Beating 5 Scam Arcade Games with Science

This is me entering an arcade wearing just your normal everyday backpack.

Only technically, it's not your normal everyday backpack because, when I set it here and then nonchalantly load a few balls into the water bottle, then it plays the game like a good robot should and I win all the tickets.

And that's pretty cool.

But what if I told you I need similar backpacks, not just for Skee-Ball, but for this game, and this one.

Basically coming up with contraptions to absolutely dominate five of the most common arcade games, including some hacks that cost less than a dollar and actually work to set world record ticket payouts.

But we also secretly recorded data from a bunch of different arcades.

So I'll teach you the strategies to beat the games that give out the most tickets along with showing you the five games we discovered are actual scams.

- Don't ever step foot in another arcade again until you've watched this video in its entirety.

- Let's get started.

Now, admittedly, the genesis for this video came when I was using my over engineered bowling ball that I could control just by leaning. Because I thought, what if I took that same concept and applied it to mini golf.

And while that idea could be really useful for getting a good golf score, there's just no real payoff for my efforts, which focused my attention to the holy grail of any mini golf course, the arcade.

It was time to recoup all the allowance money I've lost as a kid starting first with Skee-Ball.

And before we really see it in action, let me first explain how it works.

Because if you take away the backpack, you'll find a Frankenstein version of a softball pitching machine that we chopped up and modified so it runs just off batteries.

Then there's a solenoid here that makes sure the ski balls get released one at a time.

So if you just turn it on, then we put a ball in here.

It fires the ball like this.

The coolest part here though is when it's placed in the backpack, you roll this pocket up to reveal the ball exit and then place this water bottle here as a clever disguise to load up to three balls at a time.

Now, of course, if you don't have a secret robot backpack, here's how you win this game as a mere human.

For starters, if you watch the pros play, yes, there are Skee-Ball pros, they actually aim for the 4000 point hole.

And this actually makes sense because even if your throw is a little too weak or a little too strong you're still getting significant points.

A common mistake is to take the bait and go all or nothing by aiming for the small 10,000 point hole in the corner.

The pros aim for this only in desperate situations where they're behind and they need big points to make a comeback for the win.

The other big tip is to brace your leg against the base of the machine in the same spot each time and then try and only move your arm which will make your throws more repeatable and accurate because you're reducing the variables that could lead to air.

So if you want to win, just follow these tips and practice a bunch.

Or you just go with my route.

So then when you're all done dominating or if you think one of the workers might be getting suspicious, you can just pick up the backpack at any point and walk away with a bunch of tickets on your card up.

Up next is one of my personal favorites.

Basketball.

In this case, the backpack is being used just to smuggle the special mechanism inside because, to the untrained eye, this is just a normal basketball when in fact, it's a robot in disguise.

Now, before I show you exactly how it works, you first need to understand how these games work.

Just underneath each rim is an infrared laser and a detector and then on the front of the rim, on the other side of that metal plate is a reflector.

So when the laser beam shines straightforward, it bounces off the reflector and then the sensors like, yup, I can see the beam.

So when a ball goes through the hoop, it breaks the beam and the sensors like, aha, I didn't see it for a second at which point it tells the game to add two points to your total because that means you must have scored.

In engineering, we call this a beam break detector and it's the exact same concept you have as a safety feature on your garage door.

So if you really want to destroy the high score here, the ball needs to break the beam and somehow get out of the way.

So the beam reconnects and then come back and break the beam again over and over again as fast as possible.

But if you think about it, the whole ball doesn't need to actually get out of the way, just the part in front of the beam itself.

And how might you do that?

One way is to 3D print the bottom hemisphere of a basketball in two parts attached together through some linear guide rods, then add a battery micro controller and servo motor so the bottom part of the shell can translate up and down.

This way, you would reconnect the beam and then break it over and over again and register two points every time that happened.

Now, you just need a way to grab the rim so you could hang out there while you perform the shenanigans.

And if you add some pneumatic pistons connected to a mini pressure intake controlled by a solenoid valve triggered by an RF remote, then you could shoot the ball normally.

And then with one push of a button piston rod would shoot out and grab the rim.

And then once mischief was managed, you trigger the remote again and they would retract.

