What Arcade Game Is The Biggest Quarter Sucker?

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One of the things my brother and I like to do after restoring a game is to give it the quarter sucker test. Basically, we try to beat the game and then check the hopper to see how much it cost us. When I first got into arcades, I thought that they made these things so that people could enjoy them, but now I know the industries deep dark secret, that they were all about trying to get as much money out of people as possible. I think I read somewhere that the reason Missile Command II never came out was because it was too easy and the operators didn't like that. Of all the games that you've played, which ones do you think were designed to separate your from your spare change instead of just focusing on game play? Maybe I'm just getting cynical in my old age, but whenever I play a game and some random dude pops out of nowhere and kills you, I think to myself, I bet that was put there just so that someone would have to put another quarter in or restart their game.
 
From my operating experience, Gauntlet. That game could pay for itself in a week.

Four players dumping in quarters non stop to keep continuing.

Bless Atari.

LTG :)
 
Before the days of Pac-man, I'd say SeaWolf. After Pac, I'd say Gauntlet. Then there was Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, and finally games like DDR with insane $ to play amounts during an age with bored kids with xboxs.
 
I was playing crisis zone for about 5 min. I died like 4 or 5 times..

I think some of the newest games are made to suck quarters. Terminator salvation, razing storm, rambo..
 
Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat both did a good job of pitting friends against each other so that they'd waste each other's quarters. I think I even remember something about winner stays and loser pays, although given all the gambling regulation on the arcades, you'd think they'd steer clear of that kind of encouragement. Mario Brothers kind of did the same thing. If you play one player, it's actually pretty easy to play for 20 minutes, but if you play 2 players, the competitive spirit inevitably tempts you to try and push the other player into fireballs instead of trying to beat each level. It was an interesting trap based on human psychology that I could never resist.
 
House of the Dead or Time Crisis. In addition to Gauntlet and Turtles, Simpsons, X men and other "beat em ups."In the day my least favorite games were Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, etc that were simply designed to take quarter after quarter and gave you two exciting buttons to jump and hit, and had blindingly slow movement and poor graphics. But oddly, I loved Golden Axe. Go figure.:rolleyes:
 
Anything with a continue feature and a difficulty of finishing.

Something like:

Ghosts n' Goblins
Arkanoid
Klax
Rampage World Tour (a lot longer than Rampage)
 
Droler said:
In the day my least favorite games were Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, etc that were simply designed to take quarter after quarter and gave you two exciting buttons to jump and hit, and had blindingly slow movement and poor graphics.
Double Dragon can be completed on a couple of credits by a skilled player.

The graphics on the SOR games are great. They have 3 buttons, and they're not arcade games, they're on the Megadrive...
 
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Another vote for Gauntlet. There was a time when I couldn't mow enough lawns to try and feed that bastard. hahaha
 
I'd say gauntlet sucked up a bunch of mine, but ever since golden tee came out in the late 90's, I'd estimate that I've dumped thousands in those machines.
 
Gauntlet!

Gauntlet was the biggest money sucker I ever encountered, I swear I was trained to drop a couple of quarters the second I heard "Yellow wizard needs food badly", a close second would be APB. I spent a ton of money on that one too. I dropped some coin on double dragon at first but reached a point where I could win the game on no more than .75 cents tops.

Aliens vs. Predator looked like it was going to take me to the cleaners but after i stopped taking LSD the game just wasn't that fun anymore so I stopped playing it.
 
Oh god, Gauntlet sure did suck down money. And the further you get, the more willing you are to drop it in. Then you start turning to random strangers and say "Hey, can you put this $5 in the change machine for me?". Sometimes they even came back! Then you told them to just stand there and feed it every time you started getting low on health.

"Wizard needs food, badly". quarter quarter quarter

Guy would say "You're down to just a dollar".

I'd say back "Here's another 5, go quick I'm trapped alone in a corner".

quarter quarter quarter

No matter how good you were, that life meter was always clicking down. Good arcades put it right next to the change machine. Quick to get change, and quick to refil the changer right from Gauntlet's cash box.

-Hans
 
I would say all of them because when I left the arcade there were no quarters left in my pockets and my wallet was a little thinner too. But as far as one game sucking quarters, the first was Dragons Lair because it took 2 quarters to play and I sucked at the game.:rolleyes:
 
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