I started playing arcades in 1975. It was initially mechanical games, like pinballs and shooters, but video games were starting to appear. I got to watch the golden era of arcade video games.
It's rare to find a single quarter arcade these days. I have beaten a few games with just one quarter like Metal Slug, Samurai Showdown, and Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and 2
We had a arcade in town up until last summer that would charge $9 for one hour $12 for 2 hours and $15 unlimited play. You could leave and come back whenever you wanted that day. Glad my son got to experience the arcade.
The biggest quarter muncher that I remember was Gauntlet. Four friends trying to get deeper into the dungeon, each with a stack of quarters replenish their life. There was big pressure to do your part and insert another coin to continue.
My girlfriend and another couple would come prepared to play that with each couple having a $10 roll of quarters. We would feed it all into the machine to create a 'timed' activity and see how far we would get as a group. It was cheaper than each having a drink and lasted much longer. As the levels increased in difficulty, the trick was to be patient, working together.
I remember that game fondly. Didn't see if often though, so never got the chance to let it eat too many quarters. No that honour ended up going to Double Dragon for me, with honourable mentions to Tiger Heli, 1942 and Golden Axe.
In germany it was 1 DM per game (Deuteche Mark - the currency before euro). It was 3 times more worth than a quarter. Around 1990. I was on vacation with my parents at this time in spain and it was same as in USA with 25 peseta (around a quarter). I was playing in the arcades the whole summer vacation 😅
One memory that stuck with me towards the end of the golden arcade era of the 90s was when Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo in an arcade I was at costed 50¢. I also remember Jurassic Park and cruisin' world was like 75¢ to $1
In the late 80s, i would go to an arcade called buttons arcade in syracuse NY. You could get 7 tokens for a dolllar and 40 tokens for 5 dollars. When i would go there, i would spend 2 dollars for 14 tokens and make that last for several hours. 🙂
I worked at Showbiz Pizza in the late 80's and we'd steal a bag of tokens and sell them at the Airport arcade. The airport arcade had a lot of really old machines (Alpine Ski, for example) and they sold tokens 3 for $1. We would explain that we were about to leave and would someone like to buy 6 tokens for $1. We made a killing!
Biggest quarter munchers were the games that had levels and endings. We knew games like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Burgertime had a few single screen stages then repeat ad nauseum so you'd give up eventually because not many cared about high score. Games like TMNT, Double Dragon had a finish and you wanted to finish that game.
After mastering Q*bert on my Atari 8-bit computer with a Black & White TV & the Parker Bros cartridge, I could play Q*bert in the arcade for hours on the same quarter.
In Australia it was 20 cents. In the mid 80s it went up to having to pay 2 X 20c for the first game, and each game hereafter was only 20c - but only if you paid for all your games at once. In the 90s it went to 2$ for 3 games. Jukeboxes used to be 5c a song.... I'm old.
And yes, the coin-per-play encouraged people to come back. The price-for-time model used now keeps people away. The "Level 256" Pac-man retro arcade in Schaumburg, IL was an example of this. No matter how good you played at the games, you couldn't start another one once the time was up :(
Just about everything back then was a quarter, and then most stuff 50 cent around the mid to late 90s. Vending machines, pay phones, slot machines, some fair games, arcade games.
One of the memes or whatever back in the day was the "expert" who could play as long as he wanted on one quarter. I never learned a pattern or played well enough on any game to do that, except sometimes on pinball which could award extra balls and free games.
When i was little i use to watch other people play the Arcade 1st because i only had 1 or 2 quarters in my pocket. if i had a dollar then i was a happy kid at the Arcades! i had a high score for Q-Bert at our Arcade! When you were a kid with one or two quarters you had to take those games serious! As for adults that come in with 5 bucks they could afford to be careless until they come down to their final quarter & then it would be Game On. Whereas for me it was Game On all the time! it was all about that last quarter!
