I can't say I ever remember seeing blacklight carpets or even blacklights (other than Tron) in arcades in the early or mid 80s. Some of the mall arcades had cohesive design elements depending on the name and, although dimly lit, were all relatively clean and safe. In mall arcades, the arcade games tended to take up the bulk of the space with a row of pinball machines along the back wall. The typical setup I remember was a deep room with row of games down the middle (back-to-back games) and then rows of games going down both sides. Then pins on the back wall.
There were also pizza restaurants (other than Chuckie Cheese) that were set up for parties and they had a relatively large amount of games (not as many as a mall arcade). The roller rinks and bowling alleys had games and they were usually over to the side of the rink or in an open room behind the bowling lanes. The games were more or less just put in these spaces without a lot of thought put into design of the room.
The biggest arcades I went to tended to be in amusement parks and they were in more open rooms with higher ceilings with multiple entries. These were vastly larger than mall arcades. I remember being so torn because you could probably play arcade games all day long but if you did that then you'd miss out on all the rides. So it was like going into this insane arcade but you got to play one or two games.
The local college had an arcade in the student union, and that was also in a space that was relatively clean and open. They might have had 15-20 games in there.
I never went to any boardwalk arcades back in the day but I've been to some survivors in more recent years. They seemed to be on the larger side, maybe rivaling the amusement park arcades.
Movie theaters always had games but they were usually not full blown endeavors. With movie theaters often being at the mall, the theater would have a handful of games and then the nearby arcade would have a lot more. When you went to the mall you would always check the theater to see if they had new games. Stand-alone movie theaters might have more games than the mall theater but still not as many as what you might find in a mall arcade.
I agree with a lot of other people about there being games pretty much everywhere. They were at the Pizza Hut, the laundry mat, the convenience store, the dentist, the drug store, the grocery store, the department store, the hotel, the Ripley's Believe it Or Not museum, the campground, etc., etc., etc. Pretty much anywhere you could find a little spot in a place where people might have to wait, or in a spot near where people might be on vacation. Some of these places only had one game, and others might have a handful. As kids we would always know these various spots because it was always cool to see what was new. You never knew what you might find in these spots. We used to find any place with vending and look on the ground for dropped change so that we could go play arcade games. The college was the best for this.
I don't have any specific memories of being in smoke-filled arcades with heroin deals going down in the back and prostitutes hanging around outside where you might get stabbed to death playing Pacman. That was maybe more of a 70s thing, or something that was happening in bigger cities.
The whole blacklight thing is pretty overblown and I associate that more with modern home collectors. I'm not sure I ever saw that in the wild. Not saying it didn't happen, I just didn't see it.
