/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.4961018]

Why did parents think $5 was enough to give kid's as arcade money? They'd be lucky if that lasted more than 10 minutes.

[Anonymous No.4961025]

>>4961018
Most arcades set their difficulty so players can play about two minutes a game. So with about five dollars at about two minutes a game (without ANY breaks in between) should be able to play roughly fourty minutes. So if you were losing five bucks in ten minutes your parents were right for not giving you more. You sucked!

[Anonymous No.4961035]

>>4961018
>$5
WHOA! Look at mister big shot over here! Must be nice to have your loving caring parents give you FIVE WHOLE DOLLARS to spend at the arcade. Meanwhile I was givin a buck. Guess how long a dollar last at an arcade? I h8 you

[Anonymous No.4961038]

>>4961018
I had 2 brothers and $15 was equivalent to about $750 now in purchasing power.

[Anonymous No.4961046]

>>4961018
You could buy used carts for that much.

[Anonymous No.4961105]

>>4961038
That is bullshit in some ways. It implies everything else inflated with the purchasing power. Final Fantasy VI (released III) costed like 70 dollars when it was released, and people would lose their fucking mind if they released a standard, non special edition for anything more than $60. Shit, some people will complain that a game costed $40.

[Anonymous No.4961107]

>>4961038
What are you? A hundred?

[Anonymous No.4961121]

>>4961018
try beating double dragon with 50 cents

[Anonymous No.4961124]

>>4961105
They sell many more copies now, and there's far more games to choose from. Each new game devalues all. I won't stop copying that floppy because it would be no loss to me if most of the industry disappeared.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4961131]

Twenty quarters in my pocket felt like a lot when I was a kid and it still does. It's pretty much ideal, enough to practice on without just credit feeding and also enough to play a game you're good at until you're sick of it.

[Anonymous No.4961140]

>>4961124
Yeah but there doesn't seem to be a functional relation between $80 price of SNES Squaresoft and the $60 price of current games based off the enlarging pool of games coupled with the general increased amount of sales. I would be interested to see how we got stuck at this $60 price mark. I remember N64 games starting to drop to $50 a game, and then they started to raise to $60 at some point.

[Anonymous No.4961189]

$5 in the 90s is equivalent to $40 today due to inflation

[Anonymous No.4961205]

>>4961018
Git gud = more value for your money

[Anonymous No.4961229]

>>4961018
That's why you had a Game Boy and Scholastic book.

[Anonymous No.4961285]

>>4961018
>$5 was enough to give kid's as arcade money
That's at least 10 tries/games. That's more than enough to get through most beat em ups and light gun games.
> They'd be lucky if that lasted more than 10 minutes.
unless you are playing $1+ systems that is very unlikely

[Anonymous No.4961289]

>>4961018
my dad would go with me and put in a 20
That was enough for a good evening of games

[Anonymous No.4961305]

Jesus do you have brain damage or something? If you're not a total mongoloid you can easily get 10 minutes into any beat em up on a single coin, if not more than that. Even being a kid isn't an excuse.

[Anonymous No.4961313]

Fuck you, my parents gave me 50 cents. I would have one game of Street Fighter II and get as far as I could.

[Anonymous No.4961350]

>>4961025
I had a dollar

Id use 1 quarter at a time on vs games and beat them, praying some gosu didnt challenge me

1 quarter cud burn 25 mins

[Anonymous No.4962371]

>>4961189
Actually it would be $7-$10 right now depending on what year from the 90s, zoomer.

[Anonymous No.4962381]

>>4962371
I think they were funning

[Anonymous No.4962491]

>>4961121
With or without the elbow?

[Anonymous No.4962503]

>>4961018
because parents (not all) were aware of how the arcade industry designed games to milk kids of their money.

[Anonymous No.4962504]

Couldn't you fuck with the switches and set it to free play mode?

[Anonymous No.4962538]

When I was a kid, the video stores in my area started setting up rooms in the back with a bunch of consoles hooked up to TVs and you could pay for time on the consoles with any game they had. I could go there and play for an hour with the same money that would have lasted me a few minutes in the arcade, so I literally just stopped going to the arcade. In retrospect I kinda regret this because I missed out on a lot of stuff that came out on the arcades in the mid-late 90s, but I did get a lot more playtime for my buck.

[Anonymous No.4962546]

>>4961018
git gud

[Anonymous No.4962550]

They only gave you $5 because that's not what they played as kids and didn't understand it. Ask for $50 to go bowling and they'd agree.

