of what makes Cash Box so useful. The magazine did not know it was documenting the beginning of video game history. It simply reported what the coin-machine business was doing.
Pong and Atari Become an Industry Story
The transformation accelerated after Atari developed Pong.
By April 7, 1973, Cash Box was reporting that Atari was taking the two-player game into national distribution. The article described Atari as a new success story in the coin-operated amusement industry and identified several of the people who would become central figures in early video game history, including Nolan Bushnell, Ted Dabney, and engineer Al Alcorn.
The report also connected Atari directly to Computer Space. Bushnell discussed the earlier machine as a technological breakthrough and explained Atari’s ambitions to place coin-operated games in locations that had not traditionally housed amusement machines. According to the article, Pong had initially been available through only a small group of West Coast distributors before demand pushed Atari toward broader production and national distribution.
Throughout 1973, Cash Box continued recording the rapid expansion of the new television-game business. The magazine covered Atari’s Space Race in July, a four-player television game from Allied Leisure in August, and Atari’s Pong Doubles and Gotcha in September. When Pong Doubles began shipping, Cash Box described a four-player machine with a larger screen and pricing that allowed two players to compete for a quarter or four players for fifty cents.
By December, the magazine was reporting on Nutting Industries shipping a color tennis television game.
The progression is striking when the issues are read in sequence. In late 1971, a single electronic space game was strange enough to require explanation. By 1973, manufacturers were releasing competing video products, experimenting with multiplayer designs, improving cabinets, adding color, and fighting for distributor attention.
A distinct video game business was emerging inside the older amusement-machine industry.
Cash Box Watches the Arcade Industry Grow
As video games spread through the 1970s, Cash Box remained positioned close to the people actually making money from them.
This distinction matters. A consumer magazine could describe whether players enjoyed a game, but Cash Box could ask operators how much equipment earned, how long machines remained on location, what they intended to purchase next, and whether particular kinds of games were becoming more or less profitable.
Its annual jukebox and games route surveys became especially valuable.
The 1978 survey, for example, asked operators how long different types of equipment remained on their routes. Video games averaged only about two years, considerably shorter than several established coin-operated categories. The finding reflected one of the realities that would define the video game business. New technology and new hits could make equipment age quickly.
At the same time, arcade video games were becoming increasingly difficult for operators to ignore. The arrival of games such as Space Invaders, Galaxian, Asteroids, and eventually Pac-Man transformed the economics and visibility of the arcade.
By April 1980, Cash Box was reporting on Midway’s American introduction of Galaxian, another sign of the growing importance of Japanese-developed games in the United States. What had begun as a small group of American manufacturers experimenting with television technology was becoming an international business. Your research notes identify this period, particularly 1971 through 1984, as the richest stretch of Cash Box material for following the industry’s formation, boom, and contraction.
Measuring the Golden Age One Quarter at a Time
By 1980 and 1981, the numbers appearing in amusement-industry surveys captured how dramatically video games had changed the coin-operated business.
Later Play Meter figures, which provide a useful contemporary comparison with the Cash Box surveys, show average weekly video-game collections climbing from $44 in 1977 to $50 in 1978, $64 in 1979, $102 in 1980, and $140 in 1981.
That progression helps explain the intensity of the arcade boom. Operators were not simply buying video games because the machines were fashionable. Successful cabinets could produce extraordinary revenue compared with many older forms of amusement equipment.
Cash Box was in an excellent position to document which machines benefited most.
Its 1981 route survey became an important contemporary record of the golden age. The results placed Pac-Man, Defender, and Asteroids among the leading earning machines, while Midway, Atari, and Williams stood among the industry’s dominant manufacturers. A later Cash Box advertisement publicizing the survey promoted Pac-Man as the year’s top video game.
For historians, such evidence provides a different perspective from lifetime sales totals assembled decades later. An operator survey shows which cabinets people in the business believed were earning money while the machines were still competing for floor space.
That distinction can change how arcade history is understood.
Pac-Man Changes More Than the Arcade
The importance of Pac-Man also demonstrates how closely the arcade and home video game industries were becoming connected.
