The attract mode for the arcade game San Francisco Rush: The Rock showcasing one of the race tracks available to play in the game. Also display mode and show mode. A pre-recorded demonstration of a video game that is displayed when the game is not being played. Originally built into arcade games, the main purpose of the attract mode is to entice passers-by to play the game. It usually displays the game’s title screen, the game’s story (if it has one), its high score list, sweepstakes (on some games) and the message ‘Game Over’ or ‘Insert Coin’ over or in addition to a computer-controlled demonstration of gameplay. In the Atari 8-bit home computers of the 1970s and 1980s, the term attract mode was sometimes used to denote a simple screensaver that slowly cycled the display colors to prevent phosphor burn-in when no input had been received for several minutes. Attract modes demonstrating gameplay are common in current home video games. Attract mode is not only found in arcade video games, but in most coin-operated games like pinball machines, stacker machines and other games. Cocktail arcade machines on which the screen flips its orientation for each player’s turn in two-player games traditionally have the screen’s orientation in player 1’s favour for the attract mode.