Funny Thing My Dude Some Arcade Machines Did Actually take a dollar like Crazy Taxi, California Speed, San Francisco Rush and Carmagedeon I was a frequenter of Arcade Cabinets for half my life If I had UA-cam Channel 17 years ago I'd Call myself Mr. Arcade Gamer I'd probably be a smaller more consistent channel achieving mild levels of fame before moving Into bigger things but the point Is I've been around Arcade Games for the longest time I know what I'm talking about
I remember going to arcades and playing $1.00 worth of quarters/game tokens. I played games that cost 25 cents per machine. It wasn't until 1983 when I played Star Wars, Spy Hunter, Rampage, Dragon's Lair, etc that cost 50 cents. I remember putting $5.00 for 25 tokens. That was fun. It cost more, but I got to play every different arcade and pinball machine.
this is why Arcades in the 2000's and onward costing a dollar per play fel like a rip off even though from an inflation standpoint thats actually more balanced, theres just a tipping point people are willing to spend on entertainment even if the actual cost isn't that much of an increase, just look pricing of games in the XBLA days 1000 microsoft points was the equivalent to 10$, an amount that feels like a bargin today when you can pay digitally, but when your Microsoft points card was 2000 points, it felt like a rip off to eat up half your points on one purchase despite the same prices, its all in the psychology of it
More than half of the arcade industry back then was produced in japan, they charged 100 yen for almost every game during the 80s, that theory about the games being designed around that 25 cents price is kinda bs. Great video btw.
Back then the machines took tokens instead of quarters in many arcades. This allowed them to manipulate the price per game, but in a good way. Remember the 8 tokens for $1 or 50 tokens for $5? Yeah, more game for the money =)
Most arcades today have gone the way of ticket and chance games. Those however are addictive as well. Whether it's a kid wanting prizes or adults with a competitive side, it works but only in small doses in my opinion. There was always an arcade or pizza shop with that one game that you wanted to play all the time. Now pizza shops where I live have slot machines.
The most unrealistic thing about this video was anyone using a quarter made in 1964 or earlier. They are 90% silver. I’ve never found one in loose change.
I think they had real trouble going to 50¢; it was quite a jump and didn't seem worth it at the start. Maybe they should have tried 4 credits for 75¢ or 5 for $1? Some arcades made you buy tokens to use instead of quarters. I seem to recall some places you might get more tokens for the same dollars spent than quarters. Ideally, arcades could have used that for incremental increases like 33¢ instead of jumping to 50¢ and so on. Year's ago when I went to Dave & Buster's we had to buy a card then put money on it. Each game had a different cost. So basically I didn't know what I was spending, and perhaps that was the trick.
Arcade paradise vr would tell me it was due to laundromats having arcades 😂. Quarters rule. Team kirby games get crazy nowadays too, making people pay real money instead of buying the blasted thing.
This is still true today in the real-money mobile/web skill/gambling* segment of the games industry. *by gambling I mean really low skill or no skill at all like slot machines. Some real money games do need skills to play and actually win, wheather it's Solitaire, bubbles or hyper-casuals game loops.
I used to love going to the mall arcades, when the arcade had like 100 tokens for $10.
I started playing arcades in 1975. It was initially mechanical games, like pinballs and shooters, but video games were starting to appear. I got to watch the golden era of arcade video games.
It's rare to find a single quarter arcade these days. I have beaten a few games with just one quarter like Metal Slug, Samurai Showdown, and Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and 2
beaten? you mean played, right? it is simple impossible to beat MS with one credit...
@@andersonrodrigo63 Metal slug 1 is completely possible to be beaten with 1 credit the sequels I don't know maybe
@@Riz2336 All of them can be done on one credit, but they are all harder than 1.
We had a arcade in town up until last summer that would charge $9 for one hour $12 for 2 hours and $15 unlimited play. You could leave and come back whenever you wanted that day. Glad my son got to experience the arcade.
The biggest quarter muncher that I remember was Gauntlet. Four friends trying to get deeper into the dungeon, each with a stack of quarters replenish their life. There was big pressure to do your part and insert another coin to continue.
My girlfriend and another couple would come prepared to play that with each couple having a $10 roll of quarters. We would feed it all into the machine to create a 'timed' activity and see how far we would get as a group. It was cheaper than each having a drink and lasted much longer. As the levels increased in difficulty, the trick was to be patient, working together.
I remember that game fondly. Didn't see if often though, so never got the chance to let it eat too many quarters. No that honour ended up going to Double Dragon for me, with honourable mentions to Tiger Heli, 1942 and Golden Axe.
