you try to not play any arcade if you haven't seen anyone else play first, that cost you money :)
My experience with Dragons Lair is that it was a nice game to watch, and a bad game to play, it was expensive and as someone else said in the thread it requires you to memorize the movements, it was never random
As an interactive method of storytelling, I think they're fine (but not my thing). I think the problems really emerge when you try to combine them with the revenue-driving elements of an arcade machine - the challenges need to be designed to kill you so you'll keep paying rather than giving you choice or staking you in to the story further.