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Comment by lurquer | Hacker News Reader

Having lived through the peak of the US Mall years, I blame the downfall on... Nintendo.

The mall was a social center for teens. A lot of money got pumped into the malls from that age group.

Teen boys would go for the arcade. Teen girls would follow, checking out the guys. Many stores catered to that demographic (Spencers, HotTopic, makeup and cheap jewelry stores, etc.)

In short, it was a place to go on casual dates, find dates, hook up, and the like.

My peer group quit going as frequently as we could play SuperMario Brothers for free at home. And, once the internet emerged, that was it... teens rarely leave their houses now, don’t date, and shun all face-to-face contact.

So, in short, Nintendo destroyed the Malls.

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US malls could have innovated. Internet cafes are immensely popular in South Korea. Malls just really weren’t that agile.

I’m younger than you I’d guess by a decade. We still hung out at malls. The internet? Maybe. Super Mario Bros? No. We even still had some arcades, though not as many as their were.

Don't forget record/tape/SD stores as well. We all know how the audio business turned out.

It might have helped, but my default hypothesis for anything entertainment related is that people will stop finding something interesting after a while. You can never get the novelty back.

I think you're onto something here, as far as that being one, first major impetus that got taken away. Surely people went to toy stores etc, some of them in malls, to buy Nintendo games, and then bought something else while in there. So I wouldn't call that the destruction per se, but I see where you're coming from.

Can't tell if satire or woefully unaware.

That's rude. It's a valid perspective. I dumped thousands of dollars in arcade games in the 70's and 80's and spent at least as much buying tshirts and toys and pizza or walking down to the theater and watching a movie.

For me there was a sense of adventure going to the mall because the products would change unpredictably. It was like a living art piece that served great food and could lead to unexpected purchases. It was also fun in the pre-internet era of having the chance to run into someone you knew randomly whereas social media creates a seemingly constant contact.

For many it was also the only place around where parents/adults would be happy to let kids hang out completely unattended.

Exactly, 20 dollars would lead to an entire day of adventures.

I was more responding to the idea that the primary reason girls were at the mall is because they were following boys who were playing video games.

In the 80s the malls usually had 1) an arcade, 2) at least one bookstore, sometimes two, 3) a toy/hobby store where you could buy RPGs and wargames, 4) a music store or two, and 5) 'food' of some kind. Good memories, though I rarely go to a mall these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallrats

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