Golden age of arcade video games in the context of "Amusement arcade"

An arcade video game is an arcade game that takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. All arcade video games are coin-operated or accept other means of payment, housed in an arcade cabinet, and located in amusement arcades alongside other kinds of arcade games. Until the early 2000s, arcade video games were the largest and most technologically advanced segment of the video game industry.

Early prototypical entries Galaxy Game and Computer Space in 1971 established the principle operations for arcade games, and Atari's Pong in 1972 is recognized as the first successful commercial arcade video game. Improvements in computer technology and gameplay design led to a golden age of arcade video games, the exact dates of which are debated but range from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. This golden age includes Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. The arcade industry had a resurgence from the early 1990s to mid-2000s, including Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, and Dance Dance Revolution, but ultimately declined in the Western world as competing home video game consoles such as the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox increased in their graphics and gameplay capability and decreased in cost. Nevertheless, Japan, China, and South Korea continue to maintain a robust arcade industry in contemporary times.

Pixels (marketed as Pixels: The Movie) is a 2015 science fiction action comedy film directed by Chris Columbus from a screenplay by Tim Herlihy and Tim Dowling, based on a story by Herlihy. Loosely adapted from the 2010 short film Pixels by Patrick Jean (who serves as an executive producer on the film), the film stars Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad and Brian Cox. In the film, an alien force misinterprets video feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war, resulting in them attacking Earth with technological recreations of icons from the games. The President of the United States promptly assembles a team of former arcade champions to lead the planet's defense.

Development on the film began in 2010, when Sandler obtained the rights to Jean's short film via his Happy Madison Productions company and began developing the script with Herlihy. In 2013, Columbus entered talks to direct the film, drawn to the nostalgic homage to 1980s arcade games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders, all of which were licensed for use in the film. Filming took place in Toronto for three months, which involved extensive night shoots and practical sets. Post-production, led by Digital Domain and Sony Pictures Imageworks, focused on creating voxelized 3D versions of arcade characters to integrate into the live-action scenes.

The history of video games began in the 1950s and 1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframes. Spacewar! was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student hobbyists in 1962 as one of the first such games on a video display. The first consumer video game hardware was released in the early 1970s. The first home video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, and the first arcade video games were Computer Space and Pong. After its home console conversions, numerous companies sprang up to capture Pong's success in both the arcade and the home by cloning the game, causing a series of boom and bust cycles due to oversaturation and lack of innovation.

By the mid-1970s, low-cost programmable microprocessors replaced the discrete transistor–transistor logic circuitry of early hardware, and the first ROM cartridge-based home consoles arrived, including the Atari Video Computer System (VCS). Coupled with rapid growth in the golden age of arcade video games, including Space Invaders and Pac-Man, the home console market also flourished. The 1983 video game crash in the United States was characterized by a flood of too many games, often of poor or cloned qualities, and the sector saw competition from inexpensive personal computers and new types of games being developed for them. The crash prompted Japan's video game industry to take leadership of the market, which had only suffered minor impacts from the crash. Nintendo released its Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States in 1985, helping to rebound the failing video games sector. The latter part of the 1980s and early 1990s included video games driven by improvements and standardization in personal computers and the console war competition between Nintendo and Sega as they fought for market share in the United States. The first major handheld video game consoles appeared in the 1990s, led by Nintendo's Game Boy platform.

In the history of video games, the second-generation era refers to computer and video games, video game consoles, and handheld video game consoles available from 1976 to 1992. Notable platforms of the second generation include the Fairchild Channel F, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, and ColecoVision. The generation began in November 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F. This was followed by the Atari 2600 in 1977, Magnavox Odyssey² in 1978, Intellivision in 1979 and then the Emerson Arcadia 2001, ColecoVision, Atari 5200, and Vectrex, all in 1982. By the end of the era, there were over 15 different consoles. It coincided with, and was partly fueled by, the golden age of arcade video games. The generation also included the entry of handheld consoles, chiefly led by Nintendo’s foray into gaming led by the Blue Ocean philosophy of Gunpei Yokoi and the release of the Game & Watch in 1980. This peak era of popularity and innovation for the medium resulted in many games for second generation home consoles being ports of arcade games. Space Invaders, the first "killer app" arcade game to be ported, was released in 1980 for the Atari 2600, though earlier Atari-published arcade games were ported to the 2600 previously. Coleco packaged Nintendo's Donkey Kong with the ColecoVision when it was released in August 1982.

