These two companies wrestled for the top slot in American video arcades for several years. The two most successful arcade game companies of this era were Namco (the Japanese company that created Pac-Man, Pole Position, and Dig Dug) and Atari (the US-based firm that first introduced video games into arcades). At the same time, video games started to appear in supermarkets, restaurants, bars, pubs, liquor stores, gas stations, bowling alleys storefronts and many other retail establishments looking for extra income and customer traffic.Very popular video arcade games would more than on occasion cause a crush of teenagers at arcades, eager to try the latest in public entertainment. This era also saw the rapid spread of video arcades and gamerooms across North America, Europe and Japan. Video arcade games were designed in a wide variety of genres, while game developers had to work within strict limits of available processor power and memory. The Golden Era of Video Games was a time of great technical breakthroughs and game design creativity in arcade games.
