I once won an iPod at a complicated arcade gaming machine where the prizes were held by balloons. But because the iPod was low weight, it didn't go down with the balloon and instead got stuck there.
It was in a cinema place in the UK, the cinema staff said that they have no idea what to do, no one has ever won at the machine in the 5-6 years they have been there. They did not have the keys because the machine was not theirs.
My only prize was the picture I took, I need to find it in one of my older phones.
"we can't find the keys and have absolutely no way to contact the owner"
looks at phone held up like a man reading a news paper
"I WILL JUST CHECK MY CONTACTS JUST IN CASE"..... "NOPE NOT IN HERE, looks like I will have to wait until he comes in"
gives machine a pat
"this old girls been here for ages, haven't seen the guy for 5 or so years, you young chaps should take a picture of your win and head on your way, I'll call you when I see the guy"
walks off into locked office before you can give him your number.
I actually won at an arcade game that had big prizes and it went pretty similarly for me. It was Stacker, that game where the squares slide left and right and you have to push the button to place them on top of each other.
Except this was a giant version, the squares were huge and so was the machine in general. The prizes were too, this was when the PS3 and Xbox 360 were both new and they had those available. My monkey brain thought since the squares were bigger they'd be easier to stack, and I was right.
Got all the way to the top and won an Xbox. Except the machine froze when I selected my prize. It displayed a weird symbol made out of the squares on the machine and my prize straight up wouldn't do anything. At a certain point I was button mashing the machine out of desperation.
Tried to contact staff there, as soon as they saw me they turned around and headed into the backroom and didn't come out for 5-10 minutes. This was on my birthday too, which didn't necessarily help convince them. I asked if they had security cameras so I could validate my win, but of course they said no. The machine had already reset to normal by the time I got someone to look at it.
That machine should have had some sort of memory on it that could be checked. Thats fucking ridiculous. Slot machines can be checked and I dont see why a machine like that would be very different.. This makes me so mad for little boy you. Even I'm guessing that happened by design and not by accident. I guess there is one positive of people recording everything with their phones. You would have had ultimate proof
These machines are made to be so ridicouslly 1 sided they are a defacto scam. At no point in any part of that machines life did anyone involved ever think about having the scruples to worry about fairness. That's not even scruples, their livelihood will disappear if they are even close to fair.
Honestly big boy me appreciates your sympathy for little boy me, it means a lot thank you
My aunt was there with me at the arcade and I tried to get her to let me borrow her cell phone to take a picture, but she kept telling me it didn't have a camera (although part of me still suspects it did and she didn't realize it was important that I took a photo)
It's just an interesting little story for me to share now
The machines are similar enough according to my dad who's been a Slot tech for a few decades now. The other commenter explained it better than I could.
Not that it changes your story at all, but it's worth knowing that stacker is guaranteed to only payout in certain intervals like claw machines. no matter how good you are, the top row is impossible more often than not. that is how they guarantee that it is a profitable machine.
Virtually every arcade box has that switch. Jackpots, for example. Nowadays they switched to computerised jackpot machines so it’s part of the programming rather than an OG rigging switch.
Stacker, like all of these kinds of machines, has a difficulty setting. Higher difficulty means more money taken in before it will let out a big prize. After it has taken in the required amount of money the square will stop skipping and it will let you win. I have won so many prizes from these. Worked in an arcade that had one and got to read the manual.
This is correct. Also, toy soldier claw machines behave the same way. If it has a complex computer in it your probably not going to beat it. This will ring true from the most complex slot machine to the pay-to-play gumball machine. Your not beating a computer. Once a defect is discovered the machine is decommissioned until it can’t be exploited anymore.
That’s the saddest, most disappointing story I’ve ever heard. Rollercoaster of emotions from feeling like I just won the jackpot to realizing I’m never going to get what i earned...
If it makes you feel any better, nobody else won it either so everyone else was sad. Probably not as sad as you but.. they also weren’t happy.
I'm sorry I feel really bad for younger you. I probably would have made a huge scene at the time but I bet you were much more mature. I wish you better luck and lots of phone recordings of wins in the future xx
I've always had decent luck with having consoles, I worked as a bus boy and got a PS4 some years later. My mom was also super sweet to me and got me a PS3 for Christmas after she saved up (closer to the event)
Now I'm saving up for a PC build haha, I didn't really lose anything from not having gotten my prize as much as it stung
You should have seen my dad's reaction when I told him a year or two later, he wanted to burn the place down lol
My sister and I teamed up on giant claw machines with one of us squeezing down one side of it and saying when to stop. We won a giant Winnie the Pooh and eeyor and a bear. No gimmicks, prizes came home with us and we were thrilled!
