We did the exact same thing early 80's except that we used the clicker found in disposal lighters.
We did it for a couple of years until they figured it out and started to conver the arcade cabinets with transparent plastic.
At the same time they also drilled holes at the back of the machine for ventilation as the rest of the case now was sealed in plastic.
We found out that using a bamboo stick you could press the lever that register when a coin has been paid into the slot.
That made them relocate the holes for the ventilation to the top of the case instead of the back so we couldn't get the lever anymore. Or so they thought. haha
We discovered that by pressing a coin up the return slot — the one where you get your coin back if it isn’t accepted — you could also trigger the lever for coin registration and the free gaming continued.
Eventually they put in sharp screws into that coin return box so you would cut your finges.
At what point does the arcade just kick you out? I can't imagine them seeing you continuously tamper with their equipment to circumvent paying and think, "the best way to handle this is to keep modifying our machines."
Arcades were big dark noisy rooms, and quite often had only one or two people on staff who were usually either busy dealing with other customers and were paid far too little to care about the owners' profit margins. They were basically there to hand out prizes to little kids for the ticket machines and make sure nobody walked out with Dig Dug on a hand cart.
In our case the arcades was in a ajourning room to our local cinema with no staff present and no CCTV so we had plenty of time to fiddle with the machines.
Maybe the staff at the arcade, aren't the owners of the place, so they don't personally care that much. They'd rather be friends with everyone, than to be the "angry police"? (And I'm guessing the tampering players were nice people to have around)
And the technicians "improving" the machines -- maybe they had a good time too, I'm wondering. @TowerTall and friends made their job more interesting / fun?
If you kick someone out, you lose them as a customer, and they'll tell all their friends about the free play trick out of spite, so you'll have to patch the machine anyway.
You're making me wonder what the stats are for how many people try to abuse arcade machines in a country like Japan versus the United States. (Not that people in any country are gonna be entirely honest, but the entitlement to break the system and the comfort to brag about it seems cultural.)
In fact, that could be why some of the machines weren't better protected against that stuff in the first place, right?
There are some great scenes in Rebels of the Neon God [1992] by Tsai Ming-Liang (Taiwanese filmmaker) where the main characters steal the main pcbs from some arcade machines and try to resell them to the arcade owner lol. Wonderful film, recommend it - some great scenes in those arcades.
We did it for a couple of years until they figured it out and started to conver the arcade cabinets with transparent plastic.
At the same time they also drilled holes at the back of the machine for ventilation as the rest of the case now was sealed in plastic.
We found out that using a bamboo stick you could press the lever that register when a coin has been paid into the slot.
That made them relocate the holes for the ventilation to the top of the case instead of the back so we couldn't get the lever anymore. Or so they thought. haha
We discovered that by pressing a coin up the return slot — the one where you get your coin back if it isn’t accepted — you could also trigger the lever for coin registration and the free gaming continued.
Eventually they put in sharp screws into that coin return box so you would cut your finges.
After that we got a SEGA. Was great fun :)