Coin Slot + Coat Hanger = free credits

[+Cobra Kai]

I can't be the only one that figured this one out as a kid right? In a moment of nostalgia recently, I remembered something I used to do at the local arcades, before the industry switched to the common red/black push button coin return that most games ended up using all the time, probably because of people like me. But, the picture below is the closest I could find to the actual coin slot where you could get free credits. It looked similar to this, if you think about those 4 rivets you see in the picture as having not been there, and having little holes big enough for a coat hanger to fit through instead.

 

All you needed was about 6" of coat hanger wire, stick it in there and jig it around until you felt the credit trigger, and bam, free credits. Not proud of it, just something this poor kid addicted to video games figured out. Wanted to see if anyone else did it too. I even remember a few of the games I took advantage of were Rush'n'Attack and Popeye.

 

 

[Tanooki]

I remember also working on that and the push buttons too for years, you could just destroy a quarter drilling out the center and then tying high tension thin fishing wire around it. Slip the coin in just far enough to trigger, then pull it back out with the other end of the line in a loop around your finger like a yo-yo string. It wasn't I think until the earlier 90s or so they tweaked the inside for that to fail or hang up where the line would get stuck or break eating the wasted coin.

[+save2600]

Doucheiest thing I did as a kid in an arcade (that I remember), was at a Showbiz Pizza Place. One of their kiddie rides had a loose coin door, whose coins were overflowing through the bottom, so helped myself to a boatload of tokens that night. Remember spending most of them in the dark area, where the cocktail table games were kept. I either felt that bad/guilty or really enjoyed Carnival that day!

[+Cobra Kai]

^ that reminds me of a time I walked into a local bowling alley arcade room, and saw the entire vendor keyring just sitting there, dangling from the coin door keyhole from some game, and I was the only person in there. Uh, I opened that sucker up and dumped as many quarters as I could to fill my pockets and made a decent haul. I don't know why the vendor left his keys unattended, but his loss. I don't feel bad about that one at all. At least I left his keys!

[dj_convoy]

I must have been ten or so. I was playing Contra at a 7-11 I frequented, and the coin slot was jammed up. Rather than call the clerk over, I fiddled with it with my trusty pocket knife. Dunno what happened, but apparently collecting the money out of the machine wasn't a huge priority; something popped and what seemed to my mind to be an unlimited number of quarters (realistically it was maybe a couple dollars' worth) flowed forth. Needless to say, I got to play Contra for an extra minute or two and a couple of extra comics for my "trouble" that day.

[CatPix]

Reminds me I read an interview where Pierre Tel, the owner of the French arcade machines Jeutel, mentionned this.

He developped contermeasures for such things. Even better, he made alarms to let people knew that someone was trying to cheat.

One trick he had a great deal of difficulty to guess was using an electrik kitchen sparkler on the slot, that shorted the coin slot and gave free credits. If voltage was detected, it tripped the alarm. etc. a fun read.

He mentionned that someone showed him a machine proto and he shaked it until he got a free play. The guy protested "Nobody is going to ever do that" and Pierre Tel said "You're wrong, if you must unplug your machine 50 times and it offer a free credit, then everyone will try that until they get free credits. People sill try everything for a free credit"

Edited September 25, 2017 by CatPix

[rayik]

I remember playing the arcade game Targ back in college. If you beat the high score you got a free credit. To get the most free play, once we beat the high score we would deliberately die and not get anymore points. We keep doing that over and over getting free games until it was too difficult to beat the high score. Power switch was on the back top of the machine. We'd flip the game off then on. That would reset high score back to default, which was a very low #. The operator caught on to us and put a bracket over the switch so we could not turn it off. We then just followed the power cord and would unplug it from the wall. Game was taken out rather soon after we started unplugging it.

[+Random Terrain]

Nobody liked the creepy pothead wearing the belt-mounted coin changer, so I'd just stab him in the neck and fill my pockets whenever I was low on cash. He'd be replaced the next day with another creepy guy that smelled like pot and B.O. No cops were ever called since those people were a dime a dozen. I wonder what the arcade owners did with all of the bodies? I'm guessing that they ate the raw flesh at some kind of Illuminati Eyes Wide Shut style cannibal orgy.

[+kevtris]

Back when I was a later teenager, I was big into lock picking, reading the stuff available on the proto-internet then about it and decided to go about picking locks. Well at this one place that had a few machines, I picked the lock and racked up a tons of credits on the machine and relocked it. I didn't take any money, just racked up 99 credits until I blew through them. Can't remember what game it was, but it was some kind of generic shooter. Tried to pick the lock on the pinball machine but unfortunately didn't have any luck, so no free plays on that.

