The Arcades of the 80's were massive computer rooms. I was privileged to have known a few elder programmers/hardware hackers, arcade owners in the 80's, who had no issues with us kids (well, family friends) ripping cabinets apart and being involved in re-programming things. As a kid, they were my guru's. It was a wonderful time to be willing to stay up late, hack on code, and see new things up on the screen .. two battlezone cabs wired up for multiplayer, infinite lives on things, &etc. well okay, the social aspect was terrific as well. The local arcades attracted a lot of people .. so sitting in the backroom with the change-counters and dead/living cabinet bits hacking code could be reprieved with a sudden blast of humanity.

Good times.

Nowadays I watch people ignore/blowup each other with their eyephones and instead of change-counters its appstore credit...