By April 1982, Cash Box was asking amusement-industry figures whether home video games were helping or hurting coin-operated collections. The responses reported by the magazine were notably optimistic. Many operators, distributors, and manufacturers believed home systems were introducing more people to video games and making the public more comfortable with electronic entertainment.
One distributor argued that home games were teaching people who might never have approached an arcade machine how games worked. Operators also pointed to the technological advantage of commercial cabinets, whose graphics, controls, and presentation remained well beyond most contemporary home systems.
The discussion captures a moment when the modern relationship between arcade and home gaming was still being negotiated.
Arcade manufacturers could introduce characters and concepts to enormous audiences. Home consoles could then bring versions of those games into living rooms. Instead of treating the two markets as completely separate industries, Cash Box was already examining how one might generate customers for the other.
From Coin Machines to Home Cartridges
The magazine itself changed with the market.
On June 26, 1982, Cash Box announced that it was beginning a chart devoted to bestselling home video game cartridges. The editorial explained that the magazine remained primarily devoted to music and coin-operated games, but recognized home video games as part of a broader entertainment business that increasingly overlapped with its traditional readership.
The decision is historically revealing.
Eleven years earlier, Computer Space had appeared in the magazine as an unusual new arcade machine. Now Cash Box was charting software sold for home consoles.
Video games had moved from an experimental corner of the amusement trade into retail stores, homes, mass-market advertising, and a growing consumer-electronics industry.
Yet almost at the moment that expansion seemed unstoppable, warning signs were appearing in the coin-operated market.
Cash Box Records the Arcade Downturn
The Cash Box route survey published in November 1982 gives historians an unusually useful view of the arcade business near its peak and at the beginning of its contraction.
Operators responding to the survey discussed market saturation, falling collections, equipment costs, depreciation, and a desire to become more cautious about purchasing new video machines. The survey reported that video games were commonly kept on routes for only one to three years, underscoring the financial pressure created by rapid turnover.
The decline became impossible to ignore during 1983.
In its February 18, 1984 special coin-machine coverage, Cash Box discussed an investment analysis that estimated average coin drop per machine had fallen about 30 percent from 1982 levels while manufacturer unit shipments had fallen by 64 percent. The report described the market as entering a consolidation period after the explosive expansion of 1980 and 1981. Manufacturer shipments cited in the article fell from 487,000 units in 1981 to 479,000 in 1982 and only 170,000 in 1983, excluding additional conversion kits.
Contemporary Play Meter reporting confirms the severity of the broader decline. Its 1984 industry survey showed average weekly video-game collections dropping from $140 in 1981 to $109 in 1982, $70 in 1983, and $53 in 1984.
Reading these reports decades later makes the downturn look almost inevitable. It did not necessarily feel that way to operators living through it. These publications show businesses attempting to understand what had happened while they were still surrounded by cabinets purchased during the boom.
Dragon’s Lair and the Search for the Next Revolution
The industry’s troubles did not end experimentation.
The same February 1984 Cash Box issue devoted considerable attention to Don Bluth and the laserdisc games Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace. The magazine discussed animation production, financing, technology, pricing, and the extraordinary collections some operators had reported from Dragon’s Lair.
According to the feature, some locations had produced weekly collections exceeding $500 per machine, with exceptional reports approaching $1,000. The game offered a tantalizing possibility. Perhaps spectacular new technology could restore the excitement that had driven the first arcade boom.
That makes the issue particularly valuable. On one set of pages, historians can see an industry confronting severe contraction. On another, they can see manufacturers and creators searching for the technology that might begin its next era.
The arcade business was not simply collapsing. It was adapting.
Why Cash Box Matters to Video Game History
Much of early video game history survives in fragments.
Manufacturers disappeared. Records were discarded. Release dates became confused. Employees remembered the same events differently decades later. Sales numbers were repeated without documentation until estimates gradually became accepted as fact.
Trade magazines provide one way to work backward through those problems.
Cash Box recorded advertisements when manufacturers were actively selling machines. It announced products while they were entering distribution. It printed the names of executives, engineers, sales personnel, distributors, and operators. It covered industry conventions. It surveyed businesses about earnings. It documented what companies claimed about their own products, which historians can then compare against competing publications, court records, internal documents, and later interviews.
