Concept
An amusement arcade, also known as a video arcade, amusements, arcade, or penny arcade (an older term), is a venue where people play arcade games, including arcade video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers (such as claw cranes), or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables. In some countries, some types of arcades are also legally permitted to provide gambling machines such as slot machines or pachinko machines. Games are usually housed in cabinets. Video games were introduced in amusement arcades in the late 1970s and were most popular during the golden age of arcade video games, the early 1980s. Arcade game#HistoryHistory of arcade video games and Timeline of arcade video game history A penny arcade can be any type of venue for coin-operated devices, usually for entertainment. The term came into use about 1905–1910. The name derives from the penny, once a staple coin for the machines. The machines used included: bagatelles, a game with elements of billiards and non-electrical pinball, early forms of non-electrical pinball machines, fortune-telling machinery, slot machines, coin-operated Amberolas peep show machines (in the original, non-pornographic, usage of the term), which allowed the viewer to see various objects and pictures Mutoscopes love tester machines. coin-operated shooter games and gun games Between the 1940s and 1960s, mechanical arcade games evolved into electro-mechanical games (EM games). Popular examples of EM games in the 1960s included shooters such as Sega's Periscope (1965) and Rifleman (1967), and racing games such as Kasco's Indy 500 (1968) and Chicago Coin's Speedway (1969). Penny arcades later led to the creation of video arcades in the 1970s. Golden age of arcade video games Video game arcades began to gain momentum in the late 1970s with games such as Space Invaders (1978) and Galaxian (1979) and became widespread in 1980 with Pac-Man, Centipede and others. The central processing unit in these games allowed for more complexity than earlier discrete-circuitry games such as Atari's Pong (1972).
