My Biggest Complaint About Arcade Manners - Next Game Quarter Rule

There was a time when even the arcade had a semblance of order and etiquette. Like most things in today’s world, arcade etiquette has gone done the crapper, too.

When I was growing up on Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, the universal signal for “I got next game” was putting your quarter on the deck of the machine to hold your spot. Sometimes the quarters would be lined up 10 deep to wait for a really good game. That didn’t matter because we had honor back in the Galaxian days. Even though the line of quarters was 10 deep, everyone knew who’s quarter was who’s and who had the next game.

My generation didn’t come up with this self-rule form of goverment in the arcade. We were handed the tradition like the Olympic Torch from those who cut their chops on pinball. We were handed the rule of law and we observed it.

Somewhere along the line things got screwed. I think it started when game developers added the option to continue playing a video game by adding more quarters to the machine immediately after your game was over. This option lets you sit your fat ass right in front of the game with no limit to the amount of time you can spend on the machine.

Where is the order in this type of system?

My biggest complaint about not honoring the “I Got Next Game Quarter” system is that it really sucks when you have to stand in Chuck E. Cheese’s for 30 minutes with your 4 year old waiting for the Star Wars game because some kid (who’s not really a kid and is way too old to be in Chuck E. Cheese’s anyway) keeps stuffing the machine with tokens to ‘continue play’.

This is crap. What separates us from the animals?