El Fin del Tiempo (found Spanish arcade game; 1981)

El Fin del Tiempo pamphlet.

Status: Found

Date found: 02 Jun 2018

Found by: Recreativas.org and ARPA Association.

El Fin del Tiempo (translated as The End of Time) is an arcade video game developed by the Spanish company Niemer in 1981. It was one of the first introductions into the video game industry in Spain but forgotten by time due to its short appearance.^[1] In the following years, both its company and the arcade were a mystery because of the scarse information about it.

History

Enrique Zarco and José María Arribas, Niemer founders.

In 1977, Enrique Zarco and José María Arribas founded the Niemer company in Barcelona, Spain, destined to manufacture arcade cabins. These games were, for the most part, Spanish adaptations of Taito titles such as Space Invaders or Lunar Rescue. Starting in 1981, Niemer created two original video games: 4 en Línea and El Fin del Tiempo. Both arcades were presented in United Kingdom searching to export them outside Spain and appeared in pamphlets and magazines announcing their 1982 release. 4 en Línea failed to get a distributor, cancelling its release until 1991. El Fin del Tiempo, meanwhile, was distributed in various locations in Spain during the 1980s. Niemer would continue to adapt arcades until its closure in 1984.^[2]

El Fin del Tiempo was forgotten for almost two decades, until it was registered on The Arcade Flyer Archive in 2000. The page contained only an arcade pamphlet with the Niemer logo. At that time, information about the company was scarce, raising suspicions among Spanish arcade fans about the veracity of the game. It took 11 years until the name of its founders was mentioned online, on a thread of the Computer Emuzone forum.^[3]

Discovery

Interest in the arcade arose in 2014 when the Recreativas.org website began to do as much research as possible about Niemer. With this, records of their games adapted to Spanish was found, as well as El Fin del Tiempo and 4 en Línea. A year later, an arcade place owner appeared on a forum requesting help to repair an arcade she hadn't heard of before. The woman provided photographs of the cabin, revealing that it was an authentic El Fin del Tiempo arcade. The commotion caused the woman to withdraw little by little from the forum since her only intention was to repair the machine.

After contacting the ARPA Association, dedicated to the preservation of arcades in Spain, the cabin was obtain for its repair. Once finished, Recreativas.org backed up a ROM for emulation.^[4]