[Video]

Those round key locks are surprisingly easy to pick. Funny that that's the type of lock commonly used on bike locks, safes, and ATM's

 

I remember startrek TNG pinball at some place we visited had s loose door/coin mech. You could grab the coin return button and jerk up and it would give you free credits. I played that all night.

 

On pinball, what is that loud ass crack when you win a free game? Most do it, and I usually get good enough to hit it in available machines. You sure get weird looks from people when that happens. Especially if you do it a lot.

[+Random Terrain]

On pinball, what is that loud ass crack when you win a free game? Most do it, and I usually get good enough to hit it in available machines. You sure get weird looks from people when that happens. Especially if you do it a lot.

Related links:

 

youtu.be/81AmlwE-c60?t=2m47s

 

youtu.be/dHH8dRURw4Y?t=7s

 

ask.metafilter.com/214712/Origins-of-the-Knocker

[omegadot]

Back when I was a later teenager, I was big into lock picking, reading the stuff available on the proto-internet then about it and decided to go about picking locks. Well at this one place that had a few machines, I picked the lock and racked up a tons of credits on the machine and relocked it. I didn't take any money, just racked up 99 credits until I blew through them. Can't remember what game it was, but it was some kind of generic shooter. Tried to pick the lock on the pinball machine but unfortunately didn't have any luck, so no free plays on that.

 

Buying a kit and learning some lock picking will rapidly teach you how much is only safe if the crook is really lazy. Of course depending on where you live the use of picks can rapidly escalate the punishment. I remember a while back getting a lock for a moving truck out of what was available at my local hardware store. I was able to pop it in about a second with a rake and just sighed. I'm not even particularly good at it, I just went to a few classes at some conventions.

 

I never did anything nefarious at arcades so this thread is pretty entertaining.

[Eltigro]

Never stole any actual money, but...

 

When I was in middle school I remember finding a Ms Pac Man machine with an unlocked door. There was a button inside to give a credit or something and we would reach inside, push the button a few times, then close the door again like nothing was amiss and keep playing.

 

Recently, while at a Dave and Busters with my daughter, she won a few tickets playing skeeball. When I went to take the tickets from the machine, the front of it fell open exposing all the tickets. We could have taken them, but instead I used it as an opportunity to teach my daughter about doing the right thing, honesty, and such... we found an employee and notified them of the open door.

[derFunkenstein]

I know we're kind of wandering, but since Eltigro mentioned skeeball...

 

My daughter's 7th birthday party was at the local skating rink. It had two skeeball machines. One of the machines was broken, but we didn't notice at first - every time the ball hit one of the hole guards, it would register that the ball went through. As long as you had enough skill to ricochet off the 50, it'd give you 50 points AND the points of whatever spot you landed in. Eventually the machine went berzerk and started shooting out tickets as fast as it could. A rink employee noticed at that point since so many people were gathered around, and shut down the machine. But they let her keep the tickets.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I never did anything like this at an arcade, but in my early 20's when I first moved out on my own I discovered that that I could trigger the coin acceptor in my new apartment building's washers and dryers by pushing a penny up through the coin return slot with the back of a chopstick. For four or five years laundry ended up costing me $0.12 a batch instead of $3, until eventually the landlord changed out the washers and dryers for newer ones that my penny trick didn't work on.

[Professor Gull]

Maybe I am too new for this retro arcade deal but I do remember one very good way to play without pay. Well it had cost associated with it in the amount of time but the rest was free. See there are these long quarter sized metal bars and it was not me per sey but the father of a friend who decided to make a bunch of slugs to beat the arcade system. That worked really well until they got smarter coin acceptance devices but I recall having pockets filled with quarter sized pieces of metal.

[Northcoastgamer]

During the 80's I worked at Darien Lake amusement park just south of Buffalo NY. In early spring each year, before the park opened to the public, I was allowed access to the main arcade on Fridays and Saturdays. I would pack some chow and drinks, take my oldest boy and daughter and we would play free for hours and hours, nearly all day. The arcade guys would simply leave each machine open, and we would give ourselves unlimited credits. I recall Altered Beast, Dragons Lair and numerous other titles when they first came out. Those were awesome times!

[omegadot]

During the 80's I worked at Darien Lake amusement park just south of Buffalo NY. In early spring each year, before the park opened to the public, I was allowed access to the main arcade on Fridays and Saturdays. I would pack some chow and drinks, take my oldest boy and daughter and we would play free for hours and hours, nearly all day. The arcade guys would simply leave each machine open, and we would give ourselves unlimited credits. I recall Altered Beast, Dragons Lair and numerous other titles when they first came out. Those were awesome times!

 

Hey, that's cool. I still go in there occasionally (or at least in the last few years). Although last I recall, it's not very interesting anymore.

