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!
One thing I do like about boop cards rather than physical tokens and paper tickets is that redemption games will never run out of tickets mid-way through paying out a jackpot, and all the attendant can do is refund your token.
That said, I really miss the pavlovian response of the shlunk-CHUNK of the coin falling into the coin box and knowing that fun was about to happen.
I’ll never forget the time I hit that stupid spinny light stop thing for a perfect game. 500 tickets baby! It spit out 13 before it ran out. Didn’t even get my token refunded.
This is why I’m now building a doomsday machine.