Submitted 9 hours ago by bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works to retrogaming@lemmy.world
Im probably in the very very small minority of people who still love and go to arcades. We are lucky to have 2 really awesome ones in town, one of which has a lot of good old machines, and they repair them too. They have some new ones that are OK too.
Anyway, I dont like that they changed to the dumb card thing. I get it (efficiency, capitalism, it was bound to happen) but it removes another visceral experience in society that was so fun.
Anyway, my old man rant!
I don’t like tokens or cards. I like open play, just pay like $20 for all day access. I’m fortunate to have places like that around. The pay to play model penalizes you for being bad at or new to an arcade title or pinball machine, which mega blows and discourages people from trying out random games they might lose quickly at.
We have a local barcade, but with actually pretty great arcade games. They charge a cover fee, close down to minors early, and charge nothing at the games themselves. It is the best thing ever. Makes the arcade experience honestly better than it was back when it was actually big.
Ive tried explaining what arcades were like in the 80s…kids will never understand.
Yeeeeaaaaah. Kids today are just too busy with their skibidi toilet, and their school shooting drills. We didn’t have either of those things when I was a kid. You know what we had??? Jurassic Park! And Jurassic Park is awesome!
My only problem with the cards is there’s not a good way to say “I’m waiting in line and want next”. I miss just sticking a token or a quarter on the machine to line up. Note, this may have only been applicable for DDR, but it worked, dang it.
Use the card?
I dunno, a quarter or a token isn’t a big deal if it gets lost, but if a card has fifty bucks on it its staying on my person at all times. Also, I’m not sure many people still know what it means in the first place lol
Quarters/Tokens on the machine was a thing for Marvel vs Capcom as well. Always thought it odd Mortal Kombat and King of Fighters didn’t have similar queues.
You would quarter up at every fighting game in my local arcade. Definitely not a Capcom or vs. game only thing.
They should have never gone to them. Arcades should be something you visit with a pocket full of quarters.
Disagree, tokens are fun! I have one from every arcade I’ve ever been to (and that’s what I thought this post was going to be about, taking tokens from arcades) and they all have unique designs and make for great memorabilia.
Plus, logistically, tokens make sense:
The arcade can offer bulk discounts (4 per dollar vs 50 for ten dollars)
The arcade can offer party packages ( I’d rather give my kids’ friends a pot of tokens than a wad of cash)
Tokens reduce the need for cash-on-hand, reducing the risk of theft
But I’m sure the main reason is it’s what I was used to when I was a kid and teen.
They arrived when arcade machines started charging more than one quarter per play. They are there to make it easier to spend money, I mean once you bought them, why not spend them all?
I’m old though.
The only thing I hate about the cards is that most arcades that use it (not all tho) do that bullshit where the cheapest game is an odd number of credits, but you can only buy an even number of credits so you are paying a minimum of $5 for a maximum of a $3 purchase, leaving you with $2 you can’t so shit with.
Off topic rant: county fair rides. My town has a decent-ish county fair every summer, and this past year my son was finally old enough to go on rides. Nothing crazy, but he kept seeing the Ferris wheel when we would drive by, and really wanted to go on it. My wife looked up ticket prices online, and saw that it was 2 credits a person to ride, so that would equate to I think like $6USD for the three of us to take a five minute ride around the wheel. We show up to the fair, and in order to use any ride credits whatsoever, every rider has to have their own ride bracelet. Those cost $2 each. Each bracelet had to be loaded with a minimum of $20 worth of ride credits. Meaning that for my family of three to ride the Ferris wheel one time, which should have cost $6, we would be paying $66. Luckily, my little boy is an absolute trooper, and didn’t go into a conniption fit when we told him we weren’t going to do any rides. But seriously, it blew my mind. It seems like companies are just extracting every possible penny from cherished childhood memories. Don’t even get me started on mall Santas haha
People are too quick to prioritize convenience and not think about the intangibles. The experience is diminished as we race to the bottom of doing everything as fast and efficiently as possible.
This is why arcades (and many other things) have largely disappeared and with it the benefits of an open social space.
Now you game alone in a room with digital socialization instead
Those tokens are unsanitary as all hell. Good riddance.
Everything you touch is “unsanitary as all hell”. Like, you think whatever’s on tokens stops there and isn’t on the machine you’re playing, the door handle you’re turning, the counter you’re touching? In the last hour you’ve handled shit way worse and you’ll handle much more of it before the day’s over.
You realize that people carry wipes and wipe the handles before they play lots of machines.
The tokens have ridges, and are their own separate issue.
Card-based credits allow the arcade operator to offer finer-grained pricing options than tokens that can only be spent in integer amounts. Whether that's a pro or a con is debatable, they can put less popular games on 'sale' to attract players to try them out, or they can gouge you on the hottest new title. It's also very much a way of obfuscating prices so you don't even realize how much you're spending. And are you really getting the best deal by loading your card with the maximum amount of credits at once so they give you a bonus, or is that just how they get you?
In the grand scheme of things though, I'm a lot less bothered by it than I am by the way modern arcades are mostly just gambling for kids now. At least most arcades still keep a few rhythm games in the back, actually I do love that arcade rhythm games are going through a sort of modern renaissance right now, but that's kinda just the only thing still worth going to an arcade for anymore.
I haven’t been to one that uses cards, but I would prefer tokens or actual coins over the card. The only arcade near me is a bar arcade, and all of the machines take quarters. I love it.
RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 3 hours ago
FUCK. OFF. I want to put tokens in the slots and hear the token go CLIPINK. It’s part of the EXPERIENCE.