I think arcades died in North America because the gap between the games in arcades and on home PCs and consoles was becoming less every year. Add to that online multiplayer gaming that was starting to become popular in the mid 90s.

 you have had a very shallow existance then

j/k you jsut missed out a great part of pop-culture in the late 80s early 90s. The best way to go to an arcade would be a Celebration Station (For everyone) or Chucky Cheeze (for kids under 10) down here in Florida for the arcade experience.

Showbiz Pizza ruled Chucky Cheeze hard.  It's unfortunate that after they bought out Chucky Cheeze they changed all of there restaraunts over to the big Mouse. 

Wow , thats sad ... well , if we dont have arcades , than why should they ? :P

crap, here the sentence actually applies for real..

blame wii fit =o

I don't like arcades...

I was a bit confused by this at first, but then realised Japanese arcades have way more variety than the ones around me, that just carried "six buttons+joystick" type games.

Hopefully they they don't die out as well, althought more of the weird awesome games coming to the Wii would be nice.

well i dont really care since i dont use the arcades but this isnt good for people that go there often(yeah i know its in japan)

Maybe if they kept innovating in arcade design there wouldn't be an issue with people not visiting them. As other's have said, the North American arcade scene died due to crappy games and well the Super Nintendo cleaned them out with near arcade perfect ports. If they had released better games all the time in the Arcade people still would have played arcade games. I remember the last new arcade games I saw was Pit Fighter 2 and Street Fighter the Movie. Like who in the world green lit that one?

IMO, arcade games are nothing but profiteering devices. You lose the fight in Street Fighter games, and you have to insert another coin to continue. That wouldn't be a problem if the cost per game is low, but here in the UK, it's £1 per game, and maybe £2 for air hockey!

On a similar note, Ghost Squad Wii >>> Ghost Squad Arcade due to the unlimited free continues.