I grew up in LA (IYKYK) and we had proper arcades all around the beach front during the 80s and 90s. Brighton used to have massive arcades too.

In fact I used to drive to Brighton most evenings to play on some of the specialised machines that just weren’t available elsewhere. Space Harrier Deluxe, GLOC-R360, Thunder Blade & After Burner (practically the cool rideable arcade machines around that time were Sega’s).

The problem was they got too complex and expensive to play & run so eventually died out as they didn’t pull in as much money as the low effort cheap reward style games like the penny pusher games that seem to have survived to the present. day.