> No it was still easy without free play. The trick is watching other people play. > Don't just blow through all your quarters.
Most games were hard and had the settings maxed out a bit. That is until the quarter flow slowed down. Then the operators would loosen up the game a bit to draw in people to play it at all.
99.9% of these games are designed to eat your quarter fast (typically in 1-5 mins). But not too fast or you dont drop another coin. Just enough to give you that feeling 'your good at it'. But not good enough to drop a quarter and marathon play it for 6 hours on one quarter.
If you rock into a newer arcade you will notice most of them are set on fairly easy settings and to free play. The economics of video arcades do not exist anymore. They make most of the money on beer and food and 'wrist bands' or a bucket of tokens. Back in the day most operators wanted it to ROI in a max of 3 months. ROI was a very fine line of 'this game is too hard' (no one plays except the marathon runners) to 'I am really good at it just one more quarter' (everyone tries to play but are actually rubbish at the game). Basically if it was too easy the operators would spin them out and get rid of them. The ones that were hard enough but people kept dropping coins into lasted. Take something like the original gauntlet. The game is actually fairly simple to play. But you could *easy* go thru 2-3 bucks playing it. You had the occasional mythical guy who figured out how to play as warrior and could play all the levels on one quarter. Those people are rare.
If you truly think 'these games are easy'. Think again. Then I challenge you to fire up smashtv v8. I will even let you set the game to easy and 5 lives. Heck you can even go watch a bunch of vids on youtube. Now with 1 quarter drop make it to the pleasuredome. I am fairly good at the game and I am usually lucky to make it the mid second wave. Consider that game is little more than a remake of robotron. Games like SmashTV were front and center in most arcades that had them right next to street fighter, mortal kombat, and T2. There was a reason for that. They were challenging but not too sadistic (like say TMNT for the NES).
Now I will give you some of the older games could be 'gamed'. If you knew the pattern. But learning that pattern was usually a process of *many* quarters. You get a game with a decent RNG and it didnt matter. The earlier games didnt have that. So you could pull that off to some extent. But usually by the time people figured out the patterns the game was on its way out anyway. As long plays equaled 'sell it off and put something else new in'.
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Re: That's just.....retarded.
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