Rip Cord

Rip Cord is a 1979 arcade action game developed and published by Exidy, arriving at a time when the arcade industry was riding the wave of enthusiasm ignited by Space Invaders (1978) and the broader golden age of arcade gaming was just beginning to accelerate. Exidy, already known for pushing boundaries with titles like Death Race (1976) and Circus (1977), brought Rip Cord to arcades as a skydiving-themed shooter that stood apart from the space-combat and maze-chase formulas dominating the market at the time. The game places the player in the role of a skydiver descending through the sky, tasked with shooting balloons and other aerial targets while managing the freefall. The cabinet used a vertically oriented monitor, fitting the top-down perspective of a skydiver looking downward as objects rush upward toward the screen. Players controlled a crosshair or targeting reticle, aiming and firing at balloons that ascend from below, and the core challenge lay in hitting enough targets to score points before the diver reached the ground. The controls were straightforward — a joystick or directional input to move the targeting reticle combined with a fire button — keeping the game accessible to the walk-up arcade audience of the era. The level structure followed the arcade convention of the time: stages grew progressively more demanding, with balloons appearing faster, in greater numbers, and in more unpredictable patterns as play continued, creating a natural escalation of difficulty that encouraged repeat plays and coin insertions. Rip Cord occupied an interesting niche in Exidy's catalog because it leaned into a non-violent, novelty theme at a time when the company was simultaneously drawing controversy for more provocative titles. The skydiving premise gave the game a visual identity that was immediately legible on the arcade floor — the colorful balloons and the implied aerial descent made for an eye-catching attract mode. In its era, Rip Cord was one of several Exidy titles that demonstrated the company's willingness to experiment with themes and mechanics outside the dominant shooter and maze genres, even if it did not achieve the lasting cultural footprint of contemporaries like Asteroids or Galaxian. The game was distributed in relatively modest numbers compared to the blockbuster titles of 1979, and today it is considered a collector's curiosity — a snapshot of the creative experimentation that characterized smaller arcade developers trying to carve out shelf space against the giants of the early golden age.