Escape rooms are super fun. I've never heard of them until this decade. Whether they existed at all when I was younger, I can't say, but certainly not with any mainstream popularity.
They existed to some extent before that, Mostly as a temporary set up in a hotel or workplace conference room, and done by teams of coworkers as a team building exercise. They were very expensive and would come with a detailed analysis of the teams strengths and weaknesses and suggestions for improving team processes, it was typically a full day meeting, with time before and after discussions about team work, but the game was 60-90 minutes.
Then more recently some folks came up with the idea to drop the price, skip the analysis and just have friends play the game in the mall.