Super Sprint was my three player jam. I can't count how many quarters I pumped into that one at the mall. I owned one once, wish I hadn't sold it.
I can't imagine how many quarters I spent on arcade games all those years ago.
But I sure had fun. 😁
In germany it was 1 DM per game (Deuteche Mark - the currency before euro). It was 3 times more worth than a quarter. Around 1990.
I was on vacation with my parents at this time in spain and it was same as in USA with 25 peseta (around a quarter). I was playing in the arcades the whole summer vacation 😅
Nice ending bit. nThe original Star Wars Arcade game was the first video game I ever played though it was a few years old by then.
One memory that stuck with me towards the end of the golden arcade era of the 90s was when Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo in an arcade I was at costed 50¢. I also remember Jurassic Park and cruisin' world was like 75¢ to $1
Mortal Kombat 3 when it first came out was 75 cents. Disgusting, lol. I think I played it once or twice at that price.
The beginning of the end.
Atari Real Drivin' cost a buck too
@@EGarrett01That's odd, every MK3 arcade machine I came across was always 50 cents.
@@marccaselle8108 When it first came out the Sports & Games in North Jersey wanted 75 cents to play that s--t, lol.
In the late 80s, i would go to an arcade called buttons arcade in syracuse NY. You could get 7 tokens for a dolllar and 40 tokens for 5 dollars.
When i would go there, i would spend 2 dollars for 14 tokens and make that last for several hours. 🙂
I used to live in the Seneca Falls at that time, and Time Out Arcade in the Auburn Mall was always my go-to spot as a kid.
I worked at Showbiz Pizza in the late 80's and we'd steal a bag of tokens and sell them at the Airport arcade. The airport arcade had a lot of really old machines (Alpine Ski, for example) and they sold tokens 3 for $1. We would explain that we were about to leave and would someone like to buy 6 tokens for $1. We made a killing!
Biggest quarter munchers were the games that had levels and endings. We knew games like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Burgertime had a few single screen stages then repeat ad nauseum so you'd give up eventually because not many cared about high score. Games like TMNT, Double Dragon had a finish and you wanted to finish that game.
All you needed was a pocket full of quarters and a dime to call home
The plight of every 80s/90s kid... Do I use my only quarter for a gumball or 30 seconds of Toki?
After mastering Q*bert on my Atari 8-bit computer with a Black & White TV & the Parker Bros cartridge, I could play Q*bert in the arcade for hours on the same quarter.
In Australia it was 20 cents. In the mid 80s it went up to having to pay 2 X 20c for the first game, and each game hereafter was only 20c - but only if you paid for all your games at once. In the 90s it went to 2$ for 3 games.
Jukeboxes used to be 5c a song.... I'm old.
And yes, the coin-per-play encouraged people to come back. The price-for-time model used now keeps people away. The "Level 256" Pac-man retro arcade in Schaumburg, IL was an example of this. No matter how good you played at the games, you couldn't start another one once the time was up :(
Just about everything back then was a quarter, and then most stuff 50 cent around the mid to late 90s. Vending machines, pay phones, slot machines, some fair games, arcade games.
In finland it depended. It used to be 5 marks but i remember my local arcade having a metal slug cabinet you could play with 1 mark
One of the memes or whatever back in the day was the "expert" who could play as long as he wanted on one quarter. I never learned a pattern or played well enough on any game to do that, except sometimes on pinball which could award extra balls and free games.
When i was little i use to watch other people play the Arcade 1st because i only had 1 or 2 quarters in my pocket. if i had a dollar then i was a happy kid at the Arcades! i had a high score for Q-Bert at our Arcade! When you were a kid with one or two quarters you had to take those games serious! As for adults that come in with 5 bucks they could afford to be careless until they come down to their final quarter & then it would be Game On. Whereas for me it was Game On all the time! it was all about that last quarter!
Funny Thing My Dude Some Arcade Machines Did Actually take a dollar like Crazy Taxi, California Speed, San Francisco Rush and Carmagedeon I was a frequenter of Arcade Cabinets for half my life If I had UA-cam Channel 17 years ago I'd Call myself Mr. Arcade Gamer I'd probably be a smaller more consistent channel achieving mild levels of fame before moving Into bigger things but the point Is I've been around Arcade Games for the longest time I know what I'm talking about
5 dollars at an arcade in the 80s was pure heaven.
