Yes this is an arcade forum, but every now and then we need to take the time to looking at the other side of Arcades....which is redemption.

This is a story of a man never told....until last week

The Ballad of Robert Jones: Arcade Tickets Were His Currency

Ugh, Drill-O-Matic. That game redefines "maintenance nightmare". Three poorly made stepper motors, attached to equally poorly made controllers, Benchmark's infamously dodgy common board, and a power supply that quite clearly can't take the load without voltage drops. I have spent more time on that blasted machine than the entire rest of the gameroom combined.

If you ever see one come up in auction, pass it up. I don't care how cheap it is. It was discontinued for a reason.

-E- Getting back to the point of the article, these types of people ALWAYS had free access to the game in question in some form, e.g. as an employee or more commonly a gameroom technician. It's perfectly possible, for ANY game in a redemption gameroom, to perfect your skill to the point where you can empty the machine in a maximum of 20 credits per deck of tickets that fit in the bin, usually much less. Yes, redemption flows exclusively around skill, the idea being you set the bar just high enough to attain a certain payout rate, and adjust it as people get better and/or stop showing up.