Well I said helped "spur on" the death. It was a very slow process but it really started around 84. Crash + ridiculous city bilaws marked the beginning of the end. You have to understand that in 1980-1983 arcade operators were just rolling in money. Atari, Midway and Williams were producing machines in quantities like 10,000, 20,000, even up to 100,000 units. By 1984, games were produced in numbers like 5000 or less. To us the players, yeah the arcades were still there, but behind the scenes, everybody in the business side was hurting.