[Anonymous No.4962552]

>>4961189
Hahaha. No

[Anonymous No.4962554]

>>4962538
Wasn't that a 3rd world thing?

[Anonymous No.4963346]

>>4962504
Wasn't that done with DIP switches on the game board inside the locked cabinet?

[Anonymous No.4963671]

>>4961038
"No"

[Anonymous No.4963672]

>>4961018
I was lucky to get a quarter.

[Anonymous No.4963937]

>>4961018
>They'd be lucky if that lasted more than 10 minutes.
If they are shit at games then sure.

[Anonymous No.4964023]

I'm not sure it was even possible to be so shit at most games that you could burn through 20 quarters in 10 minutes. Running through all the damage/dying, respawning, invincibility, continue and/or player select animation frames probably takes longer than that in most cases.

>>4963346
Depended on the game. Switches/jumpers on the PCB, or a service menu activated by a dedicated button. In some cases the jumpers were not of the pin-and-cap variety and had to actually be soldered/desoldered by the operator. In any case it'll be locked inside the cabinet so punk kids can't steal your revenue.

[Anonymous No.4964027]

>>4964023
New speedrun category?

[Anonymous No.4964032]

>>4961018

maybe you should of gutten gud and stopped dying so much. ;^)

[Anonymous No.4964075]

>5 dollars is short
>forgetting the part you were a kid and wanted to do that every day

Yeah, "just 5 dollars, is short" . Damn parents not finding more money in their wallet or asking santa or uncle sam

[Anonymous No.4964095]

>>4961035
This. I'd get a dollar or two at fucking best and the rest of the time have to watch the other kids for the rest of the time.

[Anonymous No.4964102]

>tfw skating rink arcade with school/day care and you're done skating for some raisin and out of cash but still stuck there

[Anonymous No.4964140]

In Europe, one single credit was worth the equivalent of $1 (in 1990 dollars), sometimes even $2 if the game was extremely hot, and the difficulty was almost always set on hardest

[Anonymous No.4964173]

>>4964140
Is that why Jenny's cysts were so popular there?

[Anonymous No.4964175]

>>4964173
It's called Mega Drive in Europe.

[Anonymous No.4964215]

>>4964140
>play Virtua Striker and manage to be good enough to reach the finals by 1-0 all matches after many wasted tries
>playing Virtua Fighter and stage 5 starts raping my shit
>play Sega Rally and timer allows no mistakes
>years later
>play Virtua Tennis and stage 3 rapes the shit of me and everyone else
>get DC version
>beat arcade mode easily on whatever hard mode was called
These games were set on ultra mega super duper hard-core mode. damn jews

[Anonymous No.4964314]

>>4964173
>nintendo egomaniacs
Almost as bad as Xbox egomaniacs

[Anonymous No.4964321]

>>4964314
I actually had a Genesis. I just think it's fun to roleplay as kids on the playground.

[Anonymous No.4964341]

A lot of games from that era rewarded you for being good at them. It's very easy to play something like Crazy Taxi for 20 minutes on a single credit if you're decent at it. Shooters similarly got cheaper the closer you got to 1CCing them, eventually resulting in a full game for one play.

[Anonymous No.4964348]

>>4964140
Don't feel bad.. modern arcades suck and credits now cost 1-2$ (in 2018 money)

[Anonymous No.4964352]

>>4961046
In the 80's and early 90's? There was no such thing as a used game market.

[Anonymous No.4964353]

>>4964348
Only the new stuff. The retro arcade bar here (with some new retro games too) has everything set to a quarter, and there tokens are often offered for less at specific times.

[Anonymous No.4964363]

>>4964352
Not even for 1st-2nd generation consoles and 2nd gen software?

[Anonymous No.4964368]

>>4964215
Same here, and also:

>beat Street Fighter II Turbo quite easily on console
>try the brand new Super Street Fighter II in the arcades
>struggle at stage 1, lose at stage 2

[Anonymous No.4964372]

>>4964352
I bought almost all my games used in the early 90s desu

[Anonymous No.4964376]

>>4964368
Arcade fighter AI is bullshit.

[Anonymous No.4964409]

>>4964376
You gota be a turbo autist to no be able to beat King of figthers.

[Anonymous No.4964534]

>>4961189
No, it was worth 20 tries, I haven't been to an arcade in ages, but you do the math

[Anonymous No.4964554]

>>4961018

I'd get $2 at most from my parents for arcade games.