Now, if you just add another 3D printed hemisphere on top, then glue on the actual basketball skin, then when you put it all together, it would look something like this.

Now, if you don't happen to have a robo ball, here's a few tips that will help you get the high score for this game.

Now, the most important thing is you never want to waste time waiting for a ball to roll down to you.

And since these games normally come in pairs, just swipe your card on both games and then temporarily borrow the second set of balls and this should give you plenty more than you need.

So just keep the balls that are the least inflated.

Now you start the game and get into a rhythm where you finish your shot with one hand and then start grabbing a replacement ball with your other hand before your first shot has even gone in.

Or if the rim is close and you want to get really extreme you can just go with a two handed shooting strategy like this guy.

But even that strategy is no match for my spherical transformer because when I'm ready to go, I just shoot the ball with one hand and then hit the remote right as it's about to go in.

And now as the ball just sits there articulating, I simply watch those sweet, sweet points rack themselves right on up.

And then as soon as time's up, I just hit the remote again and the piston rods retract and while no one's the wiser, I've now engineered my way to a butt load of tickets and a new lifetime high score.

Next up is a really popular game called Quick Drop where you hit this button to release these ping pong balls at the right moment.

And if you get all 50 ping pong balls into the buckets within the 22 seconds allotted without missing any shots, then you hit the mega jackpot.

But the thing is to get all 50 balls in before the time runs out, there's essentially no margin for human error, which is good news for me because robot backpacks don't make human errors.

Now, you notice when I walk up, I can just set the backpack down and it self registers right in place.

The trick here is we 3D printed an exact negative replica of the button housing on the game.

And this piston rod that pokes through and pushes the button on the game is attached to the solenoid that's controlled by this Arduino micro controller and it tells it the exact timing needed to beat the game.

Now, if you're trying this on your own, here's what you need to know. To successfully do this in 22 seconds, you have to drop four balls in each bucket except in two buckets, you've got to drop five.

Now, dropping five into these two buckets isn't impossible, but the timing is so tight, it's really hard to pull off without them hitting the rim and bouncing out.

Now, the jackpot starts at 500 tickets and every time someone loses it goes up by two tickets.

And each time that happens, the game gives you just a little more total time on the clock.

And so if you ever see the jackpot at more than 625 tickets, enough time is now on the clock where you only need four balls per bucket to win and it's definitely worth trying it a few times because that makes it so much easier to pull off.

Alternatively, if you're too impatient to wait for the jackpot to rise up, you just go to school for six years to get a degree in mechanical engineering and do it this way.

And then even as all 554 sweet delicious tickets are being added to your account, you can just inconspicuously walk away with your backpack in tow.

For our next game we've got the perennial arcade favorite, air hockey.

Now, this is the most complicated of all the builds.

Because if you look closely here at the top, there's a hole in the bag for a camera to look out through, then stripping away the backpack, you could see that camera connects to the brains.

And in this case, it's a Raspberry Pi, which is basically like a mini computer instead of just an Arduino micro controller, like all the other builds have used so far.

The reason this one needs a bit more brain power is because it uses computer vision to track the puck.

And based off the trajectory, it makes a prediction, then sends instructions to rotate this servo which is attached to an arm that moves the paddle and protects the goal.

And perhaps my favorite part of this build is that it obviously won't work if the whole thing is sliding and moving all around.

So we need to anchor it down securely into position, but we need to do that quickly and discreetly. Our solution here is a pair of Neodymium toggle magnets.

So if you simply turn both of these knobs, the rare earth magnets move into position and anchor it to the steel frame of the air hockey table.

And it's basically cemented in place.

As you can see here.

As for the human strategy here, playing air hockey might seem like total chaos.

But there are four simple tricks that will pretty much guarantee you can beat any casual player.

The first is to hold the paddle like this and not like this doing that allows you to really whip the paddle around and gain extra speed on your shots.

The second is that for your default defensive position, you want your paddle to be out here, not right up against the goal right here.

That's because this cuts down the angle and you only have to move the paddle back and forth this far to protect the whole goal back and forth this far.

If you're against the edge. This is the same reason, goalies will come out of the goal if there's a breakaway in soccer. Even for a bank shot, you now just have to move the paddle a small distance diagonally back like this.

