10 Most Profitable Arcade Games That Made BILLIONS

Revenue To Date: $6.8 billion

Not only is it the top-selling arcade game of all time—a record that will likely never be beaten—Pac-Man is one of the most recognizable video game characters throughout the world. The puck-shaped character, who was originally called "Puck Man," established a major gaming franchise, which has been incredibly successful.

Pac-Man's gameplay is simple enough; players take control of the titular characters as they eat pellets through a maze. Players need to avoid the four ghosts but can acquire a power-up that makes it possible to earn points by eating the ghosts who were sent into a timeout.

The game was innovative with its use of an intermission, which featured a cutscene—the first of its kind in gaming. Pac-Man's gameplay was difficult, but players managed to memorize the ghosts' pattern, which made it possible to beat the game by getting to its kill-screen, which resulted in the graphics going nuts at level 256, the limit of normal gameplay.

Within a decade of its release, more than 400,000 cabinets were sold all over the world. Those cabinets earned Midway as much as $3.5 billion dollars, which means people put a total of 875 million quarters. If you adjust that revenue from 1990 to 2019, Pac-Man managed to sell $6.8 billion.