Although most of us think of arcades as coming before home consoles, Pong was based on a similar game for the Magnavox Odyssey, the world’s first home games console. While there had been games on computers in some US colleges, and even a few coin-operated games, it wasn’t until 1972 that the coin-operated arcade cabinet really took off.Ītari was formed to release the world-famous Pong, a coin-operated arcade based on table tennis. Like the cassette Walkman or the first, brick-sized mobile phones, arcade cabinets symbolize their era and the heady early years of consumer electronics. You’ve maybe seen an arcade cabinet in a movie-they are iconic technology that instantly sets any story in the eighties. If you’re under 30, you’ve probably never seen an arcade game in real life.