Somehow I beat Turtles in Time in the arcade. I think there were 3 other people playing with me that time tossing quarters in.

[Anonymous No.4964563]

>>4961018
thats 20 quarters you absolute ingrate, if you only played the 25cent games 5 dollars was more than enough to last a couple hours.

[Anonymous No.4964880]

>>4961018
Probably because they were as young dumb and broke as you are now. And didn't want to waste more than five bucks watching their spawn embarrass itself on DDR or whatever shit you liked.

[Anonymous No.4964930]

>>4961018
You fucking suck at video games.

[Anonymous No.4965041]

>>4964409
Rugal is hard

[Anonymous No.4965202]

At home, my mom gave me and my brothers a bucket of lire and we played as much as we wanted cuz we owned a caf with a small arcade.
Out of the house, when we went to play at other arcades in town (or on vacation), we got a thousand lire each and it was gone within a half hour. : (

[Anonymous No.4965207]

>>4964140
They cost either 200 lire or 500 lire in Italy in the 80s and early 90s. I'm not sure what the conversion rate was back then, but I think that's about 25-50c US. When visiting family in CH, the price was higher, 1chf per game, which I think was about $1.50.
Where are you from?

[Anonymous No.4965278]

>>4961018
Oh..OH GOD....ITS HAPPENING!!!! I CANT STOP IT!!! IM TYPING IT NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Back then...Five Dollars was a lot of money. brb, turning to dust now...

[Anonymous No.4967929]

>>4965207
bump for answer

[Anonymous No.4968430]

>>4962538
Yeah, those places were great. My nearby videostore had a PS1 set up, you'd rent it on an hourly basis and could pick up whatever CD you wanted and pop it in. My dad actually rented the console itself for like 3 days, and I spent a fun weekend playing it, mostly Crash Bandicoot 1 IIRC. No idea if this was standard or just my dad managing to persuade the staff though. Sadly I never actually owned a fifth gen console, I waited to get a proper PC.

[Anonymous No.4968447]

>>4964363
>>4964352
I don't recall their being a real "used games market" but there were certainly bargain bins where stores would sell old and outdated software (not necessarily 1st/2nd gen stuff though). You'd have to dig around to get lucky as usually it was full of 20 copies of the same three garbage games. I did get Final Fantasy IV for $20 though at some point, but that was a rare/unusual find. I think most of what you'd see in bargain bins was either PC shovelware or games that just didn't sell on the shelves for whatever reason.

[Anonymous No.4968450]

>>4964352
Speaking as an eastern european, there was no such thing as a legit games market lol.

[Anonymous No.4968472]

>>4964352
>There was no such thing as a used game market.
Yes there was, did you even read EGM?

[Anonymous No.4968476]

endless fun

[Anonymous No.4968682]

>>4961018
My parents never gave me money for arcade games.

And they were right to do so.

[Anonymous No.4968689]

>>4964348
I've never seen that; all the proper old arcades in this country have everything on freeplay and charge you about 10 to 20 quid for entry. Arcade Club is a hoot and back when the Heart of Gaming was in North Acton, you could pay 20 quid and stay there overnight. I used to head there on Saturday early in the morning, wait until 12 and spend about 15 hours playing through everything before going to sleep.

[Anonymous No.4968697]

>>4961035
Git Gud

[Anonymous No.4969058]

>>4964352
There was no such thing as you. Why do underage like bullshitting about how things were before they were born so much?

[Anonymous No.4969762]

>>4961018
>$5
man, if my parents gave me a whole $5, that'd last almost an hour, even at 2 coins a play (arcade games tend to give you from 2-4 minutes of play before they they finally decide to up the difficulty and boot you off)
I'd get a buck, and that'd be two games. Maybe 4 if I went to some old-ass cabinet that was only one coin a pop.
Late on, when Time Crisis 3 came out, it was a whole buck a play.
naturally, everyone I knew ended up playing way more TC2 because it was only 50 cents

>>4964368
Super Turbo's arcade AI outside of Japan was fucking bullshit.

>>4964409
most KOFs are super easy on default (difficulty 4)... right up until the last boss
absolutely fucking breezed through KOF98 and then went through all the credits (was playing in AES mode, so 4 on each controller port) on Rugal

>Repeat after me: I'll never take on a god again
fuck you Rugal

[Anonymous No.4971907]

>>4961289
Did Borden's do what Time Out did in that if you put a $20 bill into the token machine, it spat out an extra $10 worth of tokens for free?
Getting $30 worth of tokens was a boon back in the day. Goddamn, do I miss Time Out.

