Did You Ever Vandalize A Game?

We've all seen something scratched into the side of a game like intials or nice words... :eek:

Are you guilty of ever doing something to a cab that you shouldn't have been doing?

Breaking in, getting free credits or just beating the hell out of it.

I was never one to destroy stuff, so I never thought to do anything like that. I just wanted to play them.

And YOU?

:D

I never broke or vandalized a game, but free games, that was different. I remember 4 unique times as a broke lad.

#1 - I could get at the back door of a Birdie King game at a local mini golf place. The door was unlocked, so I took it off, looked in the manual for the dipswitch settings for the game and changed it to free play.

#2 - At a local waterslide fun park someone left the coin door on Street Fighter II unlocked. I played all day against others for free, I honestly don't think I went on one waterslide that day even though I had already bought my pass to go on them.

#3 - We figured out we could slide up the bezel of a conversion game at the local bowling alley. We could stick our hand down there and give ourselves free credits. This worked for months.

#4 - For some reason nickels started working as quarters in the MK3 at the University of Minnesota. Everyone went to the bank and got rolls of nickels and played that game non-stop for two days until the operator figured it out.

...and as an (dis)honorable mention, at the roller skating rink they had vending machines that gave out pad locks in plastic capsules. We had skinny enough hands that we could reach up the shoot and open the capsule which let the lock fall out down the shoot. The next person to pay would get an empty open capsule, then we would do it again. Not sure why locks were such a fascination for us, but we got lots of them.

Forgive me brentradio, for I have sinned. :(
 
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We would stuff the pool table pockets so the balls would never go down. Free pool at my arcade. Plus I had a few keys that opened certain games around town. I still shake vending machines to this day to get extra snacks if something is already hanging.
 
I never did, and I never saw anyone else vandalize an arcade machine either. The most I ever saw was an occasional punch to the plexi or fist slam onto the control panel, neither of which ever did anything. I mostly played arcade games at a laundromat and a general store in town, and at both places, the machines were within view of the person behind the counter.

The only free games I ever got were when an operator would stop by to collect the coins and/or service the machines, and sometimes leave some credits after testing the coin mechs. Sometimes the operator would look for kids who were good at the games to play while he watched for issues with the machine. That often led to bickering among the kids over who got to do that "job". "Why are you picking him? I'm way better at that game than he is!"
 
We've all seen something scratched into the side of a game like intials or nice words... :eek:

Are you guilty of ever doing something to a cab that you shouldn't have been doing?

Breaking in, getting free credits or just beating the hell out of it.

I was never one to destroy stuff, so I never thought to do anything like that. I just wanted to play them.

And YOU?

:D


You a cop? :D
 
Mall arcade had a tendency to leave the CP unlocked on their Soul Calibur II showcase. Pull open the CP, add credits, and enjoy.

Another arcade had just opened up (this was maybe 8-9 years ago) and used a card system. One of the Cyclones was programmed wrong and gave 5 credits per .33 instead of 1. I abused that and ended up with thousands of tickets for just a few dollars.
 
i only have 2.

probably the worst 2 in this thread thus far





local arcade had a frogger and they forgot to lock the coin door, i remember my friend loosing a game hitting the control panel and the coin door popped open. it had roughly 75 dollars worth of quarter in there.....had.............

on the way out we cleaned it out again and told the person behind the counter that it was open lol














more recent mischief............. bar where our local pinball league used to be at had a golden tee 2015, and for damn near a year the op left the control panel unlocked. you couldnt get down to credit it up, but after a few beverages i would get the idea to randomly unplug something........ one week the track ball, next the start buttons....... etc............
 
There was a Donkey Kong at the roller skating place that, if you kicked the coin door (fairly hard), would give you a credit.

I got some credits from that one...and I still suck at the game.
 
Ok, mine will be the worst in here. It wasn't me, but one of my knucklehead friends in college decided it would be funny to snap the gun off of a Buck Hunter and walk around a bar acting like he was shooting people with it. Yep, just stood on the butt of the gun and snapped it off. If you knew this guy, then you'd know trying to get him to stop while drunk was only likely to lead to more damage. It bothered me at the time, but knowing how much money this location brought in, I'm sure he was still in the black once it was all said and done. There were only 2 bars within walking distance of campus, so this place was a gold mine for machines like this during happy hours.

One other story I knew of locally was people were stealing the fighting PCB's out of cabinets at a local arcade that was huge and you could pull something off like that. It was the very first Exhilarama, here in St. Louis, and back in the heyday I'm sure they had like 15 people working, whereas at the end there was just 1 guy running the front counter. So games were having the boards stolen out of them. This was also home to the infamous Sega Rally turned fighting cabinet with the buttons drilled in above where the steering wheel would have been.
 
No, but I may or may not have pulled extra tickets from redemption games with sloppy dispensers. I may or may not have done that on several occasions.
 
Other that punching bezels when I lost a player, no.

I was naive enough that when I found an unlocked coin door or back door, I'd tell the employees.

INB4 GAMEFIXER FESSES UP TO SOME SERIOUS SHIZZ
 
Other that punching bezels when I lost a player, no.

I was naive enough that when I found an unlocked coin door or back door, I'd tell the employees.

INB4 GAMEFIXER FESSES UP TO SOME SERIOUS SHIZZ

Oh, man do I have some fessing up to do.

When I was 12 or 13 I got caught behind a Sprint 2 at the Malibu Gran Prix in Mt Laurel NJ. I had the back door off and was digging for tokens. They called the cops and my dad had to pick me up from the police station. Me and a buddy would routinely string the popular games in this place. It wasnt unusual to see Pac Man and Defender with 40+ credits on them. :)

When I got back to Cali it only got worse.

Marys deli in Redwood City CA. I had broken into ALL of the games and either put them on Freeplay or would coin them up for my friends as they came in.

Marine World in Redwood City CA. Lots of crap went down there. Breaking into games, stringing games, penny flipping games. I would get tossed out of the park by the GM of the Amusement Dept and one of his assistants would let me back in about 10 minutes later. :) That place ended up being my first job, where I still broke into the games but this time to fix them cuz the operator sucked!

Probably my best one. Was working for Chuck E Cheese and we just got this new game, Ghost and Goblins. I was determined to finish that stupid game so one day after work I grabbed a stool and planted myself in front of it. Takes me 5+ HOURS to get to the final level.... I kill the last boss... Only to be told, by the game, that I needed a specific weapon to kill the last boss! Huh! WTF? It puts me back TWO DAMN LEVELS TO GET THE SHITTY SHIELD WEAPON! I get off of the stool and kick the ever loving hell out of the front of the game as hard as I could. I'm shocked that it didnt cave in.

There are a ton more of games that died by my hand but that was because we were scrapping them. Kinda in a mini Todd Tuckey mode we used to push games off of our dock (4 foot high).
 
Sure did.

We found out that Donkey Kong Jr (or was it Popeye?) at the laundromat gave a credit with a good kick to the coin door.

It wouldn't always work, so the kicking got harder.

Eventually, the front panel got kicked in and they pulled the game shortly after.
 
Marine World in Redwood City CA. Lots of crap went down there. Breaking into games, stringing games, penny flipping games. I would get tossed out of the park by the GM of the Amusement Dept and one of his assistants would let me back in about 10 minutes later. :) That place ended up being my first job, where I still broke into the games but this time to fix them cuz the operator sucked!


Man, I loved Marine World. Great place to go as a kid. I bet working there was awesome!
 
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