For that Monopoly game, "Start Feature" is just the "Feature." It is a concept usually seen in slot machines. If it is like slots, the feature is where you can win a set range of money during the auto-playing "feature," and it is really the only time you could possibly win larger amounts of money on a slot.
One thing I think that was lost in the switch to digital card swipes is that, at least at the Chuck E Cheese I went to when I was young, you could use those tokens as more plays
As someone from the UK, these machines were the highlight of many childhood seaside holidays! I never really won anything massive on them (other than coins that went straight back into the same machine) but I've never played a redemption/token coin pusher - every one I've ever played takes in real money and has real money and mixed prizes inside. My favourites were the machines where you dropped a coin in an angled chute that fired the coin onto the pusher. It's definitely fascinating to see the differences between countries in these machines though, great video as always!
idk if this makes it better or worse: this is actually a tournament, which is why they're all button mashing and focusing so hard, so they can get maximum spins
@@RagdollWraith It makes it worse, actually. The fact that a tournament for a game of pure chance is bad enough, but the fact they are so focused on it, and just mashing one button continuously when obviously pressing the button does nothing while the wheels are spinning and they could just start mashing as the final wheel begins to slow is just sad. Even sadder is that they are all boomers, and even when they aren't in a tournament, I guarantee their behavior isn't much different, and it's an absolute tragedy that their idea of fun is, "Press this button to watch lights flash while deleting your familial wealth and leaving nothing to your children or grand children. And don't forget to reverse mortgage your house for a free spin!"
So glad you covered these! Yeah, the Avengers and the Willy Wonka ones are my main go to personally, I genuinely enjoy coin pushers that offer cards in the mix. Love your content, seen all your videos and am always excited to see you upload!
Never, ever spend a play to get a card that has already fallen and is stuck. You've already won it. Always call an attendant over (unless you believe waiting is going to cost you money elsewhere) The coins spitting out is just the mechanism for when a card blocks a coin from recycling. Usually you will get a coin or two credit when you put it back in the machine. A not too bad strategy is to save these coins for when you have those rare occasions where a play or two will finish off a card but you don't need to do the full upsell.
I’ve gotten a few good “crashes” on the angry birds game. It’s so satisfying when that big stack falls down. The only downside is that you only get points for coins going down the center third of the ledge, meaning a handful of all the coins won’t increase your tickets.
Ayyyy, thanks for covering these! I love coin dozers. yeah coin pushers are never going to be truly reliable, but they're fun and unlike a lot of arcade games you can at least visibly see the rough approximation of their "payout window" based on how stacked the edge of the board is or how many of that game's unique gimmick features are lit up/littering the coin field. Also seeing physical coins get knocked off the edge makes the dopamine go *wheeee*
This video just felt dystopic, this is just gambling with extra steps and no cash payout. I guess there's a bit of skill involved in these games, but still. Good breakdown on the machines regardless. Very well done video.
As someone who works at an arcade prize counter, I have one major tip if you want to play ANY kind of card coin pusher and that is to quite literally "stalk" the coin pusher as others play it. Some people don't know this but the technicians of the games are the ones who control the cards to make it "more fair" for others to play it. As someone who's counted and sorted cards out of the Spongebob coin pusher, I can 100% tell you if you were to try playing the Spongebob coin pusher (at my location at least) versus playing the Star Trek coin pusher (which the rare card is the Tribble), you'd have BETTER luck getting a Tribble than you would /ever/ getting Gary from Spongebob. Last time I sorted out the cards, there was only 6 Gary cards in a batch of 325 IF we included gary into the count. Your best odds of getting a 6 in 325? Roughly around 1.6%, myself personally? I've only ever seen ONE gary card in the actual machine up for plays and I've worked at this arcade for a while now. Our machine is set to the default jackpot of 3k tickets while Star Trek is set to a jackpot of 2.5k. If you had the option of Star Trek or spongebob as your card game? Go for Star trek, just trust me on this one.
I really enjoy your videos! When I was a kid my go-to redemption machine was the ball dropping ones. The ones where you time it so they fall cleanly into the slot, or else they bounce around. It was that and the one dinosaur game where you aim and either pull back a lever or (my favorite) have a pad you slam your fist down to launch a ball into different hoops.
Ive got a Wizard of Oz one in my local Main Event locations, and I get a good kick out of these. First of all, any arcade game that drops you something physical that isn’t tickets is cool, even if it’s just a card with a character on them, it’s nice and collecting them can feel like a neat merger between card collecting and arcade games. (Minecraft Dungeons: Arcade Edition does this too it’s AWESOME!) The really good thing is that the Wizard of Oz manufacturers or the arcade managers were big time smart, as it’s a lot more skill based than luck based. Not only are the coins amiable, but the bonus system is easy to chain a few times in a row. This speedruns the entire card collecting process as it’s much easier to aim for specific cards and get enough throws to make a difference in the position of said cards. The arcade uses a multi sided one too so it is my go to for having an ironically consistent good time.
wizard of Oz pusher is great, unfortunately the arcade purposefully only has like one of the last character card per the hundreds in the machine, so you can't complete the set for bonus tickets. :\
oh my god from the beginning i was reminded of the coin ski slope game and was going down this mental road of nostalgia during game 1 then it was mentioned and it was *chefs kiss* hit right in the dopamine receptors
The cost to enjoyment ratio on coin pushers is typically better on coin pushers compared to a lot of other "rigged" arcade machines. With all the gimmicks and at the very least a reliable payout based on time played, plus the amount of time you can get on the machine for your investment, coin pushers are my faves.
Finally, the coin pusher video! I personally play the Wizard of Oz coin pusher the most and it pays pretty well if you know when to go in. Keep up the hard work!
I'm glad that this video got recommended to me, I've recently become more interested in the technical side of redemption games, so this channel is great!
I just followed you a bit ago and I am so excited when I see you post a new vid 😌 I live somewhere where arcades are nonexistent and I like the humor in your videos and commentary. Thanks!
About 16 years ago, I was in Italy with my family for vacation, there were a lot of arcades, but there was one arcade where there was a coin pusher where the coins you used were actually also the ones to use in other arcade machines. This meant that if you waited until there was a good chance you were getting some coins getting pushed off, you could play more arcade games. That was a great vacation.
I’m personally a huge fan of the Wizard of Oz coin pusher. The payouts are smaller, but you have control of the drop arm and the only bonus they give is extra plays (often awarded ever play and a half), which means that you’re less likely to get a bonus you just can’t use or lands unhelpfully and you bleed money slower and focus on moving individual cards. For the same amount of plays, I can sit at the WoZ machine for half an hour vs like 5-10 minutes for the Willy Wonka one
YES, finally the coin pusher vid, amazing work as always. I am a huge fan of the avengers coin pusher. Would love to see you talk about the arcade simulator game on steam “the coin game”
Just found your channel and i just have to say i love your videos! i've binged watched them all and it throws me back to when i was on holiday in America and got to experience an arcade (in Sweden we dont really have arcades and the differences between swedish ones and ones in america is so massive)
Your video are top notch! Love your content for good ol' redemption arcades. New suggestion! Not sure if you covered it but I would like to hear if you ever talked about those claw machines with plushies on them soon.
i love the spongebob coinpusher, getting the timing right and getting into the rhythm to string coin and play bonuses feels great. but yeah ive never gotten the 15 bonus so i figured it was rigged like that, having confirmation is interesting to hear though
I've toured quite a few arcades in China and I know abt a lot of coin/ball pushers that go for even crazier aestethics, plus a whole different type where you shoot down moving targets by aiming with a dial! this video reminded me of those :D I remember a spongebob coin pusher where you play minigames after hitting certain islands, and a coin crasher where you need to down 3 same-colored chips to attack enemies (I notice the chinese ones have you playing several minigames before getting close to the super jackpot which goes into the quadruple/quintuple digits)
Yoo, I was hoping to see this video in my feed! Excellent video. I thought talking about the legality of these machines was really interesting, because I only had a vague idea of it. I never knew that it extended even to how manufacturers call their own machines.
