Sea Wolf

In 1976 Midway launched Sea Wolf, an arcade submarine simulation that ranked among the most successful machines of its time. The player looks out at the sea through a periscope – a special viewfinder built directly into the cabinet – and fires torpedoes at passing ships, having to judge their distance and speed so the torpedo arrives exactly where the ship will be.

The game was built on a simple but engaging principle: a limited number of torpedoes forced the player to aim judiciously and not waste ammunition on distant or overly fast targets, while the night variant of the game added flares and made it harder to spot targets in the dark. The physical periscope with its movable viewfinder made Sea Wolf one of the most distinctive representatives of the electromechanically-tuned machines from the transitional era between older mechanical games and purely screen-based video games, giving the game a physical, tangible dimension that later screen-based titles would lose.

Sea Wolf's commercial success helped Midway solidify its position among the leading arcade machine manufacturers in the mid-1970s, and the game is still mentioned today alongside other periscope shooting titles it inspired with its emphasis on estimating distance and timing the shot. It ranks among the classics that shaped early ideas of what an arcade game could look and sound like, even at a time when most of the competition still relied on simpler principles and depended mainly on plain screen graphics without a physical control element.

Why play it: For the unmistakable experience of aiming through a real periscope, which set the machine apart from most of its contemporaries.