- published: 16 Oct 2015
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An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses, such as restaurants, bars, and particularly amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers (such as claw cranes).
The golden age of arcade video games was from the late 1970s to the 1980s. While arcade games were still relatively popular during the 1990s, this type of media saw a continuous decline in popularity in the Western world when video game consoles made the transition from 2D to 3D. Despite this, arcades remain popular in Asia through to the present day.
The term "arcade game" is also, in recent times, used to refer to a video game that was designed to look like a classic arcade game (adopting an isometric view, 2D graphics, scores, lives, etc.) but instead released on platforms such as XBLA or PC.
The first popular "arcade games" were early amusement park midway games such as shooting galleries, ball toss games, and the earliest coin-operated machines, such as those that claim to tell a person their fortune or played mechanical music. The old midways of 1920s-era amusement parks (such as Coney Island in New York) provided the inspiration and atmosphere of later arcade games.