My dad called these tuppence machines because they're mostly filled with 2 penny coins in the UK. I love these things because you can really stretch your pound. Usually you get cheap plastic crap but sometimes you can get sweets or small amounts of tickets, usually 10-50 bundled tickets.
Yay coin pusher, andd my comment is at the end. I bought a pot of gold real arcade pusher for my house because they're so fun but definitely money eaters (but that's not a problem when you have the key). It's quite great having one since I can set up different scenarios and see when a payout is likely (by the way, you want as few coin layers on the play field as possible, more likely for your single coin to actually push them over). The spongebob game is quite fun. There was an arcade in Tennessee where I had great luck and got an entire collection of cards along with a bunch of dupes. I cashed n the dupes and kept the full set to put in my own coin pusher. Then I went to another arcade in the same city and had terrible luck on their spongebob machine. Oh well, I still got decorations for my machine.
Only just discovered your channel, and as someone who works at an arcade, it's super interesting to see an outside view on these games. I'd love to see you cover games based on board games, i think that could be a neat topic.
The machines you covered are all recent recent, and come from a new generation of machines, that resemble traditional coin pushers, but completely discard their most important design elements, in order to reward tickets for 'acts of skill', and take the focus away from the old focus, which was the very deceptive idea of "you could put in only one coin, and win many coins in return'. This new design philosophy is probably what makes them legal to operate. It's worth noting that traditionaly, coins that tip over the edge into the prize hole would simply fall into a tray at the bottom, for the player to collect. They were the "prize". Later, arcades started sweetening the pot, by placing physical prizes, or chips that can be redeemed to tickets ontop of the coins. The idea is that you won the prizes or chips, in addition to any coins that you can tip into the prize hole. The older generation of coin pushers are banned in a number of places, because they're designed around a number of optical illusions, which trick the player into thinking that the game is fairer than it actually is. Most machines from before the 2000s not only have a hidden lip, but also have hidden 'drainage holes' at the side of the coin pile. As coins are pushed forwards, the lip stops the momentum of coins from spilling over into the prize hole, but because the momuntem has to go somewhere, it instead pushes the coins at the side of the pile into the drainage holes. Ironically, these older machines are also usually S-Tier, in terms of prize redemption. Most players tend to time their coin drops to co-incide with the movement of the platform, which means very few coins are added to the machine, and the "wave" created every time coins drop onto the lower platform is very small. In this case, around 70% of coins that drop into the machine are pushed into the drainage holes, and 30% or less ever make it into the prize hole. If the machine has a way to insert multiple coins at once, or to insert many coins in a very short space of time, then the winning strategy is to insert as many coins, as quickly as possible, regardless of the timing. This means that the top platform starts to acrue a huge ammount of coins, and when a drop onto the bottom platform happens, the effect is a very large "wave" of coins all dropping at once, and creating a huge ammount of momentum, almost always enough to move coins over the lip, and tip the odds in the player's favor, meaning anywhere from 50% or 70% of the coins move forwards into the prize hole, rather than sideways into the drainage hole. The wave of momentum carries with it any prizes that are placed ontop of the coins. This makes coin pushers the Kiddy Casino equivelant of Blackjack. It's never, ever possible to beat the house, and win more coins than you deposit, but you can potentially win back 50% of your deposit, while pushing forward any prizes that are placed ontop of the coins. If the items ontop were high value enough, and you could approach the game with the pholosophy that any coins won or lost in the process are irrelevant, then these were -the- machines to grind back in the old days. Amazing channel, keep up the good work :)
Kinda new to the channel, but I work on a lot of old arcade machines, video, and redemption. The legality of coin pushers depends on if they actually give out the coins put into it. In my state, if it's any form of U.S. currency that is dispensed, then they are considered illegal. However, if they give out tokens or just dispense tickets, then they are perfectly legal. It's a weird legal loop hole in the wording of the law against gambling. Also, the old monopoly pushers with the start usually have a jackpot floor depending on the programming of the machine if I remember right. We used to have one way back when, but with all the parts and games discontinued it wasn't worth keeping on the floor.
I've never seen coin pushers with ticket payouts, so to me this video was kind of fascinating to see this type of machine in a configuration I'm completely unfamiliar with. But I suppose that's probably because I don't go to arcades very often these days. The only ones I've ever seen were (probably not-so-legal) machines that don't take tokens. And usually, they were in some kind of traveling amusement operation, like attractions at a festival or fair of some kind. The ones I'm familiar with would have quarters instead of tokens, and instead of big chips or plastic pieces, they'd have rolls of quarters as a kind of "jackpot" prize. I guess a few of them might have had something similar to the plastic pieces that you could redeem for one of those big carnival prizes like a giant stuffed animal, but generally, it was mostly the quarters. It's been a long time since I've been to one of these types of events, so maybe they have dried up in recent years. But I do remember them being very common at small local events like that.
Well now, here's a channel I didn't know I needed in my life. I used to be crazy about arcade prizes as a kid...well, except my taste was trash and I wanted the cheap stuff you could only see in arcade ticket redemption prize areas. (Plastic skull rings! I still have a few somewhere.) As a kid, I never saw the point of coin pushers when I felt I could reliably get more tickets from other games for less money. The motion of the coins always seemed way too small on a per coin basis to be worth it. Meanwhile, you ever seen a redemption game where the player is given rubber ball(s?) they gotta try to roll down a very slight ramp shielded by plexiglass to get the ball into specific slots to make a wheel spin (possibly a specific number of Wheel of Fortune-looking slots depending on which slot you got the ball into)? The only difficulty there was that the ball would very definitely bounce off the plastic slot dividers erratically if your aim was just a little bit off, which was how I ended up getting the jackpot reliablly as a kid. (Didn't even need to stick my arm under the plexiglass to try to make it easier.) I think you could even use just strategy and skill to get whatever you wanted the machine to do done. No luck at all, and probably not that much skill either. It was kinda like a strategic and slower paced skee-ball, if I remember correctly. This might explain why I never saw that machine in other arcades, since it might have been too easy to win at. (Or it could be because this would have been two decades ago when documentation wasn't online. Would have been neat to see that machine's documentation today but I couldn't even remember the name.) Anyway, if you ever see one then I ask for your opinion on it. Was it skill or was I just lucky enough to have to get the staff to write me a note with a value of 1000+ (or was it 2000+? I should have saved it instead of getting a prize) tickets cos the machine ran dry? Anyway, Subscribed!
