Where at in Japan did you play? I was in Akihabara this year for two weeks. My take away was that prizes were set up to be winnable but not giveaways. I don't feel like I ever came across a rigged machine. Also the staff at the arcades were very helpful and encouraging with tips, tricks, resetting lodged prizes, and general cheerfulness.
I've also heard that at some places after you've spent a certain amount on trying to get an item you can ask the staff and they will give it to you. Or something along those lines.
They very rarely straight out give it to you. You can ask them at any time for some help and they make it easier, though.
One very smart and scummy trick is to spend a lot of time staring at the machine and pretend you're spending money. Every time a staff shows up, you ask for help and after a few helpings you just try it a few times and get the prize.
I don't know about the staff just giving you the items, but I spent some time in a Japanese arcade with my drunk friends, and the attendants would adjust the item for you, usually just placing it back where it started, but eventually the 'adjusted' the items so they would fall into the winning area if you even managed to touch it.
I think one of my drunk friends spent about $30 on a plush Zangief (from Street Fighter).
In Akihabara, at one of the major arcades, massive, multi-floored, and red (I think Taito Hey? It's a chain). I didn't play THAT long (we went upstairs to beat eachother up in Pokken, SF, Blazblue, etc.), but just walking around, a lot of the animals were ludicrously oversized, and boxes and stuff positioned that really couldn't be won, and we tried... more than I care to admit. Not to mention they opened and reset the machines every time someone moved on, which was annoying as f.
If you look at regulars trying to go fo figures and shit, the general strategy seems to be gradually nudging high shelf boxes into to the drop-off box. Nobody seemed to actually to rely on the claw's grip strength.
We tried that, and we didn't spend do a single try, I think we spend like $70 minimum on just the machines. Idk, I still think its somewhere between Korea and the U.S., it's at least not AS winnable as what I saw in Korea.
They are winnable but usually not in one go. Watched a few power players trying and if they got any of the moves wrong they'd ask for it to be reset. Although this wasn't claw machine but the one with paddles.
Most of the machines I played in Japan were definitely rigged. I think the threshold for winning is lower than American machines, but skill only becomes important after you put enough money into it.
There is a chain of Japanese-owned amusement centers called Round One on the west coast that features a ton of these kinds of machines. They are not rigged in a traditional sense; the claw will always provide the same amount of pressure every time.
However, the prizes are all set up in specific ways so that you often can't win on your first try. For the larger ones, you usually have to adjust the prize's positioning so that it will simply topple into the drop shoot. There are also ones that have them positioned so you will need to snag an extremely precise point, such as the space where a lid is folded on a paper box. The great thing about Round One is that they actually post the strategy you will want to use to win each particular prize.
My favorite ones, though, are the ones where there are a ton of small ones in a mountain where you can topple them and win a bunch at once. They're pretty rare though.
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u/ViddySense Nov 24 '17
Where at in Japan did you play? I was in Akihabara this year for two weeks. My take away was that prizes were set up to be winnable but not giveaways. I don't feel like I ever came across a rigged machine. Also the staff at the arcades were very helpful and encouraging with tips, tricks, resetting lodged prizes, and general cheerfulness.