That does not mean every statement printed in Cash Box should be accepted without question. Manufacturers had products to sell, executives had companies to promote, and operator surveys had limitations. In fact, Cash Box itself cautioned that its route surveys reflected trends rather than providing an absolute measurement of the national business.
That warning actually strengthens the magazine’s usefulness. It reminds researchers to treat the publication as a primary source rather than an all-knowing authority.
The goal is not simply to ask whether Cash Box was correct. It is to ask what the people inside the industry were saying, selling, measuring, fearing, and expecting at a particular moment.
Preserving Cash Box for a New Generation of Researchers
For decades, using Cash Box extensively required access to scattered physical issues or library collections. Digitization has changed that.
William & Mary’s Earl Gregg Swem Library acquired an exceptionally complete collection and partnered with the Internet Archive on a project to digitize approximately 190,000 pages contained in 163 volumes. The Council on Library and Information Resources described the collection as by far the most complete known run and emphasized the value of optical character recognition that would allow researchers to search across decades of material.
World Radio History also provides extensive scans covering the magazine’s original run, while the University of Pennsylvania’s Online Books Page identifies more than 2,000 digitized issues available through the William & Mary archive.
The Video Game History Foundation now catalogs Cash Box directly as a game-history resource. Its library describes the publication as a trade magazine for the American music and amusement industries and specifically recognizes its coverage of jukeboxes, coin-operated amusements, and arcade games.
That recognition is important. Cash Box may be remembered most widely as a music publication, but hidden within decades of record charts and music-industry reporting is one of the richest running records of the American coin-operated amusement business.
The Arcade Industry in Real Time
The historical value of Cash Box becomes clearest when its issues are placed beside one another.
In 1942, its pages belonged to a world of jukeboxes, pinball machines, vending equipment, routes, operators, and coin boxes.
In 1971, Nutting Associates placed Computer Space before that audience.
In 1973, Atari was taking Pong national and rapidly expanding its product line.
By the end of the decade, operators were measuring video games as an increasingly important part of their routes.
In 1981, Pac-Man, Defender, and Asteroids were symbols of an arcade boom.
In 1982, Cash Box added home video game cartridges to its charts.
By 1984, its coin-machine pages were discussing collapsing collections, falling shipments, conversion kits, laserdiscs, Dragon’s Lair, and the uncertain search for whatever came next.
Few sources allow historians to follow that transformation with the same continuity.
Cash Box did not begin as a video game magazine, and that may be precisely why it matters so much to video game history. It stood inside the older coin-operated industry that gave commercial video games their first factories, distributors, sales networks, trade shows, locations, and customers.
When video games arrived, Cash Box was already there.
And week after week, it watched an industry being born.
Sources & Further Reading
Cash Box Publishing Co. The Cash Box. December 1, 1942. Early issue describing the publication as a marketplace for the coin-machine industry. World Radio History Cash Box archive
Cash Box Publishing Co. The Cash Box. December 29, 1942. Early coin-machine trade issue featuring industry news and equipment price information. World Radio History Cash Box archive
Cash Box Publishing Co. Cash Box. November 27, 1971. Nutting Associates advertisement for Computer Space, 54. November 27, 1971 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Nutting of Calif. Launching Unique Space-Combat Game.” Cash Box, December 4, 1971, 45. December 4, 1971 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “PONG Into National Distribution; Success for Atari, Inc.” Cash Box, April 7, 1973, 104. April 7, 1973 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Atari Bows ‘SPACE RACE.’” Cash Box, July 21, 1973, 39. July 21, 1973 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “4-Player, 50c, TV Game From ALI.” Cash Box, August 25, 1973, 48. World Radio History Cash Box archive
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Atari Ships ‘Pong Doubles’ & ‘Gotcha.’” Cash Box, September 29, 1973, 54. September 29, 1973 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Focus on MOA’s 25th Anniversary Expo.” Cash Box, November 24, 1973, 50–51. World Radio History Cash Box archive