For game 2 the closest you’ll get at the moment for a manual is likely the ticket circus one as that’s what it’s the most similar to. The version with marbles you showcased was a prototype version of a rethemed diamonds and pearls but they switched it to coins for release hence why you can’t find the other version
Really appreciate this insight! Looking at Ticket Circus vs Quarry Quest, they look almost the same, minus the Cyclone game. This bootleg parallel would have been very poetic with 7 Grand Dad.
I find that all the arcades in Melbourne have one of those Andamiro redeem machines. It has some annoying sound effects and when one of the arcades rearraged the venue and it faced towards the staff kiosk it was quickly turned down
I just ran into your channel and probably binged all the videos. If you take requests, my favorite ticket game I can consistently get jackpots on is Golden Gear.
Of the style of coin pusher similar to the Spongebob one, my favorite is Konami's Smash Stadium. Instead of trying to get the tokens through a ferris wheel of bonuses, any time a coin gets pushed into a specific bonus gate next to the edge of the board, a wheel on the screen spins and offers up bonus plays (at a much more generous rate), card drops, ball drops, etc. If a ball drops, a roulette happens with the chance to have balls enter the center of the machine, outfitted with bumpers, and each bump moves the conveyor belt carrying the cards needed to complete the set. I've only ever seen it at Round 1, I don't know if they have a specific monopoly (no pun intended) on that machine, but it's not bad if you ever get to try it!
No way! I just asked if you could cover these. I'm so glad you did it. I was never able to secure the toto card for the wizard of oz pusher and even considered buying one of off ebay.
My family's go-to is the spider-man machine shown in this video! We can generally get a couple hundred tickets in a play or two, especially if you can tell when it's set up right. The rapid auto-shot basically guarantees one of the spins on the big ball wheel unless you're really unlucky, so we try to aim for a machine as close to that as possible, especially if the spider sense is at 4 lights. We've only ever gotten fairly low bonus spins though, so I don't know if that part's rigged or if we're just unlucky.
There’s also a DC superheroes version of the spongebob machine. My experience is that your best off layering your coins on top of the stack, rather than on the pusher. It’s more of a long game kind of technique, but ultimately results in the most amount of cards dropped.
Amazing content!!! You should get more views than you do (I know redemption games are a niche topic, but still). If I were to a suggest a video, what about one dedicated to games based on game shows (Price is Right cups, Deal or No Deal, Wheel of Fortune wheel, etc).
I saw the second video suggested and so I wanted to watch the first, and I'm already hooked 2 minutes in. I dont ride on the negativity, I love arcades but I especially love coin crashers. I know they're terrible but the dopamine rush is what gets me. I loooove seeing those stacks.
Got recommended this and looked at the channel and went "I must watch all of these videos" before getting to this one. SpongeBob is my goat so I love coin pushers
17:59 Hot tip: Most machines account for this to happen. There's usually still a coin slot on the machine, despite your arcade using cards. Put the token in the coin slot, and you get some free plays. Oh, and if a card gets stuck somehow, just get an attendant to open it up and get it for you. Attendants are usually very nice, and do things like that.
Honestly, I remember when I was 10 or 11, I lived next door to a Valero Gas Station that had a coin pusher near the front door. A fond memory was me winning $2 from one out of luck.
I feel like the long ticket wait is a lost but genius marketing trick. You're in the shop longer, you're taking in the sights and sounds of other people having fun and machines going nuts, while you're waiting for something you can cash in if you only had 4500 more. I can see that pushing the young not-gambling addict to throw a few more bucks down the slot.
No Flying Dutchman cards on the Spongebob machine for you? II play it here in the UK and our cardss dont have barcodes. I have quite a few. I've never seen a Spongebob episode actually, but these machines, something draws me to them. Also, great video style, got yourself a new sub.
I think it could be interesting to talk about some old types of games. There is this one that is basically a roulette wheel with uneven spacing and different colors, where you select a color before it spins and the colors with the smaller sections have higher payouts. Also the popcorn arcade game where you catch pingpong balls had an old feel to it.
Cool video I also have a request. Could you look at the redemption game known as "Dizzy Chicken" by Bay Tek Games? Id love to see your input on it and where you rank it.
Old coin pushers are the best. I was able "lightly" nudge and kick them to move the money. Gotta look for the ones with basic wooden cabinets and poorly fitting plexiglass.
holy shit, the monopoly coin pushers are ones I saw at nickel city. I always remembered them because of the tv feature and that they replaced the claw machjine that had coupons you could redeem
I've never really been a big arcade grinder, but as someone who just goes to play games for the sake of them, I've gotta say that coin pushers are part of my top 3 favourite arcade games, up there with Skeeball and Pinball. I don't fully know what it is about them, but I've just always loved coin pushers. The newer generation of them like the Willy Wonka one have become a go-to game for me whenever I pop into the arcade at Cedar Point. I've actually been thinking for a long while about building my own coin pusher to just have in my room, since none of my nearby arcades have any variants of one
I grew up playing coin pushers in seaside arcades here in England, when I stayed in Japan for a bit recently I found myself hooked to medal games because of how intricate and addictive they are, having slot mechanics, giant rotating screens and arcade card (Aime, E-amusement and Nesica) profile saving so you’re grinding a coin pusher for more content to collect or display when you play/get jackpot chances that’s only legal because medals have no value or prize worth! It’s insane thinking about a 16 to 32 player coin pusher game taking up half an arcade floor but that would never be legal or viable in the west
You going to take a look at Blips and Chitz? It's my absolute favourite coin pusher in terms of ticket farming. I must have been packing so much candy in my pockets after a few games that it took over two minutes to take it all out.
I'm a little late, but "features" are present among lots of online casino slot machine games, and work in a similar way. If you meet whatever criteria is needed to activate a feature, it throws you into a special sub-game with 10-15 "free-spins" and lot's of bet multipliers. Getting a feature is the main way you win big payouts on these types of slot games.
I remember one time I went to Dave and Busters, and some arcade goblin was on the Spongebob coin pusher all day. I finally got a chance to play when he left, but it turns out he left his card on the machine to try and "reserve his spot" while he used the bathroom or something so he got all pissy about me using it while he left.
Round One near me has a couple of those Marble Carnival ones, I have a bit of a tingle towards it. It feels more like Pachinko to me, where a "plain-ol'" coin pusher feels Slot Machine-y. It really only is good when it's already been pretty well played-up, but it usually seems to be. I hit the jackpot multi-ball super release once, felt like it took at least a smidgen of skill, but mostly it was totally luck. A lot of fun sensory dopamine rewards, though. Very, very lively.
Personally, I love coin dozers. I go to arcades regularly, and they're usually the first games I gravitate towards. They're really fun and satisfying. That's really all there is.
Regarding the marbles- arcades are still pretty big in Japan compared to the US but they also have much stricter gambling laws. The metal balls come from Japanese pachinko machines where redeeming balls for prizes was some sort of legal loophole. Also, if the edge is slightly curved up and the tokens are sitting on top of the balls, it will let the balls effectively act as bearings for the much larger but lighter tokens. Balls will slide underneath and off the edge while the tokens stay relatively stationary on top without ever actually going off the edge. Diminishing actual payout while giving the illusion of a larger opportunity.
these are definitely the machines designed for the parents to sit at while the kids are doing other things. its always the parents on them! (my mom enjoys the star trek one when we went to d&b recently). It's also one of the few things you can get physical rewards as in cards now after tickets moved to digital, so there is some more 'umph' from getting these even if mathematically its not the best return. its not the worst return either especially if you don't have the reflexes for pop the lock or other more technical games.
