<P> The video game was one of several concepts that helped to reform the image of the arcade as a seedy hangout for delinquents . This in turn aided the growth of arcades in suburban shopping malls . The principle pioneer of the shopping mall arcade was Jules Millman, who established an arcade in a shopping mall in Harvey, Illinois, in 1969 . By banning eating, drinking, and smoking, and maintaining a full staff at all times to keep an eye on the facilities, Millman created a safe environment where parents could feel safe leaving their older children while browsing other stores in the mall . Millman founded American Amusements to establish more shopping mall arcades, which was purchased by Bally in 1974 and renamed Aladdin's Castle . Other entrepreneur's imitated Millman's format, and arcades became a mainstay of the shopping mall by the end of the decade . </P> <P> The emergence of solid state pinball in the late 1970s, in which electro - mechanical technologies like relays were replaced by the newly emerging microprocessor, temporarily stole the limelight from video games, which once again entered a period of decline in 1977 and 1978 . While individual games like Atari's Breakout (1976) and Cinematronics' Space Wars (1978) sold in large numbers during this period, overall profitability began to lag . The market surged once again, however, after the introduction of the Taito game Space Invaders by Midway in 1979 . </P> <P> The Magnavox Odyssey never caught on with the public, due largely to the limited functionality of its primitive technology . By the middle of the 1970s, however, the ball - and - paddle craze in the arcade had ignited public interest in video games and continuing advances in integrated circuits had resulted in large - scale integration (LSI) microchips cheap enough to be incorporated into a consumer product . In 1975, Magnavox reduced the part count of the Odyssey using a three - chip set created by Texas Instruments and released two new systems that only played ball - and - paddle games, the Odyssey 100 and Odyssey 200 . Atari, meanwhile, entered the consumer market that same year with the single - chip Home Pong system designed by Harold Lee . The next year, General Instrument released a "Pong - on - a-chip" LSI and made it available at a low price to any interested company . Toy company Coleco Industries used this chip to create the million - selling Telstar console model series (1976--77), while dozens of other companies released models as well . Overall, sales of dedicated ball - and - paddle systems in the U.S. grew from 350,000 in 1975 to a peak of 5--6 million in 1977 . A similar boom hit the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, with much of the market supplied by clone manufacturers in Hong Kong . </P> <P> After 1977, the dedicated console market in the United States collapsed . A new wave of programmable systems hit the market starting with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976 that offered the possibility of purchasing and playing a wider variety of games stored on cartridges containing mask ROM that could be plugged directly into the CPU of the console . As older model dedicated consoles were heavily discounted and consumers with more purchasing power transitioned to the new programmable systems, newer dedicated systems with more advanced features like Video Pinball from Atari and the Odyssey 4000 were squeezed out by their lower priced predecessors and their more sophisticated programmable replacements . This caused a brief dip in the market and the exit of industry leader Coleco, which failed to transition to programmable hardware . Fairchild remained in the new programmable market alongside Atari and Magnavox, which released the VCS (1977) and Odyssey (1978) respectively . </P>

When did home video games first become very popular