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!
I built an arcade machine from scratch (MAME for arcade games) and had a coin button to begin with. Mostly meant that it was too easy to just spam the coin and start button (sits beside one another) and just “pay” our way through games.
I built coin slots with tokens falling through a light sensor and now it is a little more work to “pay”, and also a slight shame introduced to the gameplay when your pile of tokens are significantly smaller than your friend’s :)
We’re trying a little harder now to play better.