[Anonymous No.4972186]

>>4971907
Extra 5 dollars' worth if I recall correctly. 100 tokens.

[Anonymous No.4972230]

>>4964352
What absolute bullshit, my local video game store sold me a used copy of Super Mario 2 in fucking 1988. Get off this board.

[Anonymous No.4972234]

>>4964352
I want to say I started getting used Nintendo tapes from this place in 1989. Definitely before 1991.

[Anonymous No.4972516]

>>4961018
>Why did parents think $5 was enough to give kid's as arcade money?

If you couldn't beat the game or at least know your place after $5 you clearly was wasting money, time, and pissing off the kids behind you while being an embarrassment to the arcade.

[Anonymous No.4972535]

I thin $5 was enough for me to play to the end of Maximum Force.

[Anonymous No.4972573]

>be 10
>playing one of the arcade cabinets at chuck e cheese
>run out of tokens decide to wander around looking at other cabinets
>notice one of the games has 25 credits and no one is at the machine to use them
>its motherfucking magical truck adventure
my arms got sore as fuck that day

[Anonymous No.4972608]

>>4961025
that was the dickiest shit ever, even downright scummy.

[Anonymous No.4972610]

>>4972608
Do you know why your D-pad is on the left?

[Anonymous No.4972618]

>>4961140
because retards in both ends rated up the inflation slope >>4961189

The inflation argument is just a stupid copout.

,>>4972573
How many times have one of you encountered a machine with a forgotten credit.

I can recall once with the original TMNT when I was a kid

[Anonymous No.4972626]

>>4964352
Early 90s had the used market! I remember my mom and my grandma going to Las Palmas Calexico and buying stuff there, heck I got my old copy of Super Mario 3 in box and manual, heck, most of the old NES I got as a kid were purchased on the second hand market.

(I don't have those old copies anymore but rebought those games in the late 2000s when prices were still fair/mostly cheap)

[Anonymous No.4972629]

>>4972626
heck

[Anonymous No.4972643]

>>4972626
Most prices are still far below MSRP and that's very fair if old games truly are better than new games.

[Anonymous No.4973930]

>>4961018
>His family had enough money to spare to let him go to an arcade
Keep complaining asshole

[Anonymous No.4975439]

I could have a great time at the arcade today with only $5. The cheapest games this one arcade near-ish me has are all $1 and up. Even if I'm shitty at them, that's still a half hour of entertainment. Certainly worth the money, IMO.
And back in the 90s? Shiiiiiiieeeeet, $5 would been an hour or more of play time. Or a half hour, a couple slices of pizza and a goddamn soda. I should know cuz I used to play... oh, what was the game called...

You know the top-down stages in NES Bionic Commando? The game I'm thinking of is basically just that all the way through. Good as shit.
Anyway, with $5, I'd walk down to the pizza joint at the corner, play like four credits of that game and get two slices of cheese pizza and a bottle of Pepsi.
Good times.

[Anonymous No.4975447]

>>4975439
Or hell, if I felt like getting my ass handed to me, I'd pop a few credits into the NBA Jam at the Chinese take out place at the opposite and have a couple egg rolls. I fucking SUCKED at NBA Jam, but I still loved playing it.

[Anonymous No.4975621]

>>4965207
All arcades in Sweden cost 10 sek to play, all arcade games I've ever played in Finland cost ~10 fim or 1 euro.
Also the only arcades we've ever had for as long as I remember are racing games, lightguns and dance machines. Although we've had a decent selection of pinball boards.

[Anonymous No.4975626]

>>4975621
Forgot to mention, 10 sek is about 1.10 usd.
10 fim is around 1.40 usd.

[Anonymous No.4975801]

>>4965207
Sorry for the delay. I'm from France and the cost was usually 5 francs (more or less $1) for one credit, if the game was "current". And if you were lucky, you could have three credits for 10 francs. That was so expensive that you had to maximize your play time, and thus fighting games were rarely played in 2-player mode.

I remember my dilemma was: do I buy a video game magazine this month (cost: 30 francs) or do I spend the same amount for 25 minutes in the arcade room?

Also, on outdated games, you would get maybe two credits for 5 francs, but no one cared about these games.