Swimmer

Swimmer is a 1982 arcade game from Tecmo of Japan, released under the company then-current name Tehkan. The record notes a side-on view and multiplayer support, meaning the classic cabinet arrangement of two players alternating on one machine.

1982 was the peak of the first great arcade wave. Cabinets stood in every arcade and shopping precinct, and competition between manufacturers played out at the level of the idea: each game needed one situation legible at a glance from outside the cabinet, immediately inviting a passer-by to part with a coin.

Swimmer builds on swimming and on vertical progress upstream while avoiding everything in the way. It belongs to the family of progression arcade games where the pace steadily increases and the difficulty climbs without pause, because the machine has to end the session within a commercially reasonable time.

Visually Swimmer is remembered for its unusually vivid colour work. Hardware of 1982 offered a limited palette, but developers used it ostentatiously, since a bright screen was what pulled a customer across the room.

Arcade games of the early eighties share a quality now valued again: they teach themselves in seconds and never end in victory. You play for score and the machine eventually beats you, a structure modern design rediscovered decades later. Swimmer is a pure example from the time when this was not a style choice but the only known way to build a game.

Swimmer switches on directly in your browser here at OldGame.cz, so a game from 1982 needs nothing more than a click.