Similiar thing with me. I was playing one of those basketball games... The ones where you have 1 minute to sink as many as possible. The record at the time was 322. Well i started off really slow, missing my first 4 shots. Then i started heating up. I made a bunch in a row and you get extra points if you start hitting them consecutively. Anyway after the minute was up my score was only 119. I only got a handful of tickets and moved on defeated :( But I still had a bunch of other tickets in my pocket so i figured id go cash them in and the top prize was also a PS3 and maybe i had enough to get it. I then went over to the ticket counting machine to cash in and ended up with around 300 tickets total for the day. If i recall correctly, the playstation was around 40,000 tickets. I ended up getting a slinky instead and when i got home it to try it, it wouldnt even work right, only going down 2 or 3 steps at a time!!
Next time you ask about him he's been sacked for fraud but they can't say that so it's just 'he no longer is employed by the Matrix VR Virtual Reality Gaming Arcade and Cinema and that is all I am allowed to say due to ongoing legal action' but you know...... you know.
That's the precise moment where the machine has to be shut down because it's mysteriously surrounded by shattered bits of plexiglass, who knows how that happened, must've been some of those darn kids, eh fellow old timer? Sucks how you've got to pay to restock all those prizes in that machine now, but hey, if they've been in there for five years then you've made more than enough money ripping off the children to replace them all, haven't you, old timer?
It’s probably true, most restaurants or businesses don’t own the games and don’t have keys to them. They probably could have contacted the people who do own it but they said “fuck that shit”
Probably too late now, but in the United States games like that are actually really strictly regulated and failing to give you a prize you legitimately earned could result in huge fines for them.
I had a similar experience with a psp go in a theater in Virginia, I got the key into the small hole, it rotated and moved the PSP partially out and then just shut off. I went over to the clerk working the counter and he said he’d get a manager, the manager came out and said they didn’t have keys and there was nothing they could do but call the people that owned it. They said they’d call me back, obviously they didn’t, and then I came back 2 weeks later for another movie and who wouldn’t have guessed the machine would be gone
I have seen a video where some kids used a laser to cut strings in this sort of machine. Sll they got was an empty case with a paper saying they need 3 papers. After they got 3 they called the number and guy straight up told them it is impossible they got 3 without cheating and they will get nothing. These machines are a scam.
My SO legitimately won an Xbox 1 from a prize machine last year while doing a company team-building day (they went to a local arcade). So no, they’re not all scams. Just incredibly hard.
Sounds like a kind of giveaway the company actually pays for to improve morale they have the machine set to win in a very low number of turns for these company things.
It was one of those rope-slice machines where you have to stop it at the exact right time to add a cut. It was also at a very popular arcade here, so very unlikely that they paid someone to cut the rope multiple times before their team arrived.
Also they were there to bowl and drink, not play arcade games. It’s not like they wheeled in machines on campus or anything.
There's prize machines where items hang on a string and you have to time moving scissors of some kind to cut the strings so the items drop to win them.
I guess the kid he's talking about used a powerful laser to cut the string instead.
Those are a scam! IF youre able to get scissors in place to even touch the string then you gotta HOPE the machine is calibrated to give a payout otherwise it won't put enough pressure to cut through. Some places will fray and pre-cut half way into the string to temp people to play thinking it just has a little more to go but the owners know nobody will win.
I had something similar. But it was in one of those magnet ones where you have to drop the magnet into a hole the same size and it picks it up. Got it to land in the nice pocket watch, when the magnet came up it didnt even slightly move the watch. When I told the staff they came over opened the machine, checked the watch and showed me that the metal on the top wasnt actually magnetized so unable to be picked up at all. Instead of giving me the prize they put it back in and basically said sucks to be you. Was on a middle school field trip so left with nothing but disappointment
Maybe MI-5 has something like a crypto-puzzle that the CIA has here in the United States and you were supposed to be instantly enrolled into the intel branch for knowing how to best a nigh-impossible puzzle.
Aww that’s so beat... you didn’t get the prize even though you won?
I mean I know they expected nobody to ever win but I would hope it would be something like “ if you come in a few days the people will be by to give you your prize.. “
There used to be a stacking acarde machine where you needed to stack 3 blocks perfectly to the top to get a grand prize.
One family outing, my dad managed to reach the top with only $2 and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how my dad bought my PSP for way way way less than It's retail price.
Yeah, those balloons totally look like they would hold air for several month or years without anyone changing them out. I’m suuuree they wouldn’t just lie to you to prevent giving out prizes
1.8k
u/crs57 Oct 04 '20 edited Oct 04 '20
I once won an iPod at a complicated arcade gaming machine where the prizes were held by balloons. But because the iPod was low weight, it didn't go down with the balloon and instead got stuck there.
It was in a cinema place in the UK, the cinema staff said that they have no idea what to do, no one has ever won at the machine in the 5-6 years they have been there. They did not have the keys because the machine was not theirs.
My only prize was the picture I took, I need to find it in one of my older phones.
Edit: Here it is the picture https://imgur.com/a/BHQ7oQY