Groups of uncontrolled kids hanging out around the Orange Julius, with no intention of spending money, could quickly ruin families’ pleasant trips to the mall.

When video games arrived in the home, they were safe and simple. Slowly they turned children into mindless zombies, but what’s the harm in that?

Nintendo’s release of their Nintendo entertainment system boosted the idea that games could promote family time.

Now what could possibly ruin video games’ good name?

Simple. The greatest American invention of all, the mall, and its diseased inhabitants, the mallrats, would come to destroy the very fabric of existence and the American right to shop in peace.

Malls were places of shopping and consumerism. Families could now do all their necessary shopping in one place with nothing to slow them down, save one thing: the mallrats.

Groups of uncontrolled kids hanging out around the Orange Julius with no intention of spending money quickly ruined many a family’s pleasant trip to the mall.

Beside the food court, the children were known to congregate around a shear phenomena of technology: the video arcade.

Video arcades were, as far as parents were concerned, worse than a bar.

Kids hung out there rotting their minds into mush, and spending their hard-earned allowance on frivolous machines that didn’t provide any usable service.

What were those children thinking? They could be saving up for Zoo Books and Encyclopedia Britannica!

When the children did earn something from arcade, it was a worthless piece of plastic crap that was hardly worth the collective price the children paid in the first place.

Not to mention that the games were becoming more and more violent.

Fighting games and gun games seemed to be multiplying before parents’ eyes, feeding the violence that the media said was rising inside these children.

I was one of these people. Countless quarters and hours were lost in arcades, like my hometown’s arcade, Aladdin’s Castle.

Never did I miss a chance to sneak from my parents grasp and head across the mall to the arcade, only to hear my name called over the mall’s speakers, much to the embarrassment of my family.

This was happening in malls across the nation; families were losing kids only to find them in the dens of adolescents.

Video games had destroyed the American invention of convenient shopping; it would be years until malls would be rid of these foul growths.

Notice how you never see an arcade in a mall anymore?

Now what else could ruin video games’ image?

To be continued…

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