I personally like the sarcophagus coin pusher one. Where it has only one pushing objective on a predetermined rail that resets after the reward is claimed and isn't not one of those sly cheeky ones that you have to push all the way off the edge that can use additional slanted coins or something to confuse the person. The reward however is usually on the intermediary/low side making it easier to replay the game rather than these token collecting games that is of a popular IP to lull in other plays. I think the popular one that I saw was the Plinko coin pusher one. I haven't been in an arcade in some time so I don't know what the trendy ones are now but it isn't surprising to me to see that IPs have taken over the coin pusher arcade market.
If you're ever in Northeast Pennsylvania during the summer might I recommend visiting the arcades at Knoebels Amusement Park They're all coin operated and have some vintage machines like pop-a-ball The only problem is that one of the arcades hasn't been consistently open because of staffing issues
One of my favorite older coin pushers is the Wizard of Oz machine, but my favorite newer one is Angry Birds coin crash. I’m surprised yet happy it made an appearance!
My go-to arcade machine at the local pizza joint is the coin pusher that features _balls_ It's _very_ similar to the spider-man one shown at 19:57 , (I imagine same manufactuer and all that) except that the one I'm referring to calls the balls "pearls", and the small balls are white to reflect that fact, and also the large balls go into a "ball spins around and settles into a pocket thing" when gotten. (That's the best name for it that my brain could muster, sorry). Also: yeah, I don't have any idea what it's called, haha. In general I've seen a LOT of these rubber-ball coin pusher machines in local arcades, and they all seem to have very unique minigames/goals for the large orange balls. I've yet to see any two machines (with different branding) have the same minigame. A video on these types of machines all to their own might a bit much to ask, but I would CERTAINLY like to see one featured in the future. Speaking of; I'm new around here and I subscribed instantly and also this channel is my new obsession. Don't send help; I'm actually having a marvelous time.
We have the wonka machine at our arcade and it has a 3.5k ticket return for a full set, which ends up being a pretty good return for the amount of plays it takes to collect all the characters. How often golden tickets pay out however don't seem to be very reliable, so my partner and I just check the machines each time we go incase anyone has left golden tickets in them The arcade does have one of the card redeeming machines and you have to feed the cards one at a time and it makes an obnoxious cartoon "slip" sound each time you put a card in 😅. You can also return coins that got accidentally dispensed with cards. Also if something gets stuck in one of the machine mechanisms, arcade staff may be happy to help you get it out
About the transition away from physical tickets - if memory serves, many games would allow you to continue playing while the tickets dispensed. It may be the cynic in me talking, but I feel like arcades used the ticket dispensing time as a way to subtly suggest that you continue playing, especially when you're the lucky winner of a larger jackpot - "hey, you won, but the tickets are gonna take a while to come out - why not keep playing while you wait?"
I played that Monopoly machine in Wildwood, NJ last summer. I hit the Feature twice. The first was for around 1,500, the second much less. I had to keep calling the attendants over because I ran the machine out of tickets and they kept getting jammed in the dispenser ^^'
Coin pushers are amazing because they are extremely cruel. As a child, you are presented something so enticing; the alluring visage of coins stacked precariously just above the goal. "Well these are just PRIMED to fall! I bet just one coin will be enough!" You tell yourself. But once you put that coin in and it neatly slots itself beneath the stack instead of pushing it over. You are taught two lessons. That the physics of objects being pushed beneath other objects is way more complicated than you realize... And that just because something has its entire process on show, to present an aire of fairness. Doesn't mean it's fair.
17:34 Wizard of Oz, the first of these types of machines, Toto was the rare card in the set. The machine also had "Junk Cards" at one point, cards that didn't help with completing the set
I’m not sure where you’re located, but my local FatCats (they have a bunch of locations) has a card redeeming machine for the spongebob pusher. A year ago the spongebob machine got removed and they replaced the redemption machine with a different one for a marvel themed pusher.
I work as an attendant in a redemption arcade and it makes a lot of sense to find out the games I saw as borderline gambling are actually borderline illegal. Also, I was reading through the manual for the Angry Birds game earlier today looking for a specific error code when I discovered that the Angry Birds game has a "New Jersey" mode that just does the upselling plays thing mentioned at 16:05, except it doesn't advertise it anywhere outside of the game. It also removes the timer for dropping coins and saves plays in the event of a power outage. I'm not sure why this is a thing, but it might have to do with the fact that coin pushers aren't fully illegal in New Jersey.
You should take a look at the XL Bubble Bobble "Puzzle Bobble" game. I really love it, and my girlfriend loved bubble bobble as a child. But those stupid XL games with their chunky LED screens are so hard to look at, it makes significant payouts difficult. I think the highest we got was 80 something lines.
For me personally, I never play the SpongeBob game (or really any coin pusher) for tickets. I just really want the cards. Not to redeem, just to collect them. Still got some from the various years I did the SpongeBob one.
I discovered this channel like a week ago and was wondering why you hadn't done a coin pusher video yet. Our local Pizza Ranch has the Angry Birds and Avengers ones
Pretty sure the legalities have to do with a couple things. The ones in arcades are not legal tender coins being pushed nor won. I remember arcades back in the 90s used to have quarters and when it pushed coins over you would win the quarters. You would also see these in bars and such. Packed with quarters and bills that could be pushed off the edge. These are the ones illegal in those states. The old pushers you see in arcades now just use tokens. Usually there's a way to earn tickets from the tokens, like your Monopoly having a "feature". Most modern pushers don't actually drop coins to the player, they just recycle back into the dispenser. If you're not spending legal tender coins and winning legal tender coins, it isn't gambling in the eyes of the law.
I remember playing these in the uk early 2000s. The "prices" were 5-20 pound notes, and a dude I knew lurked around the arcades to snipe when stuff got to the edge. Making minor profits on his allowance.
For that Monopoly game, "Start Feature" is just the "Feature." It is a concept usually seen in slot machines. If it is like slots, the feature is where you can win a set range of money during the auto-playing "feature," and it is really the only time you could possibly win larger amounts of money on a slot.
Appreciate the info! I only go to "kiddy casinos"
I was going to comment this lol.
and I think that the UK version is real cash coin out
@@Capybarski Heh, yeah, that's a misread. "Light 8 Hats to Start Feature" means "Light 8 Hats to BEGIN the Feature".
One thing I think that was lost in the switch to digital card swipes is that, at least at the Chuck E Cheese I went to when I was young, you could use those tokens as more plays
As someone from the UK, these machines were the highlight of many childhood seaside holidays! I never really won anything massive on them (other than coins that went straight back into the same machine) but I've never played a redemption/token coin pusher - every one I've ever played takes in real money and has real money and mixed prizes inside. My favourites were the machines where you dropped a coin in an angled chute that fired the coin onto the pusher. It's definitely fascinating to see the differences between countries in these machines though, great video as always!
0:42 i LOVE that clip of the old people spamming in the casino, i've had that video saved in my computer for over a year now.
