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Crane Machines - Legalized Gambling For the Young'uns
maximumzero
I...wait, what?New Orleans, LARegistered User regular
I...wait, what?New Orleans, LARegistered User regular
So I realized tonight I have a possibly unhealthy addiction to crane games. No matter where I am, if I come in contact with one I typically end up dropping at least $2 into one, if not more. Whether it be Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, a Restaurant, or anywhere else I come into contact with one, I'm like a bug to a goddamn bug zapper. Even if there's nothing in there that I want it's all about the thrill of the chase.
Then Wal-Mart goes and puts a UFO Catcher in the store.
Mother Fuck.
Unlike most crane games, this one seems to have a bit of skill involved. Rather than the typical three "claws" this one has two. However, also unlike most crane games it's bloody expensive, at $1 a play. Though the prizes are better, so it averages out.
Tonight on the way out of Wal-Mart I ended up dropping $3 into one. On the first two grabs I came up with nothing but on the third I came up with two prizes. That's a first for me, and I was shocked, as were the two people that were passing by.
Tonight I won the two in the middle.
I ended up giving one, the Goofy plush, to a little girl that was in a basket with her parents. The Donald is still in my trunk. I don't know what I'm gonna do with him. That's the other thing, I have no need for plush toys, so I try to find any young'uns in the area that would appreciate one.
How about you, are you addicted to crane games?
Then Wal-Mart goes and puts a UFO Catcher in the store.
Mother Fuck.
Unlike most crane games, this one seems to have a bit of skill involved. Rather than the typical three "claws" this one has two. However, also unlike most crane games it's bloody expensive, at $1 a play. Though the prizes are better, so it averages out.
Tonight on the way out of Wal-Mart I ended up dropping $3 into one. On the first two grabs I came up with nothing but on the third I came up with two prizes. That's a first for me, and I was shocked, as were the two people that were passing by.
Tonight I won the two in the middle.
I ended up giving one, the Goofy plush, to a little girl that was in a basket with her parents. The Donald is still in my trunk. I don't know what I'm gonna do with him. That's the other thing, I have no need for plush toys, so I try to find any young'uns in the area that would appreciate one.
How about you, are you addicted to crane games?
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Also, I once won one of these 3 times in a row, and have never won one since.
So fuck her, I'm holding that toy right now. Haha bitch.
I recall seeing a tv show or something which mentioned that crane games are programmed with variable grip strength, which is absolutely devious.
Other than that though, I tend to win the majority of the cranes I play. I once won 6 or 7 tiny Nintendo keychain plushes at the Point Pleasant, NJ. In a row. That's when my family decided to put me on crane games for stuff they wanted. I've won watches and jewelry. Stuff you're not supposed to win.
I was once kicked out of an arcade for winning too much stuff.
[/gloat]
It's funny the kind of shit parents do that they think is "parenting" their children.
To be fair I was using it to traffic cocaine into the country but she wasn't to know. Dumb whore.
Then things changed.
More claw machines started showing up that would grab the item, raise it up, then the claws would open again, and drop it, before moving to deposit it in the collection area.
At first I thought this was a glitch, but then I saw it...again...and again...and again..a hundred times over. Then I realized, The new claw games are bullshit.
And thus my torrid love affair with the claw was forever shattered.
An example.
This is from my four months in Nagasaki. (The can of Dr. Pepper is for scale.) I later spent two years in Japan, and I calmed down more that time.
There is seriously something disturbing about seeing all those smiling faces just...looking back at you, from the writhing mass
What I do like about the UFO catchers though is the configuration of the "crane" I find helps you more accurately pick something up.
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I can get the minor prizes easy, but those are all really shitty prizes. Like it's $4 to play (cause all the major prizes are like PSPs, iPod Nanos, iTV recievers, Wii, X360 Arcade) but the cheap shit's stuff you find at a supermarket capsule machine.
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Me and my girlfriend blew $15 on one of those at an arcade once, but it was only $1 to play each time. We got up to the last level 4 seperate times, but failed every time
I worked at a movie theater that had one of these (it's called Stacker) and I'm pretty sure it cheats. I can't tell you how many times I saw people get to the top with no problem and then fail.
The guys who worked there would be around stocking the machines with new stuff and occasionally you'd hear them coment on something or congratulate you on picking up a cool prize. I really miss that site.
A funny thing is that at some places around here with Stacker machines, they tape polaroids of people who have won major prizes at the machine and when. I have no idea if the pictures are faked or not, but I'd lean towards thinking that they are.
