this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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Im probably in the very very small minority of people who still love and go to arcades. Its such a great place to meet like minded nerds. We are lucky to have 2 really awesome ones in town, one of which has a lot of good old machines, and they repair them too. They have some new ones that are OK too.

Anyway, I dont like that they changed to the dumb card thing. I get it (efficiency, capitalism, it was bound to happen) but it removes another visceral experience in society that was so fun.

Anyway, my old man rant!

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[–] plantfanatic@sh.itjust.works 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

How’s the person supposed to know there is even anything on the card…?

$2 is a lot more attractive than a empty piece of plastic mate.

Lots of machines take up to 5 coins, air hockey has always been $2-3.

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 6 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

How’s the person supposed to know there is even anything on the card…?

Because it's an arcade and loading funds is what people do with those cards. Also, those cards are generally accountless, and not tied to any sort of identifying information, so snatching one up and pocketing it is trivial and nobody would give you a second look if you tried using it on another machine.

[–] plantfanatic@sh.itjust.works 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

People use blank cards for this purpose all the time, and if there’s enough people to justify using tokens in a line. No one is gonna be able to grab a card without being noticed. So there’s a very good chance that someone is gonna be caught and get an empty card.

Yeah… that’s mighty tempting eh? If you’re foolish enough to use a loaded card and leave it unattended you kinda deserve it to be honest.

[–] SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

If my card was taken, which would be empty, I would go seek management and they would use the cameras to find the person instantly the only realistic end is the person gets caught with a blank card, gets banned and likely get police involved.

Or would you just stand there dumbfounded instead of dealing with it….? There’s no situation here where the thief gets ahead, they’ll be caught 100% of the time if you are smart enough to seek management….

This is a wonderfully fake situation that’s easily dealt with to get mad at though lmfao.