coin controls partly responsible for industry crash? (i think so)

r5g

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coin controls partly responsible for industry crash? (i think so)

it is my opinion that coin controls is at least 25% plus responsible for the commercial coin op amusement indusry demise.

thier coin mechs and doors are so horrid its unreal, the mechs work for a short time only, then the quarters get hung up intermittedly in the mech after that for life, (even after clean and adjust) that leads to coin jams up the jing jang, then the door itself and its innards are made of thin pot metal, and thin plastic, it readily bends and or the plastic coin rejects break when a pissed customer kicks the door, or even just hitting the reject button normally, that leads to even more jam ups after the tech clears the existing jam, (since now the alighnment for everything is off, or plastic parts broke) which in turn leads to a never ending circle of coin jams and foul ups

this condition as a whole contributed largely to big decreases in revenue and customer disssatisfaction with coin op.

the coin mech doors and mechs as well as happs are a dream compared to coin controls, (although i think the old style coin mech and its metal mechs are best, i have 15-30 yr old coin mech doors and mechs which perform 20x better than old or new coin controls junk)
thanx manufacterures for outfitting most of the coin doors out there with coin CONTROLS brand, you saved $10 per, but cost yourself and us the whole biz in the process

coin controls doors and mechs are barley acceptable for home use, i never use them when i have a choice for commercial locations.
 
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nope I don't think so...

Rise of the high power home consoles (3D games)
Arcade manufactures making games more like "location based entertainment" which in turn…
High Priced machines changing the time to earn out its purchase.
Economies changing as people still wanted to only pay a quarter but it's value dropped significantly.
Cultural shift away from playing games in an arcade venue. (curfews and city ordinances)
 
% coin control

i agree the rest of the 100% of the biz failure reasons are made up of things like what you mention, and in the post i site that the door problem might have been 25% of the problem with the biz failing, i mean you cant make money from a game when the door is all f'ed up which is most of the time with a coin controls door
 
I don't think it will cause a failure of the biz cause these are fixable problems.
Opps just can't be lazy. It adds fustration at different levels. But increased downtime isn't even a top 10 reason for such a sharp decline in the arcade biz.

I personally found more problematic control and monitor issues than machines taking money or being jammed.
 
i personally preferred coin controls doors.
as long as you check the feeder chute and make
a slight bend so coins cannot get halted by the edge
of the coin mech, you're golden. i rarely got calls
on coin jams unless foreign matter was stuck in it.


you cannot make money,
if money cannot be made.
 
I quit going to arcades for two reasons.

Most new games required constant feeding of quarters instead of skill to play. (MK II vs. Pacman). I could get good enough to play a few minutes on .50, but my wife would get immediately destroyed. And she never played it again.

Playstation - Tekken was the last game I'd go to the arcade just to play. When the Playstation came out I no longer needed to make the trip to play. Ten mile drive each way + money vs. one $30 purchase.

-JM
 
I stopped going to arcades because...

...I got a car and instantly life turned to "How do I get laid?"

The word "arcade" wasn't even in my vocabulary after that... until I got old and crusty.
 
You may be onto something. My boss bought some Fast & Furious games, the coin doors were immediately broke, and I think that revenue suffered for a long time over it. Eventually I talked him into buying new door skins, new parts for the doors, and a special metal plate hasp that covered them completely. Less coin jams, but still pretty bad. I think he lost MAJOR money on that game over that shit, like 30% or so.
 
Even non-video games suffer from bad coin mechs. The bowling alley I go to has several crane type games, and similar coin operated stuffs. Sometimes I have a few minutes to kill while waiting for the rest of the guys to get there and I play the crane game or something. Seems like half the time the coin mech is jammed. And, being newer style machines, they only have *one* mech. I think it's the newer Coin Controls electronic validator type - looks kind of like an old Nintendo rolldown mech. And, of course, when the fuzzy tiger is on top - that's when the coin door is jammed up :)

-Ian
 
Yeah, those were the worst ones, the japanese ones were actually better! The 'good' ones have a door that swings open to clean the chute, if they don't have that little door on the side they act up constantly. We took all ours out and replaced them slowly with the japanese ones, and they worked much much better.
 
I quit going to arcades for two reasons.

Most new games required constant feeding of quarters instead of skill to play.

-JM

I agree completely. I saw no relationship between being any good at a game and how long I got to play. For the later games, They should have just had a sign that read "25 cents for 2 minutes". All the "arcade" games were basically redemption games ... with no redemption!

Another thing (rant mode on)... all the newer games were fighters or racers, and the home consoles had those things beat by a mile. DDR was one of the few success stories, since it is skill based and people loved watching other people play.
 
Well, as someone who's worked on coin op equipment for 36 years, I've seen all manor of coin jams in all brands of coin doors and coin mechs.

By far, the leading coin mech and coin door manufacturer for most often jammed is.....

Coin Controls. The worst. Original designs and manufacturing were 100% metric hardware and made in England (later switched to the USA and had Wells-Gardner build them, another step down in quality if you ask me). Started out making everything in metal, then suddenly switched out making certain parts out of plastic. Oh yes, and those blue (a.k.a. "Busy Bee" ) coin microswitches went bad all the time. The idiots made them with silver plated internal contacts which caused many "failure to make" contact from tarnished contacts resulting in lost customer's coins. The switch contacts needed to be gold plated for use with logic and low voltage applications. The doors got worse when they started using plastic coin entry bezels.....they warped alot and would bind the red plastic reject button. Customer beats on it and the push rod on the button breaks then the two screws holding the entire metal entry trough to the bezel fall out/break creating a real full-scale jam up.

My personal favorite coin door (most reliable) is the Williams silver pinball door with the Coin Mechanisms door a close second. Happ Controls clones the Coin Mechanism doors, but uses plastic parts where Coin Mechanisms uses metal parts. Happ also uses softer metal for the door itself.
 
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I know I'm a new member but I disagree somewhat with the skill vs constant feeding.....Being in my 20's I was bought up on fighters and racers and could beat MK2,3, SF etc. all on one credit....I was never interested in Ms. Pacman (until I bought 2 cabs for $300 a year ago) and I could barely get to level 4. I guess its all in what your used to playing, I will agree with you when it comes to games like Blitz, NBA Jam, Baseball stars 2 and many others that have you pay after each quarter of the game is completed....Complete rip off but they made a ton of money.

What turned me off from the arcade scene, was being frustrated at how shitty some of the games were...Up doesn't work on 1p side...The microswitches are off so I can't do supers, or specials moves...Hard kick doesn't work so I have to play and beat SVC chaos with only 3 buttons (I'm still bent about this one lol.)...The monitors too dim or bright, and they never bothered to fix these issues....As well as the game took my money (which r5g explained point blank)
 
^ I don't get what they're talking about either, specifically when they mentioned Mortal Kombat II.

How in the hell can you say that Mortal Kombat II required quarters instead of skill to get anywhere. Have you even played any classic games? Pac-Man, lets take the mac daddy game of all time, you can't do shit on that game if you're new to it without losing your lunch money.

Mortal Kombat II can be beat on 1 credit if you're any good. You can play Pac-Man for years and never split it.

It's the same thing.

Now if you're talking about games where you only buy one round or whatever per quarter, that makes sense but I think MKII is a bad example. It's hard, but certainly no more hard than ANY classic game.
 
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