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Nutting Industries Ships Color Tennis TV.” Cash Box, December 8, 1973, 44. December 8, 1973 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “‘Sprint 8’ Driving Game Becomes the Newest Arcade Piece From Atari, Inc.” Cash Box, May 21, 1977. May 21, 1977 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “1978 Jukebox/Games Route Survey.” Cash Box, November 11, 1978. November 11, 1978 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Midway Debuts ‘Galaxian’ Video.” Cash Box, April 5, 1980, 40. April 5, 1980 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “1980 Jukebox/Games Route Survey.” Cash Box, November 1, 1980. November 1, 1980 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “In Review.” Cash Box, February 21, 1981. Contemporary review of amusement machines including Pac-Man, Berzerk, and Polaris. February 21, 1981 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “1981 Jukebox/Games Route Survey.” Cash Box, October 31, 1981, C-18. October 31, 1981 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Authoritative Industry Sources Acclaim: PAC-MAN Top Video Game of the Year!” Cash Box, December 26, 1981, 91. December 26, 1981 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Most Tradesters Feel Home Vid Games Boost Coin-Op Collections.” Cash Box, April 24, 1982. April 24, 1982 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. Cash Box. June 26, 1982. Issue announcing the magazine’s home video-game cartridge sales chart. June 26, 1982 Cash Box scan
Cash Box Publishing Co. “1982 Jukebox/Games Route Survey.” Cash Box, November 20, 1982. November 20, 1982 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Special Coin Machine Focus.” Cash Box, February 18, 1984. Coverage of the arcade-industry contraction, conversion kits, laserdisc games, and changing market conditions. February 18, 1984 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “Don Bluth, Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace.” Cash Box, February 18, 1984. Contemporary feature on laserdisc-game development, animation, financing, and arcade performance. February 18, 1984 Cash Box issue
Cash Box Publishing Co. “I, Robot.” Cash Box, June 16, 1984. Contemporary coverage of Atari’s three-dimensional arcade game and its technology. World Radio History Cash Box archive
Cash Box Publishing Co. Cash Box Salutes AMOA Expo ’89. September 16, 1989. Video Game History Foundation Library, MAG-CASHBOX.1989.09.16. Video Game History Foundation Cash Box collection
World Radio History. “Cash Box Magazine: Music and Coin Machine Magazine, 1942 to 1996.” Digital archive of original issues. Accessed October 10, 2026. World Radio History Cash Box archive
Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William & Mary. Cash Box Digital Collection. 1942–1996. Digitized in partnership with the Internet Archive. William & Mary information on the Cash Box digitization project
Council on Library and Information Resources. “Digitizing Over Fifty Years of Jukebox Music News: Cash Box, 1942–1996.” Hidden Collections Registry. CLIR Cash Box digitization project
Video Game History Foundation Library. “Cash Box.” MAG-CASHBOX. Video Game History Foundation. Accessed October 10, 2026. Video Game History Foundation Cash Box collection
Willaert, Kate. “Pixels in Print, Part 1: Advertising Computer Space, The First Arcade Video Game.” Video Game History Foundation, 2018. Video Game History Foundation Computer Space research
Willaert, Kate. “Pixels in Print, Part 2: Advertising Odyssey, The First Home Video Game.” Video Game History Foundation. Video Game History Foundation Odyssey research
Video Game History Foundation. “Video Game Research Tips: Searching the Internet Archive.” Video Game History Foundation. Video Game History Foundation research guide
International Arcade Museum Library. “Play Meter.” International Arcade Museum Library. Accessed October 10, 2026. The collection provides a contemporary comparison for Cash Box operator and industry reporting. International Arcade Museum Play Meter archive
Smith, Alexander. They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. I: 1971–1982. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2019. Routledge and CRC Press book page
Goldberg, Marty, and Curt Vendel. Atari Inc.: Business Is Fun. Carmel, NY: Syzygy Company Press, 2012. Google Books record for Atari Inc.: Business Is Fun
Kent, Steven L. The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond, The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001.
Wolf, Mark J. P., ed. The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to PlayStation and Beyond. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008.
Horowitz, Ken. The Sega Arcade Revolution: A History in 62 Games. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. McFarland book page
Cashbox Magazine. “Archives.” Accessed October 10, 2026. The official archive traces the publication to Bill Gersh’s 1942 coin-machine trade magazine and preserves its historical publication record. Cashbox Magazine Archives
Cash Box Archives. “Cash Box Archives.” Accessed October 10, 2026. Digital resource documenting the original weekly publication from July 1942 through November 16, 1996. Cash Box Archives