The arcade was a place to play games, meeting point. In the german part of switzerland there were almost only males (you could also gambel). They were dark in the most of cases.

In the ‘westschweiz’ there were a lot more women in also in the arcades and younger people (for example in Lausanne). 

In the arcades there were always different types of arcades (older and the latest), than ‘table football’, flippers and so on. 

Fantasy computers are computer that are ‘inspired’ by real computers. Means their name sound like ZX81 > Tic80 but of course they are fast, programmable with lua and in the most of the cases have all integrated: spriteeditor, tile/background-editor, soundeffects editor and music editor. So they are really the dream of an 8bit-coder* with assembler, low memory, low graphics, no tools. 

there are two aspects came together in the universal computer. 
1. computing (sorting)
2. control (cases, if then, input)
before this were seperated functions in analoge maschines.

How people connect each other. Which places were important and why? Which media was important and why? Most of this places (Clubs, Supermarkets,  Arcades/Spielsalon, Computershops).
What happened with people from the country side? 

The Theory

Limitations

The technical limitation on the C64 Keyboard hardware is that not more than 2 keys may be pressed at the same time if you want to be 100% sure the result is valid. In some cases, three keys will work fine but whenever 3 keys form a right angle in the keyboard scan matrix, a 4th letter will appear. The combination “ABC” will work fine but the combination “ASD” will form such a triangle and the matrix will also report that the “F” key is pressed. Same goes for “ASF” which would incorrectly read a “D” the same way.

In short, the C64 keyboard is not a piano where you can play choords and stuff.

A lot of works in the area of electromechanic/optic calculation in games.

Pinballs are really computing hells. 

Where people met, talked about computers, learnt about computers. Played games, designed games.

Yes also pirate software and games was part of this world. 

Consoles inspired by old consoles but 100% new. They are somehow like the dream of this days. All dev. thing in one tool (graphics, sound, tiles, coding, levelediting)

part of the cracking job in the most of the cases. 

(money laundering?)

Make games copyable. Some cracker groups where in the tradition of information freedom, others learned from cracking software creating software, others had fun, others were in a sport ‘who is first’ and of course also others gained money. 

Why switzerland? and not us? The rumor is: There was no law in switzerland against cracking.