Why were arcade machines much more powerful than home video game consoles and personal computers back in the day?
In: Technology
They weren’t. Like modern consoles they appeared powerful because they were highly specialized. A computer has to do many things, usually at the same time. A console or arcade game only does the one thing. All of the hardware is specialized for that software and nothing else.
It’s like this: a screwdriver is better at driving screws than Swiss Army knife, but the Swiss Army knife is a more versatile tool capable of doing more than only driving a screw.
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