I remember going to arcades and playing $1.00 worth of quarters/game tokens. I played games that cost 25 cents per machine. It wasn't until 1983 when I played Star Wars, Spy Hunter, Rampage, Dragon's Lair, etc that cost 50 cents. I remember putting $5.00 for 25 tokens. That was fun. It cost more, but I got to play every different arcade and pinball machine.
this is why Arcades in the 2000's and onward costing a dollar per play fel like a rip off even though from an inflation standpoint thats actually more balanced, theres just a tipping point people are willing to spend on entertainment even if the actual cost isn't that much of an increase, just look pricing of games in the XBLA days 1000 microsoft points was the equivalent to 10$, an amount that feels like a bargin today when you can pay digitally, but when your Microsoft points card was 2000 points, it felt like a rip off to eat up half your points on one purchase despite the same prices, its all in the psychology of it
More than half of the arcade industry back then was produced in japan, they charged 100 yen for almost every game during the 80s, that theory about the games being designed around that 25 cents price is kinda bs.
Great video btw.
Back then the machines took tokens instead of quarters in many arcades. This allowed them to manipulate the price per game, but in a good way. Remember the 8 tokens for $1 or 50 tokens for $5? Yeah, more game for the money =)
The ones that ate most of my quarters were any of the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat titles.
I stopped going to arcades when they started charging $1
Most arcades today have gone the way of ticket and chance games. Those however are addictive as well. Whether it's a kid wanting prizes or adults with a competitive side, it works but only in small doses in my opinion. There was always an arcade or pizza shop with that one game that you wanted to play all the time. Now pizza shops where I live have slot machines.
It took him a while to be able to get that quarter back on track but companies implemented loot boxes and microtransactions
Joust ate all my quarters so many times I could've owned my own cabinet
The first game I played with any regularity was Galaga at my local mom & pop convenience store in the mid 80s.
Once video gaming came to the home, I found much more interest in Pinball when out. Sometimes you were on fire, other times it was best to just quit.
Great video
Loved it good documentary
The most unrealistic thing about this video was anyone using a quarter made in 1964 or earlier. They are 90% silver. I’ve never found one in loose change.
I think they had real trouble going to 50¢; it was quite a jump and didn't seem worth it at the start. Maybe they should have tried 4 credits for 75¢ or 5 for $1? Some arcades made you buy tokens to use instead of quarters. I seem to recall some places you might get more tokens for the same dollars spent than quarters. Ideally, arcades could have used that for incremental increases like 33¢ instead of jumping to 50¢ and so on.
Year's ago when I went to Dave & Buster's we had to buy a card then put money on it. Each game had a different cost. So basically I didn't know what I was spending, and perhaps that was the trick.
Arcade paradise vr would tell me it was due to laundromats having arcades 😂. Quarters rule. Team kirby games get crazy nowadays too, making people pay real money instead of buying the blasted thing.
Do! Run Run got the majority of my quarters in 1984.
I remember a Shakey's Pizza with a game that took dimes to play, I think it was Ms Pacman or maybe Joust.
"💯Great-Interesting video!"👍
Here it was guilder equivalent to a dollar.
How half dollars are never a thing in the US and Canada is beyond me...
there were some machines that took dollar bills.
😂 at a Pizza Hut, i pumped in $5.00 in quarters to get past a level. Nope the game won my money. 😅 Dad was mad about that when i told him. 😵💫🤣
It used to be 10p back here in the UK.
This is still true today in the real-money mobile/web skill/gambling* segment of the games industry.
*by gambling I mean really low skill or no skill at all like slot machines. Some real money games do need skills to play and actually win, wheather it's Solitaire, bubbles or hyper-casuals game loops.
Was a great time !
Easy answer: It's the biggest coin, i.e., it's worth the most, and it's easy to part ways with one. Maybe two. Or three....
EVERY game that allowed continue was a quarter eater to me
Why is this video captioned like it's a TikTok?
Normal captions would be better so they can be turned off.
AI images stick out like a sore thumb and detract from an otherwise good video.
agreed
That silver 1955 quarter is worth a lot more than 25 cents
I was the biggest quarter muncher in my life. The biggest Quarter Pounder muncher 🫃