Penny arcade (venue)

An amusement arcade (often referred to as "video arcade" or simply "arcade") is a venue where people play arcade games such as 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. The term used for ancestors of these venues in the beginning of 20th century was penny arcades.

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. Arcades became popular with children and particularly adolescents, which led parents to be concerned that video game playing might cause them to skip school.

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:

Penny arcades later led to the creation of video arcades in the 1970s.

Arcades catering for video games 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).

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