What year did "public arcades" take off? I know if the movie Tron in 1982, there was a large arcade. Where there arcades in the late 70's?
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Early. I think many started as pinball parlors in the 1950s, and became video arcades once the new machines began killing off the old...
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yeah, it all began with pinball. then arcade machines got huge in bars but when pacman became huge it ended up being more of a family thing.
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This is super interesting -- I had no idea pinball machines went back that far in time. Obviously it wasn't until the 70's that you had electronic scoring, but the essence of a pinball machine existed decades earlier.