Built-in games, like those from the first generation, saw limited use during this era. Though the first generation Magnavox Odyssey had put games on cartridge-like circuit cards, the games had limited functionality and required TV screen overlays and other accessories to be fully functional. More advanced cartridges, which contained the entire game experience, were developed for the Fairchild Channel F, and most video game systems adopted similar technology. The first system of the generation and some others, such as the RCA Studio II, still came with built-in games while also being able to use cartridges. The popularity of game cartridges grew after the release of the Atari 2600. From the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, most home video game systems used cartridges until the technology was replaced by optical discs. The Fairchild Channel F was also the first console to use a microprocessor, which was the driving technology that allowed the consoles to use cartridges. Other technology such as screen resolution, color graphics, audio, and AI simulation was also improved during this era. The generation also saw the first handheld game cartridge system, the Microvision, which was released by toy company Milton Bradley in 1979.

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is a 1991 fighting game developed and published by Capcom for arcades. It is the second installment in the Street Fighter series and the sequel to 1987's Street Fighter. Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto and Akira Yasuda, who had previously worked on the game Final Fight, it is the fourteenth game to use Capcom's CP System arcade system board. Street Fighter II vastly improved many of the concepts introduced in the first game, including the use of special command-based moves, a combo system, a six-button configuration, and a wider selection of playable characters, each with a unique fighting style.

Street Fighter II became the best-selling game since the golden age of arcade video games. By 1994, it had been played by an estimated 25 million people in the United States alone. More than 200,000 arcade cabinets and 15 million software units of every version of Street Fighter II have been sold worldwide, earning an estimated $10 billion in total revenue, making it one of the top three highest-grossing video games of all time as of 2017 and the best-selling fighting game until 2019. More than 6.3 million SNES cartridges of Street Fighter II were sold, making it Capcom's best-selling single software game for the next two decades, its best-selling game on a single platform, and the highest-selling third-party game on the SNES.

The video game crash of 1983 (known in Japan as the Atari shock) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985 in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality. Waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers also played a role. Home video game revenue peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983 (equivalent to $10.1 billion in 2024), then fell to around $100 million (equivalent to $292.36 million in 2024), a drop of almost 97%. The crash abruptly ended what is retrospectively considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. To a lesser extent, the arcade video game market also weakened as the golden age of arcade video games came to an end.

Lasting about two years, the crash shook a then-booming video game industry and led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing home computers and video game consoles. Analysts of the time expressed doubts about the long-term viability of video game consoles and software.

Video games are a major industry in Japan, and the country is considered one of the most influential in video gaming. Japanese game development is often identified with the golden age of video games and the country is home to many notable video game companies such as Nintendo, Sega, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Taito, Konami, Square Enix, Capcom, NEC, SNK, Koei Tecmo, Atlus, Arc System Works, Sony and formerly its branch Sony Computer Entertainment. In 2022, Japan was the third largest video game market in the world after the United States and China.

The space is known for the catalogs of several major publishers, all of whom have competed in the video game console and video arcade markets at various points. Released in 1965, Periscope was a major arcade hit in Japan, preceding several decades of success in the arcade industry there. Nintendo, a former hanafuda playing card vendor, rose to prominence during the 1980s with the release of the home video game console called the Family Computer (Famicom), which became a major hit as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) internationally. Sony, already one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers, entered the market in 1994 with the Sony PlayStation, one of the first home consoles to feature 3D graphics, almost immediately establishing itself as a major publisher in the space. Shigeru Miyamoto remains internationally renowned as a "father of video gaming" and is the only game developer so far to receive Japan's highest civilian honor for artists, the 文化功労者 (bunka kōrōsha) or Person of Cultural Merit.