THEY JUST KEEP GOING
0:44 fixed😊
idk if this makes it better or worse: this is actually a tournament, which is why they're all button mashing and focusing so hard, so they can get maximum spins
@@RagdollWraith It makes it worse, actually. The fact that a tournament for a game of pure chance is bad enough, but the fact they are so focused on it, and just mashing one button continuously when obviously pressing the button does nothing while the wheels are spinning and they could just start mashing as the final wheel begins to slow is just sad. Even sadder is that they are all boomers, and even when they aren't in a tournament, I guarantee their behavior isn't much different, and it's an absolute tragedy that their idea of fun is, "Press this button to watch lights flash while deleting your familial wealth and leaving nothing to your children or grand children. And don't forget to reverse mortgage your house for a free spin!"
So glad you covered these! Yeah, the Avengers and the Willy Wonka ones are my main go to personally, I genuinely enjoy coin pushers that offer cards in the mix. Love your content, seen all your videos and am always excited to see you upload!
the willy wonka one is also the one i usually go to. i always try to get mike because he was always my favorite
@@jordy9606same! Willy Wonka is the best!
Wow, I remember you talking about going to the arcade more in your recent commentary. Glad to see you around here.
@@ArsonRaboot But the avengers pays out more
8:31 "It's a stone, Luigi, you didn't make it"
It’s a football! I chiseled it!
Never, ever spend a play to get a card that has already fallen and is stuck. You've already won it. Always call an attendant over (unless you believe waiting is going to cost you money elsewhere)
The coins spitting out is just the mechanism for when a card blocks a coin from recycling. Usually you will get a coin or two credit when you put it back in the machine. A not too bad strategy is to save these coins for when you have those rare occasions where a play or two will finish off a card but you don't need to do the full upsell.
I’ve gotten a few good “crashes” on the angry birds game. It’s so satisfying when that big stack falls down. The only downside is that you only get points for coins going down the center third of the ledge, meaning a handful of all the coins won’t increase your tickets.
The Marble Carnival games are usually found in Round 1's if you're still on the lookout for them. Best of luck, and thanks for the video!
similarly (for 13:25) most round 1 locations should also have the fancy card eaters, which also take the plastic chips some of the games give you!
Ayyyy, thanks for covering these! I love coin dozers.
yeah coin pushers are never going to be truly reliable, but they're fun and unlike a lot of arcade games you can at least visibly see the rough approximation of their "payout window" based on how stacked the edge of the board is or how many of that game's unique gimmick features are lit up/littering the coin field.
Also seeing physical coins get knocked off the edge makes the dopamine go *wheeee*
This video just felt dystopic, this is just gambling with extra steps and no cash payout. I guess there's a bit of skill involved in these games, but still.
Good breakdown on the machines regardless. Very well done video.
As someone who works at an arcade prize counter, I have one major tip if you want to play ANY kind of card coin pusher and that is to quite literally "stalk" the coin pusher as others play it. Some people don't know this but the technicians of the games are the ones who control the cards to make it "more fair" for others to play it. As someone who's counted and sorted cards out of the Spongebob coin pusher, I can 100% tell you if you were to try playing the Spongebob coin pusher (at my location at least) versus playing the Star Trek coin pusher (which the rare card is the Tribble), you'd have BETTER luck getting a Tribble than you would /ever/ getting Gary from Spongebob. Last time I sorted out the cards, there was only 6 Gary cards in a batch of 325 IF we included gary into the count. Your best odds of getting a 6 in 325? Roughly around 1.6%, myself personally? I've only ever seen ONE gary card in the actual machine up for plays and I've worked at this arcade for a while now. Our machine is set to the default jackpot of 3k tickets while Star Trek is set to a jackpot of 2.5k. If you had the option of Star Trek or spongebob as your card game? Go for Star trek, just trust me on this one.
This channel is so underrated! Kinda like peeking back into my old arcade phase as a kid.
I really enjoy your videos! When I was a kid my go-to redemption machine was the ball dropping ones. The ones where you time it so they fall cleanly into the slot, or else they bounce around. It was that and the one dinosaur game where you aim and either pull back a lever or (my favorite) have a pad you slam your fist down to launch a ball into different hoops.
Ive got a Wizard of Oz one in my local Main Event locations, and I get a good kick out of these.
First of all, any arcade game that drops you something physical that isn’t tickets is cool, even if it’s just a card with a character on them, it’s nice and collecting them can feel like a neat merger between card collecting and arcade games. (Minecraft Dungeons: Arcade Edition does this too it’s AWESOME!)
The really good thing is that the Wizard of Oz manufacturers or the arcade managers were big time smart, as it’s a lot more skill based than luck based. Not only are the coins amiable, but the bonus system is easy to chain a few times in a row. This speedruns the entire card collecting process as it’s much easier to aim for specific cards and get enough throws to make a difference in the position of said cards. The arcade uses a multi sided one too so it is my go to for having an ironically consistent good time.
wizard of Oz pusher is great, unfortunately the arcade purposefully only has like one of the last character card per the hundreds in the machine, so you can't complete the set for bonus tickets. :\
oh my god from the beginning i was reminded of the coin ski slope game and was going down this mental road of nostalgia during game 1 then it was mentioned and it was *chefs kiss* hit right in the dopamine receptors
The cost to enjoyment ratio on coin pushers is typically better on coin pushers compared to a lot of other "rigged" arcade machines. With all the gimmicks and at the very least a reliable payout based on time played, plus the amount of time you can get on the machine for your investment, coin pushers are my faves.
Finally, the coin pusher video! I personally play the Wizard of Oz coin pusher the most and it pays pretty well if you know when to go in. Keep up the hard work!
I'm glad that this video got recommended to me, I've recently become more interested in the technical side of redemption games, so this channel is great!
I really love your editing!
You are one of the small youtubers that i watch videos over and over again.
I mean this wholeheartedly, this is the most wholesome channel. My eyes brighten a little when I see a new upload.
I just followed you a bit ago and I am so excited when I see you post a new vid 😌 I live somewhere where arcades are nonexistent and I like the humor in your videos and commentary. Thanks!
About 16 years ago, I was in Italy with my family for vacation, there were a lot of arcades, but there was one arcade where there was a coin pusher where the coins you used were actually also the ones to use in other arcade machines. This meant that if you waited until there was a good chance you were getting some coins getting pushed off, you could play more arcade games. That was a great vacation.
I’m personally a huge fan of the Wizard of Oz coin pusher. The payouts are smaller, but you have control of the drop arm and the only bonus they give is extra plays (often awarded ever play and a half), which means that you’re less likely to get a bonus you just can’t use or lands unhelpfully and you bleed money slower and focus on moving individual cards. For the same amount of plays, I can sit at the WoZ machine for half an hour vs like 5-10 minutes for the Willy Wonka one
the willy wonka machine is the lowest paying redemption pusher on the market
YES, finally the coin pusher vid, amazing work as always. I am a huge fan of the avengers coin pusher. Would love to see you talk about the arcade simulator game on steam “the coin game”
I like the chilled out analytical vibe here.
Just found your channel and i just have to say i love your videos! i've binged watched them all and it throws me back to when i was on holiday in America and got to experience an arcade (in Sweden we dont really have arcades and the differences between swedish ones and ones in america is so massive)
Your video are top notch! Love your content for good ol' redemption arcades.