[Northcoastgamer]

^ Yeah, Darien Lake is no where near what it was back then. I recall nearly 30,000 people there on some packed Saturdays. Those were good days to take a break near the bottom of the water slides, watching the ladies come down.

[+FujiSkunk]

This brings back some memories.

 

Some time in the mid '80s, the nearest arcade to me was nice enough to set their Asteroids and Missile Command machines to two credits per quarter. Not everyone knew this, so it wasn't uncommon for credits to be left on the machines. I would hover around when people played, to see if they knew. Once I tried to be smart and "casually" cover the flashing player buttons after a guy played. He was smarter. I didn't get a free game that time.

 

Then there was Power Drift, one of my favorite arcade racing games, which the local Walmart happened to have during my early teenage years. One day it had an "out of order" sign on it, much to my dismay, though the machine was still turned on. Looking around, I quickly discovered the game itself was fine. The problem was the coin door was open! You could put a quarter in, fish it back out, and get all the free games you wanted! Surprisingly this lasted for several weeks, before they finally replaced the machine rather than fix the coin door. I guess they thought it wouldn't make enough money.

 

In college, those of us who worked in the rec area and stayed on campus through spring break were treated to free games when the distributors set all the machines to free play. One school quarter they forgot to set one machine back: Space Lords. I got really good at that one before they finally got wise and reset the machine.

 

I can at least for the record state that I never broke a game myself, and I never took any money that was already in an arcade machine, just my own quarters from Power Drift. Laundromat driers, however, are a different story. I never broke into their coinboxes, but I didn't have to. At the laundromat of the apartments I lived in at the time, people would leave change in their pants, and so coins were always falling out of the tumblers and into the area below. Almost all of those old machines had broken locks on the filter doors, and so it was stupid easy to open the machine, reach up toward the tumbler and fish out handfuls of coins at a time. I got to know the guy who worked on the machines, and he would even open the one machine that had a good lock so I could help "clean" that one too. Good times.

 

Maybe I am too new for this retro arcade deal but I do remember one very good way to play without pay. Well it had cost associated with it in the amount of time but the rest was free. See there are these long quarter sized metal bars and it was not me per sey but the father of a friend who decided to make a bunch of slugs to beat the arcade system. That worked really well until they got smarter coin acceptance devices but I recall having pockets filled with quarter sized pieces of metal.

 

Nolan Bushnell himself has a similar story about those first Pong machines. Often the technicians would come empty the coinboxes and find them full of wet money. It turned out people were tricking the coin mechanisms with quarter-sized disks of ice! What Catpix said is true. If there is a way to get a free game, real or imagined, people will try it. I had heard of the "turn the machine off and on X times to get a free game" trick too, but was never brave enough to try it myself.

[Tempest]

The closest I came to getting free games was when I'd hit the coin return and get a random quarter back that had gotten jammed. It happened a lot by me since we're so close to the Canadian boarder and US and Canadian quarters look pretty much the same in the dark and tend to jam in old machines (they went right through to the return tray on later ones) . You'd get a few Canadian quarters out of the machine and whine to the arcade attendant that the change machine gave you a non-US coin and you'd get a US quarter without trouble. Hardly a cunning scheme, but a free game is a free game.

 

I also used to hang around those change machines at Chuckie Cheese where people would put $20 in and get a pitcher full of quarters. Lots of parents spilled a few and didn't notice. I was quick to scoop those up.

 

I always wanted to try the old coin on a string trick, but I could never get it to work (probably because I wasn't drilling a hole through the quarter, just tying the string round it). Then again I was like 8 and not trying too hard.

[NE146]

I remember on the old Taito Space Invaders cocktails.. you could sometimes put a penny in the return slot and if you flicked it hard enough with your finger so it went UPWARD through.. it'd hit the credit switch. That didn't last long and by the time the Galaxians came out it didn't work much anymore.

 

[Eltigro]

Just remembered that, while not an arcade game, there was a jukebox in a local burger place that had a button or something on the back somewhere. I was there with some people I knew at the time that said that you could get free credits by pushing the button, but it was difficult, because it was in a busy restaurant and in a place close to the front where employees could see you. Anyway, they would kind of stand next to the machine and squat down a little and reach behind it and there would be a free credit. I never knew how it was done or where the button was and was too scared of being caught to try it.

[BigO]

I'm telling on you guys.

[+Cobra Kai]

Just remembered that, while not an arcade game, there was a jukebox in a local burger place that had a button or something on the back somewhere. I was there with some people I knew at the time that said that you could get free credits by pushing the button, but it was difficult, because it was in a busy restaurant and in a place close to the front where employees could see you. Anyway, they would kind of stand next to the machine and squat down a little and reach behind it and there would be a free credit. I never knew how it was done or where the button was and was too scared of being caught to try it.

Fonzi taught us all that you could just bang on the jukebox to get a song.