Please post your best UFO Catcher grabs itt
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Got it for someone else and unfortunately I also included something else in the package that got it confiscated at customs so she never got it (RIP)
Got it on the third try though which is pretty good.
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I give my prizes to little kids who are watching, the real prize is seeing the smile on their faces
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I once worked with a guy who claimed to have won a prize in one of these in every Denny’s in California
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That actual sega UFO catchers play the starlight zone theme makes the yakuza UFO Catchers don’t a crime.
I bet they would have to license the song though.
I have never won. My wife is awesome at this and has won me a bunch of dumb stuffed animals at Denny’s that I later donate to friends’ kids.
I always wanna get cool stuff from the UFO Catchers at Japanese arcades, but they’re too hard and too expensive for me to try. If I really want sometehing, I’ll just go stalk the basements of Akiba stores.
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Never played UFO catcher, but my sister and I spent way too much time/money on various claw games down at the boardwalk in our youths. We probably won better things but the one that sticks out is the lighter shaped like a gun as it took us years to finally claim one.
I won a Kwanzaa doll from one. It was in a Denny’s in upstate NY. I still have it somewhere and if I find it I will post a photo.
I was so excited over the win that I did a little victory dance. This little old lady came up and congratulated me. She was very kind.
It was one of the greatest moments in my life.
every time he heard that a new denny’s was going up somewhere he would have to plan a road trip so he could conquer its claw machine
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I’d love to hear what you folks like about crane games; it’s completely alien to my psychology.
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My gf is pretty good at these, she and her sister enjoy them a lot. They also derive enjoyment from those penny-crusher machines, so I think a lot of it is just the novelty.
Yeah I think the appeal is pretty obvious? These are “arcade” games in the sense of, like, a penny arcade, but not yknow the shitty webcomic. Amusements & attractions. They have a physical reality that makes them fun to manipulate. Like skeeball and pinball and those things where you throw basketballs in a hoop.
It seems to me that these games exist in a continuum from ‘fun toy’ to ‘gambling exercise’; or, I’d order them like:
skeeball => carnival games => crane game => ‘light bar’ timing game => slot machine
So the game portion is engaging? To me it seems a poor game due to the lack of consistency in grip strength, and the lack of physical sensation through the joystick. Or, is it in a sweet spot in the continuum between games and gambling that keeps it engaging?
Seems like people are attached to the cheap stuffed toys they’ve won, presumably it feels more ‘earned’ than toys purchased with money and has greater sentimental attachment because of that?
Sure. I mean I don’t personally find any joy in crane games but I get it. You read kind of like an alien anthropologist here. People have more emotional attachment to things they earned through a memorable experience??? Um, yes
Sure, I’m working through my thoughts on this out loud.
I can’t think of gambling without thinking of the crushing big picture and certainty of losing money so to me crane games look like a petty rip-off.
If they’re celebrated and enjoyed, well, I can probably figure it out but I want to hear strong arguments from those who enjoy it.
My sister was playing a crane game as a kid and it ate one of her quarters. This was at a Nathan’s. They used to have pretty ok arcades. I dunno if they still do. My dad went and got a janitor and he told us those games were rigged, and they only pay out once a certain amount of money’s been earned. That may not be true but it scared me straight! I haven’t used one since.
Except for that one time in a Denny’s where I won a Kwanzaa doll.
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blow yr fukin mind
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boy that’s a lot of settings for an arcade operator to mess with per toy
wonder how many games are obnoxiously difficult just because they didn’t program the grip right for the prizes