New suggestion! Not sure if you covered it but I would like to hear if you ever talked about those claw machines with plushies on them soon.
i love the spongebob coinpusher, getting the timing right and getting into the rhythm to string coin and play bonuses feels great. but yeah ive never gotten the 15 bonus so i figured it was rigged like that, having confirmation is interesting to hear though
I've toured quite a few arcades in China and I know abt a lot of coin/ball pushers that go for even crazier aestethics, plus a whole different type where you shoot down moving targets by aiming with a dial! this video reminded me of those :D I remember a spongebob coin pusher where you play minigames after hitting certain islands, and a coin crasher where you need to down 3 same-colored chips to attack enemies (I notice the chinese ones have you playing several minigames before getting close to the super jackpot which goes into the quadruple/quintuple digits)
Yoo, I was hoping to see this video in my feed! Excellent video. I thought talking about the legality of these machines was really interesting, because I only had a vague idea of it. I never knew that it extended even to how manufacturers call their own machines.
Loved the longer video. Every minute of Capybarski is to be treasured
you are one of my favorite youtubers. please never stop this amazing arcade content, i love it!!!!!
My dad called these tuppence machines because they're mostly filled with 2 penny coins in the UK. I love these things because you can really stretch your pound. Usually you get cheap plastic crap but sometimes you can get sweets or small amounts of tickets, usually 10-50 bundled tickets.
Yay coin pusher, andd my comment is at the end. I bought a pot of gold real arcade pusher for my house because they're so fun but definitely money eaters (but that's not a problem when you have the key). It's quite great having one since I can set up different scenarios and see when a payout is likely (by the way, you want as few coin layers on the play field as possible, more likely for your single coin to actually push them over).
The spongebob game is quite fun. There was an arcade in Tennessee where I had great luck and got an entire collection of cards along with a bunch of dupes. I cashed n the dupes and kept the full set to put in my own coin pusher. Then I went to another arcade in the same city and had terrible luck on their spongebob machine. Oh well, I still got decorations for my machine.
Only just discovered your channel, and as someone who works at an arcade, it's super interesting to see an outside view on these games. I'd love to see you cover games based on board games, i think that could be a neat topic.
The machines you covered are all recent recent, and come from a new generation of machines, that resemble traditional coin pushers, but completely discard their most important design elements, in order to reward tickets for 'acts of skill', and take the focus away from the old focus, which was the very deceptive idea of "you could put in only one coin, and win many coins in return'. This new design philosophy is probably what makes them legal to operate.
It's worth noting that traditionaly, coins that tip over the edge into the prize hole would simply fall into a tray at the bottom, for the player to collect. They were the "prize". Later, arcades started sweetening the pot, by placing physical prizes, or chips that can be redeemed to tickets ontop of the coins. The idea is that you won the prizes or chips, in addition to any coins that you can tip into the prize hole.
The older generation of coin pushers are banned in a number of places, because they're designed around a number of optical illusions, which trick the player into thinking that the game is fairer than it actually is. Most machines from before the 2000s not only have a hidden lip, but also have hidden 'drainage holes' at the side of the coin pile. As coins are pushed forwards, the lip stops the momentum of coins from spilling over into the prize hole, but because the momuntem has to go somewhere, it instead pushes the coins at the side of the pile into the drainage holes.
Ironically, these older machines are also usually S-Tier, in terms of prize redemption. Most players tend to time their coin drops to co-incide with the movement of the platform, which means very few coins are added to the machine, and the "wave" created every time coins drop onto the lower platform is very small. In this case, around 70% of coins that drop into the machine are pushed into the drainage holes, and 30% or less ever make it into the prize hole.
If the machine has a way to insert multiple coins at once, or to insert many coins in a very short space of time, then the winning strategy is to insert as many coins, as quickly as possible, regardless of the timing. This means that the top platform starts to acrue a huge ammount of coins, and when a drop onto the bottom platform happens, the effect is a very large "wave" of coins all dropping at once, and creating a huge ammount of momentum, almost always enough to move coins over the lip, and tip the odds in the player's favor, meaning anywhere from 50% or 70% of the coins move forwards into the prize hole, rather than sideways into the drainage hole. The wave of momentum carries with it any prizes that are placed ontop of the coins.
This makes coin pushers the Kiddy Casino equivelant of Blackjack. It's never, ever possible to beat the house, and win more coins than you deposit, but you can potentially win back 50% of your deposit, while pushing forward any prizes that are placed ontop of the coins.
If the items ontop were high value enough, and you could approach the game with the pholosophy that any coins won or lost in the process are irrelevant, then these were -the- machines to grind back in the old days.
Amazing channel, keep up the good work :)
Kinda new to the channel, but I work on a lot of old arcade machines, video, and redemption. The legality of coin pushers depends on if they actually give out the coins put into it. In my state, if it's any form of U.S. currency that is dispensed, then they are considered illegal. However, if they give out tokens or just dispense tickets, then they are perfectly legal. It's a weird legal loop hole in the wording of the law against gambling. Also, the old monopoly pushers with the start usually have a jackpot floor depending on the programming of the machine if I remember right. We used to have one way back when, but with all the parts and games discontinued it wasn't worth keeping on the floor.
I've never seen coin pushers with ticket payouts, so to me this video was kind of fascinating to see this type of machine in a configuration I'm completely unfamiliar with. But I suppose that's probably because I don't go to arcades very often these days. The only ones I've ever seen were (probably not-so-legal) machines that don't take tokens. And usually, they were in some kind of traveling amusement operation, like attractions at a festival or fair of some kind. The ones I'm familiar with would have quarters instead of tokens, and instead of big chips or plastic pieces, they'd have rolls of quarters as a kind of "jackpot" prize. I guess a few of them might have had something similar to the plastic pieces that you could redeem for one of those big carnival prizes like a giant stuffed animal, but generally, it was mostly the quarters.
It's been a long time since I've been to one of these types of events, so maybe they have dried up in recent years. But I do remember them being very common at small local events like that.
Well now, here's a channel I didn't know I needed in my life. I used to be crazy about arcade prizes as a kid...well, except my taste was trash and I wanted the cheap stuff you could only see in arcade ticket redemption prize areas. (Plastic skull rings! I still have a few somewhere.) As a kid, I never saw the point of coin pushers when I felt I could reliably get more tickets from other games for less money. The motion of the coins always seemed way too small on a per coin basis to be worth it.
Meanwhile, you ever seen a redemption game where the player is given rubber ball(s?) they gotta try to roll down a very slight ramp shielded by plexiglass to get the ball into specific slots to make a wheel spin (possibly a specific number of Wheel of Fortune-looking slots depending on which slot you got the ball into)? The only difficulty there was that the ball would very definitely bounce off the plastic slot dividers erratically if your aim was just a little bit off, which was how I ended up getting the jackpot reliablly as a kid. (Didn't even need to stick my arm under the plexiglass to try to make it easier.) I think you could even use just strategy and skill to get whatever you wanted the machine to do done. No luck at all, and probably not that much skill either. It was kinda like a strategic and slower paced skee-ball, if I remember correctly. This might explain why I never saw that machine in other arcades, since it might have been too easy to win at. (Or it could be because this would have been two decades ago when documentation wasn't online. Would have been neat to see that machine's documentation today but I couldn't even remember the name.) Anyway, if you ever see one then I ask for your opinion on it. Was it skill or was I just lucky enough to have to get the staff to write me a note with a value of 1000+ (or was it 2000+? I should have saved it instead of getting a prize) tickets cos the machine ran dry?
Anyway, Subscribed!
