That was by design, actually. A lot of the old arcade games were like that.
It was to get people to either quit after a bit of playing so a new person could step in and give the machine money, or have the person who lost at the hard level put more money in.
Otherwise at just a quarter the machines become unprofitable. Just capitalism things.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Yeah. It was a stupidly hard game. With unlimited lives (ie unlimited quarters) the entire thing is only a 25 minute play through.