arcade game

Pronunciation

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Noun

arcade game (plural arcade games)

1. (video games) A coin-operated video game or amusement device.
   • 2014, Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino, Translation and Localisation in Video Games:

     Luckily for fans, these arcade games (as the good old classic titles are now called) used to have rather simple mechanics, and most players could learn to play them, despite their poor or non-existent knowledge of English.

2. (video games) A game for a computer or console that shares traits of coin-operated video games, such as short levels, simple and intuitive controls, and rapidly increasing difficulty.
   • 1985, Scott Adams, quoted in Graeme Kidd, Great Scott!, in Crash issue 15

     ‘They’re Twitch Games,’ he grinned, ‘arcade games. An adventure game is one where you use your mind; if you can type, you can play an adventure. If you require anything other than that, you’ve got a twitch game — an arcade game — where your skill of movement is more important than your thinking. […]

   • 1985, PC Mag, volume 4, number 14, page 51:

     It's not an arcade game—there is no crack of the bat or roar of the crowd or even much in the way of a screen display—but for the true fan, there is the excitement of mathematically structured matchups of real current and past teams with a more-than-passing resemblance to real-life outcomes.