Why were mirrors originally used in so many early cabs?

[idsane]

Just curious. Was the monitor easier to fit this way?

[Bender]

I think it was to eliminate the look of a monitor at all, the images just floats there, to me that look is just beautiful, I think they stopped doing it because of the cost, but this is purely a guess

[CrazyKongFan]

Yeah, I agree with Bender. Alot of the games that did this also have a backdrop the image projects onto, giving it a more realistic look (like Space Invaders, Omega Race, Asteroids Deluxe, etc). I think some of the shooting games may have needed it due to the close proximity of the gun. Games like the eXidy shooters (Cheyenne, Chiller, Crossbow, etc), Operation Wolf and Thunderbolt. One other game that used one was X-men 6-player, which had 2 monitors. That way they could have a real monitor on one side and a mirror up tight against it to allow the 2 screens to (theoretically) look like one wide image. You couldn't get 2 monitors that close together otherwise.

[Necro]

Because they wanted to make it a    nightmare to get the cab MAME'd out with an LCD since you can't mirror the display out to an LCD.

(I'm a bit bitter on this point...)

[Gray_Area]

I think for games with overlays, you couldn't do it any other way.

[idsane]

Got ya. Did any use magnifiers to make the screen look bigger or were they all just reg mirrors. Cheyenne... I just rediscovered that game for the first time in 20 years, love it!

[CheffoJeffo]

Got ya. Did any use magnifiers to make the screen look bigger or were they all just reg mirrors. Cheyenne... I just rediscovered that game for the first time in 20 years, love it!

The Exidy 440 games are some of the most fun that I have ever played and CKF is dead-on about the reason for using the mirror.

[idsane]

I am playing it with the mouse but having a full original cheyenne game would be awesome if one ever popped up on craigs

[CheffoJeffo]

Then you add an Exidy 440 Multiboard (if you can find one) and you can play all of the great Exidy shooters.

[RandyT]

Yeah, I agree with Bender. Alot of the games that did this also have a backdrop the image projects onto, giving it a more realistic look (like Space Invaders, Omega Race, Asteroids Deluxe, etc).

Any normal games which used a mirror, did so strictly for overlay purposes.  I've seen games with mirrors on a black backdrop, but that was more than likely because the overlay portion was missing, damaged, etc...  There is a benefit to doing this, however.  In an environment with a lot of ambient light where the source isn't directly behind the player (like a big window to the outside), the monitor is more immune to washout, as it's face is deeply shrouded.

 
I think some of the shooting games may have needed it due to the close proximity of the gun.

Pretty much.  Technically speaking, you don't need a lot of distance, as long as you can make the targets small enough to appear to be in the distance.  This is easy to do nowadays, because common resolutions in use are much greater and small targets can still be well defined.  Not so much with the lower res monitors of that era, so they really needed to push them back optically to keep detail in the imagery.  One of the neat things about those shooting games was the fact that the monitor face actually appeared to be further away than was possible, given the physically shorter depth of the cabinet.  That's something which can only be done by putting a large(ish) monitor way down deep in the base of the cabinet and using a fold mirror.  It's also important to note that these mirrors were probably what is known as "first surface" mirrors (or at least they should have been).  These are mirrors that have the reflective surface on the same side as the light they are reflecting, which eliminates ghost images, as well as the ~4% per reflected surface loss in brightness.