For game 2 the closest you’ll get at the moment for a manual is likely the ticket circus one as that’s what it’s the most similar to. The version with marbles you showcased was a prototype version of a rethemed diamonds and pearls but they switched it to coins for release hence why you can’t find the other version
Really appreciate this insight! Looking at Ticket Circus vs Quarry Quest, they look almost the same, minus the Cyclone game. This bootleg parallel would have been very poetic with 7 Grand Dad.
I find that all the arcades in Melbourne have one of those Andamiro redeem machines. It has some annoying sound effects and when one of the arcades rearraged the venue and it faced towards the staff kiosk it was quickly turned down
I just ran into your channel and probably binged all the videos. If you take requests, my favorite ticket game I can consistently get jackpots on is Golden Gear.
Of the style of coin pusher similar to the Spongebob one, my favorite is Konami's Smash Stadium. Instead of trying to get the tokens through a ferris wheel of bonuses, any time a coin gets pushed into a specific bonus gate next to the edge of the board, a wheel on the screen spins and offers up bonus plays (at a much more generous rate), card drops, ball drops, etc. If a ball drops, a roulette happens with the chance to have balls enter the center of the machine, outfitted with bumpers, and each bump moves the conveyor belt carrying the cards needed to complete the set. I've only ever seen it at Round 1, I don't know if they have a specific monopoly (no pun intended) on that machine, but it's not bad if you ever get to try it!
No way! I just asked if you could cover these. I'm so glad you did it. I was never able to secure the toto card for the wizard of oz pusher and even considered buying one of off ebay.
My family's go-to is the spider-man machine shown in this video! We can generally get a couple hundred tickets in a play or two, especially if you can tell when it's set up right. The rapid auto-shot basically guarantees one of the spins on the big ball wheel unless you're really unlucky, so we try to aim for a machine as close to that as possible, especially if the spider sense is at 4 lights. We've only ever gotten fairly low bonus spins though, so I don't know if that part's rigged or if we're just unlucky.
There’s also a DC superheroes version of the spongebob machine. My experience is that your best off layering your coins on top of the stack, rather than on the pusher. It’s more of a long game kind of technique, but ultimately results in the most amount of cards dropped.
One game im surprised you haven’t talked about yet is Quik Drop as its one of my personal favorite modern arcade game
Amazing content!!! You should get more views than you do (I know redemption games are a niche topic, but still). If I were to a suggest a video, what about one dedicated to games based on game shows (Price is Right cups, Deal or No Deal, Wheel of Fortune wheel, etc).
I saw the second video suggested and so I wanted to watch the first, and I'm already hooked 2 minutes in. I dont ride on the negativity, I love arcades but I especially love coin crashers. I know they're terrible but the dopamine rush is what gets me. I loooove seeing those stacks.
Got recommended this and looked at the channel and went "I must watch all of these videos" before getting to this one. SpongeBob is my goat so I love coin pushers
17:59 Hot tip: Most machines account for this to happen. There's usually still a coin slot on the machine, despite your arcade using cards. Put the token in the coin slot, and you get some free plays.
Oh, and if a card gets stuck somehow, just get an attendant to open it up and get it for you. Attendants are usually very nice, and do things like that.
You should publish a guide on speedrunning getting banned from your local arcade though.
The start feature exists at casinos too, more or less.
Was going to comment this, "Feature" is from slot machines and it's the bonus game you sometimes win
Honestly, I remember when I was 10 or 11, I lived next door to a Valero Gas Station that had a coin pusher near the front door. A fond memory was me winning $2 from one out of luck.
I feel like the long ticket wait is a lost but genius marketing trick. You're in the shop longer, you're taking in the sights and sounds of other people having fun and machines going nuts, while you're waiting for something you can cash in if you only had 4500 more. I can see that pushing the young not-gambling addict to throw a few more bucks down the slot.
No Flying Dutchman cards on the Spongebob machine for you? II play it here in the UK and our cardss dont have barcodes. I have quite a few. I've never seen a Spongebob episode actually, but these machines, something draws me to them. Also, great video style, got yourself a new sub.
I think it could be interesting to talk about some old types of games. There is this one that is basically a roulette wheel with uneven spacing and different colors, where you select a color before it spins and the colors with the smaller sections have higher payouts. Also the popcorn arcade game where you catch pingpong balls had an old feel to it.
Cool video I also have a request. Could you look at the redemption game known as "Dizzy Chicken" by Bay Tek Games? Id love to see your input on it and where you rank it.
Old coin pushers are the best. I was able "lightly" nudge and kick them to move the money. Gotta look for the ones with basic wooden cabinets and poorly fitting plexiglass.
holy shit, the monopoly coin pushers are ones I saw at nickel city. I always remembered them because of the tv feature and that they replaced the claw machjine that had coupons you could redeem
I was thinking my d&bs was taking out the Gary cards from the spongebob one, but now I know it's the rare card. Thanks!
I've never really been a big arcade grinder, but as someone who just goes to play games for the sake of them, I've gotta say that coin pushers are part of my top 3 favourite arcade games, up there with Skeeball and Pinball. I don't fully know what it is about them, but I've just always loved coin pushers. The newer generation of them like the Willy Wonka one have become a go-to game for me whenever I pop into the arcade at Cedar Point. I've actually been thinking for a long while about building my own coin pusher to just have in my room, since none of my nearby arcades have any variants of one
A 21 minute video? You're too kind
I mess with your channel dude. This is rad
great video! i’ve always wondered about these machines and how worth it playing is
I grew up playing coin pushers in seaside arcades here in England, when I stayed in Japan for a bit recently I found myself hooked to medal games because of how intricate and addictive they are, having slot mechanics, giant rotating screens and arcade card (Aime, E-amusement and Nesica) profile saving so you’re grinding a coin pusher for more content to collect or display when you play/get jackpot chances that’s only legal because medals have no value or prize worth! It’s insane thinking about a 16 to 32 player coin pusher game taking up half an arcade floor but that would never be legal or viable in the west
You going to take a look at Blips and Chitz? It's my absolute favourite coin pusher in terms of ticket farming. I must have been packing so much candy in my pockets after a few games that it took over two minutes to take it all out.
This is the type of completely useless content that I live for. Thank you so much for this gem of a video!
I'm a little late, but "features" are present among lots of online casino slot machine games, and work in a similar way. If you meet whatever criteria is needed to activate a feature, it throws you into a special sub-game with 10-15 "free-spins" and lot's of bet multipliers. Getting a feature is the main way you win big payouts on these types of slot games.
I remember one time I went to Dave and Busters, and some arcade goblin was on the Spongebob coin pusher all day. I finally got a chance to play when he left, but it turns out he left his card on the machine to try and "reserve his spot" while he used the bathroom or something so he got all pissy about me using it while he left.
Round One near me has a couple of those Marble Carnival ones, I have a bit of a tingle towards it. It feels more like Pachinko to me, where a "plain-ol'" coin pusher feels Slot Machine-y. It really only is good when it's already been pretty well played-up, but it usually seems to be. I hit the jackpot multi-ball super release once, felt like it took at least a smidgen of skill, but mostly it was totally luck. A lot of fun sensory dopamine rewards, though. Very, very lively.
Personally, I love coin dozers.
I go to arcades regularly, and they're usually the first games I gravitate towards. They're really fun and satisfying. That's really all there is.