The thing I love the most about the Sega UFO Catcher machines is the video that demonstrates techniques for snagging the prizes... tricks like grabbing them by their tags rather than by the toy, dislodging groups of close ones to the prize bin, etc. It makes it look so much more winnable that it entices you to play!
Thankfully, the ones around here have not been filled with swag I want, so I've been able to resist.
I went to the boardwalk at Wildwood, NJ once on vacation, and happened upon an arcade or two there.
Their idea of an "arcade" is row after row of these fucking rigged crane games next to row after row of somehow-legal slot machines for kids, with maybe one fighting game tucked away in a corner somewhere.
It was terrible.
And I sold a lot of extras on ebay or gave them to friends. I still have a lot of them. Thankfully, slime merchandise isn't available in UFO catchers now.
What was really cool in Japan, and the machine in the OP is a Japanese one, is that the claws can be calibrated exactly. In a good game center you can see the attendants adjusting the machines to make them work better or worse. Usually the machines in the front of a place had new stuff and were hard to get, but after a few weeks the prizes would get cycled to the back and would be easy to win.
There was one of these at a local truck stop that had a diner attached, so after we would eat we would hit the game room. The first day it was out, it had like X360 games and cheap radios and such in it. We dropped a dollar in to try it and won, so we did it again and won. The machine had to have been set on easy, we cleaned all the good prizes out, ended up with like 4 copies of NFL and NBA X360 games, and like 3 radios. A week later we came back and tried again only to see everything moving a lot faster and being completely impossible to play... relatively unlikely but true story.
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Isnt it fucking retarded how they can get away with those rigged claw games?
I mean some of them, like I mentioned the ones that open and drop shit, are obvious as fuck.
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He would spend a few dollars "warming up" the machine (he explained that the claw was loose when the machine hadn't been used for a while, and couldn't grip properly), then he would pull out toys with stunning regularity. Usually one toy for every two or three attempts. I once saw him pull out four toys in a row.
My aunt would stand beside the machine helping him out by looking through the side glass. It was quite a spectacle.
He ended up donating the toys to charity after he filled a whole room with them... but he kept playing after that. I think he mostly did it for the attention. People would gather around, watch him play, and be in awe.
find good places like arcades where its more likely then not that you will have a better crane.
By the end of the year I'd worked there, I'd memorised the strength of the claws on each, which days the toys were restocked (Thursday, plus a refill on Monday if any of the machines had gotten low), and which stores were best to burn $5 notes at for change (usually by buying a Red Bull to feed my caffeine addiction). I was winning about one plushy and two candy bars on average every three days.
I have two dogs, so they appreciated the extra play-toys. The candies went into the fridge for visitors since I dislike them.
Next to one of them was an old guy who sat and rested on the same bench every day for half an hour at the same time, which was around the time I got off work. He seemed genuinely surprised they were actually being used, and always watched when I was using it.
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Any chance it was Dora the Explorer? Were you holding a small tub of petroleum jelly at the time?
But seriously, that's depressing. I've given away prize stuffed animals to little kids more than once. Now I'm imagining the kids leaving my sight, the parents ripping away the toy and tossing it in the trash.
I think the airport factor was probably to blame.
Some people become paranoid wrecks as soon as they step into an airport.
That reminds me of a trip to Gameworks during PAX.
A buddy and I had a shared points card for the hotel reservation, and we were trying to figure out what to waste those points on. A decision was made: claw machines.
As we took our time to examine the machines (they used the two big pincer-prong claws, not three) and their prizes, a bloke stepped up to one of the machines. This machine had scale model cars and scale model cars only.
We watched in awe as he perfectly lined up the claw dead center to the target, and we were sure he was going to get his prize as the claw came down smoothly. This was the result:
His face:
:shock:
o_O
:x
And then he stormed off.
The opened claw was smaller than the scale model car box lengthwise. ALL the boxes were arranged lengthwise. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY to win.
Couldn't stop laughing though.
I've seen plenty of evidence that Stacker machines are random. There are plenty of web pages devoted to it. It requires some skill to play them, but if you're not on a "win" cycle, then there's no way you can possibly win.
They're basically fruit machines for kids. I don't know how they're legal.
The only ones I played after that are the 'play till you win' ones, usually stuffed with candy.
Also no new Wal Marts have arcades anymore - and the last one to have one closed it down and turned it into their check cashing/money order thing.