Short answers, pulled from the story.
An arcade video game is a coin-operated game that takes player input from its controls, processes it electronically, and displays the result on a monitor. It is housed in an arcade cabinet and located in amusement arcades alongside other arcade games.
Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney created Pong, a table tennis game built with help from engineer Allan Alcorn. Atari released it in 1972, and it is recognized as the first successful commercial arcade video game.
The golden age of arcade video games ran roughly from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, though exact dates are debated. It began after Taito released Space Invaders in 1978 and included Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.
Arcade video games declined in the West as home consoles such as the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox improved in graphics and gameplay while dropping in cost. Japan, China, and South Korea have continued to maintain a robust arcade industry.
Capcom's Street Fighter II sparked the resurgence, establishing the modern style of fighting games and leading to titles such as Mortal Kombat and Tekken. A related 3D graphics race between Sega and Namco also drove the renaissance, which lasted from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s.
Old arcade video games are preserved through emulators such as MAME, which run exact copies of the original software on modern devices. Companies such as Arcade1Up also build scaled recreations of classic arcade cabinets using modern LCD monitors.