Really love your videos, keep up the great work
Regarding the marbles- arcades are still pretty big in Japan compared to the US but they also have much stricter gambling laws. The metal balls come from Japanese pachinko machines where redeeming balls for prizes was some sort of legal loophole.
Also, if the edge is slightly curved up and the tokens are sitting on top of the balls, it will let the balls effectively act as bearings for the much larger but lighter tokens. Balls will slide underneath and off the edge while the tokens stay relatively stationary on top without ever actually going off the edge. Diminishing actual payout while giving the illusion of a larger opportunity.
these are definitely the machines designed for the parents to sit at while the kids are doing other things. its always the parents on them! (my mom enjoys the star trek one when we went to d&b recently). It's also one of the few things you can get physical rewards as in cards now after tickets moved to digital, so there is some more 'umph' from getting these even if mathematically its not the best return. its not the worst return either especially if you don't have the reflexes for pop the lock or other more technical games.
I personally like the sarcophagus coin pusher one. Where it has only one pushing objective on a predetermined rail that resets after the reward is claimed and isn't not one of those sly cheeky ones that you have to push all the way off the edge that can use additional slanted coins or something to confuse the person. The reward however is usually on the intermediary/low side making it easier to replay the game rather than these token collecting games that is of a popular IP to lull in other plays.
I think the popular one that I saw was the Plinko coin pusher one. I haven't been in an arcade in some time so I don't know what the trendy ones are now but it isn't surprising to me to see that IPs have taken over the coin pusher arcade market.
More coin pushers! They are by far my favorite redemption style game and I will watch them all.
If you're ever in Northeast Pennsylvania during the summer might I recommend visiting the arcades at Knoebels Amusement Park
They're all coin operated and have some vintage machines like pop-a-ball
The only problem is that one of the arcades hasn't been consistently open because of staffing issues
Your channel is a gift from god. Please never stop !
One of my favorite older coin pushers is the Wizard of Oz machine, but my favorite newer one is Angry Birds coin crash. I’m surprised yet happy it made an appearance!
I used to go to a movie theater that had a straight up quarter coin pusher. You would get actual quarters out of the machine.
My go-to arcade machine at the local pizza joint is the coin pusher that features _balls_
It's _very_ similar to the spider-man one shown at 19:57 , (I imagine same manufactuer and all that) except that the one I'm referring to calls the balls "pearls", and the small balls are white to reflect that fact, and also the large balls go into a "ball spins around and settles into a pocket thing" when gotten. (That's the best name for it that my brain could muster, sorry). Also: yeah, I don't have any idea what it's called, haha.
In general I've seen a LOT of these rubber-ball coin pusher machines in local arcades, and they all seem to have very unique minigames/goals for the large orange balls. I've yet to see any two machines (with different branding) have the same minigame. A video on these types of machines all to their own might a bit much to ask, but I would CERTAINLY like to see one featured in the future.
Speaking of; I'm new around here and I subscribed instantly and also this channel is my new obsession. Don't send help; I'm actually having a marvelous time.
We have the wonka machine at our arcade and it has a 3.5k ticket return for a full set, which ends up being a pretty good return for the amount of plays it takes to collect all the characters. How often golden tickets pay out however don't seem to be very reliable, so my partner and I just check the machines each time we go incase anyone has left golden tickets in them
The arcade does have one of the card redeeming machines and you have to feed the cards one at a time and it makes an obnoxious cartoon "slip" sound each time you put a card in 😅. You can also return coins that got accidentally dispensed with cards.
Also if something gets stuck in one of the machine mechanisms, arcade staff may be happy to help you get it out
About the transition away from physical tickets - if memory serves, many games would allow you to continue playing while the tickets dispensed. It may be the cynic in me talking, but I feel like arcades used the ticket dispensing time as a way to subtly suggest that you continue playing, especially when you're the lucky winner of a larger jackpot - "hey, you won, but the tickets are gonna take a while to come out - why not keep playing while you wait?"
I played that Monopoly machine in Wildwood, NJ last summer. I hit the Feature twice. The first was for around 1,500, the second much less. I had to keep calling the attendants over because I ran the machine out of tickets and they kept getting jammed in the dispenser ^^'
They have (had at least) coin pushers at Dave and Busters in Virginia Beach. loved them as a kid!!!
Coin pushers are amazing because they are extremely cruel.
As a child, you are presented something so enticing; the alluring visage of coins stacked precariously just above the goal.
"Well these are just PRIMED to fall! I bet just one coin will be enough!" You tell yourself. But once you put that coin in and it neatly slots itself beneath the stack instead of pushing it over.
You are taught two lessons.
That the physics of objects being pushed beneath other objects is way more complicated than you realize...
And that just because something has its entire process on show, to present an aire of fairness.
Doesn't mean it's fair.
These are actually my favorite of these types of games.
17:34 Wizard of Oz, the first of these types of machines, Toto was the rare card in the set.
The machine also had "Junk Cards" at one point, cards that didn't help with completing the set
I’m not sure where you’re located, but my local FatCats (they have a bunch of locations) has a card redeeming machine for the spongebob pusher. A year ago the spongebob machine got removed and they replaced the redemption machine with a different one for a marvel themed pusher.
I remember seeing these on one of the roro ferries in the baltic, with a security guard standing next to it.
I work as an attendant in a redemption arcade and it makes a lot of sense to find out the games I saw as borderline gambling are actually borderline illegal. Also, I was reading through the manual for the Angry Birds game earlier today looking for a specific error code when I discovered that the Angry Birds game has a "New Jersey" mode that just does the upselling plays thing mentioned at 16:05, except it doesn't advertise it anywhere outside of the game. It also removes the timer for dropping coins and saves plays in the event of a power outage. I'm not sure why this is a thing, but it might have to do with the fact that coin pushers aren't fully illegal in New Jersey.
You should take a look at the XL Bubble Bobble "Puzzle Bobble" game.
I really love it, and my girlfriend loved bubble bobble as a child. But those stupid XL games with their chunky LED screens are so hard to look at, it makes significant payouts difficult. I think the highest we got was 80 something lines.
For me personally, I never play the SpongeBob game (or really any coin pusher) for tickets. I just really want the cards. Not to redeem, just to collect them. Still got some from the various years I did the SpongeBob one.
21:05 There I am Gary, there I am!
Great video. I would be interested in knowing how you redeem your tickets and evaluate prizes in these kiddy casinos.
I discovered this channel like a week ago and was wondering why you hadn't done a coin pusher video yet. Our local Pizza Ranch has the Angry Birds and Avengers ones
Pretty sure the legalities have to do with a couple things.
The ones in arcades are not legal tender coins being pushed nor won. I remember arcades back in the 90s used to have quarters and when it pushed coins over you would win the quarters. You would also see these in bars and such. Packed with quarters and bills that could be pushed off the edge. These are the ones illegal in those states. The old pushers you see in arcades now just use tokens. Usually there's a way to earn tickets from the tokens, like your Monopoly having a "feature". Most modern pushers don't actually drop coins to the player, they just recycle back into the dispenser.
If you're not spending legal tender coins and winning legal tender coins, it isn't gambling in the eyes of the law.
I remember playing these in the uk early 2000s. The "prices" were 5-20 pound notes, and a dude I knew lurked around the arcades to snipe when stuff got to the edge.
Making minor profits on his allowance.