Periscope

Periscope is a shooting game, simulating a submarine attacking warships. It has a backdrop representing the ocean, upon which cardboard cutouts of ships hanging from chains are moved horizontally. Players look through a periscope to direct and fire torpedoes, which are represented by lines of colored lights and by electronic sound effects. Each play has five torpedoes that can be launched.

The original Nakamura cabinet model supports up to three players. Sega redesigned it into one model supporting up to three players and one with one player.

In a 1977 interview, Masaya Nakamura of Nakamura Manufacturing Co. (to become Namco in 1977) claimed that Periscope is the first amusement device that he built. Namco states that its Japanese release of the game was in 1965. Initially named Torpedo Launcher, the game is called Periscope in the April 1967 issue of Cashbox, where Nakamura offers direct import assistance to distributors.

It has been speculated that the original Nakamura version may have been a custom model for department store rooftops, one year prior to the mass-produced model. It has also been speculated that Nakamura may have licensed the game to Sega; Nakamura stated that he did sell some of his games to competitors.

The game's success helped to set the trend of a quarter dollar coin per play for premium games, which became the US market standard for all arcade games since then. According to Rosen, "If you talk to the old timers in the industry, they will tell you that The Periscope was a turning point in the industry." He said Periscope showed Sega it "could design acceptable games" and prompted the company's business of designing and exporting original games, including to the United States. Sega upgraded its subsequent game development to the latest technology, as Rosen explained: "We were doing lots of things that hadn't been done before, like adding sound and special effects." The success of Periscope sparked competition from traditional Chicago-based arcade manufacturers and led American distributors to Japan for new arcade games, which in turn encouraged more competition from Chicago manufacturers.

Periscope revived the novelty game business in arcades, establishing a "realistic" or "audio-visual" category of games, using advanced special effects to provide simulation experiences. It catalyzed the "novelty renaissance" where a wide variety of novelty or specialty games were released in the late 1960s (including quiz, racing, hockey, and football), many adopting the $0.25 price point. It particularly represented a trend of missile-launching gameplay during the late 1960s to 1970s, followed by electro-mechanical games such as Sega's Missile (1969) and Midway's submarine-themed missile-launching games Sea Raider (1969) and Sea Devil (1970).