So your paddle should essentially always stay inside a triangle like this when you're playing defense.

Now when you watch professionals play, yes, there are air hockey professionals.

You will see them employ both these first two tips.

The third trick you'll also see is they try and play for possession.

You want to try and cushion your opponent's shot and gain possession of the puck so you could set up your own shot, which leads to the last tip, mix up the straight shots and bank shots, but try and practice at least one trick shot like this one where you hit the puck down into the corner and then when it rebounds back to you, you hit the bank shot for the win.

Here's what that looks like in action.

Now, the real benefit of my backpack system is you can be playing your opponent, but then when you get a phone call or you have to attend to some other important matters, your goal is in safe hands.

And then at your own leisure, you can eventually just come back and finish things off.

Then with the victory securely in hand, you just disengage the two toggle magnets with a twist and you're good to go.

And finally, we've got the ultimate test of strength, the punching bag game.

Now, for this one to make it more interesting, I wanted to find and challenge the guy in the arcade whose muscles look the least like mine.

So I stepped up first and rocked the 678 out of a possible 999.

But then he stepped up and rocked in 877.

And since that's bigger than 678, the trash talking commenced, - Maybe if you spend a little less time at the computer, a little more time in the weight room.

- So that was disappointing.

But lucky for me, I had a trick up my sleeve.

Like actually, because that's a fake arm in order to disguise this.

- Now who's the one who's feeling a little inadequate?

- It's basically a bionic punching arm powered by two spring loaded pistons.

To set the springs, we use a threaded rod and a drill.

And once under tension, they're held in place with a quick release mechanism I can trigger with my finger at the exact moment I want to punch a thing.

And I would classify the initial test in the lab as encouraging.

Now it's important to note to play by the rules for this game.

There's no side punching, pushing, running, kicking or headbutting, but you'll notice there's no rule against spring loaded piston punching gloves.

So now that my moment of sheer domination had arrived, I stepped up and rocked in 838 which was less than 877 which was disappointing.

And in hindsight, I should have known it's really hard to compete with the human body in terms of things like punching and throwing because we're just so efficient with those mechanics.

And I have to sacrifice a lot of the speed and momentum of my own arm body system when I'm wearing that heavy wrist mounted puncher.

But you know what I'm a fighter and what I lack in muscle mass, I make up for in tenacity.

So out of curiosity, I took a closer look to see how the machine actually works.

And it turns out it has a beam break sensor just like the basketball game.

So as that odd shaped metal piece which is attached to the axle and punching bag rotates around the beam has this tiny window to hit the sensor.

You can see the sensor in the front view here.

So the game cleverly measures how many milliseconds the sensor sees the beam for and from that, it infers how quickly the bag is rotating on the axle and therefore how hard it was punched.

And this gave me an idea.

So I went to the prize counter and redeemed a few of my jackpot tickets I'd been stocking up in exchange for a Pez dispenser.

Step one was to unwrap and eat some of the Pez because they're just delicious.

And then for step two, I removed the head and cut the arcade card like this and then taped it here and then went and tracked down my new friend.

My theory was that if I extended the Pez dispenser and modified card out like this and then let go, the force of the spring would retract the card and it would break the beam so fast, the machine would think it was an insanely fast punch.

But would it actually work?

And it turns out it absolutely does because I maxed out the machine.

So yeah, use this information responsibly kids.

Now, a few years ago, I made a video where I visited the carnival and collected data on all the games and then used physics to expose which carnival games were rigged and then showed how to beat them.

So this time around instead of the carnival, I once again bribed some family friends with unlimited slurpees in exchange for them collecting a bunch of data at some local arcades.

And in addition to uncovering which games were scams, which I'll cover in just a minute, here's what we discovered.

For starters, the most popular games in the arcade were the redemption games as opposed to the experience games.

And here's what I mean by that: Redemption games are the games where the goal is to win tickets.

So like the Coin pushers or this Plinko game or spin the wheel. On the other end of the spectrum, you have experience games like air hockey, skee-ball or racing games.

It's a trade off because the games on this side of the spectrum give out more tickets, but it's not as much about the fun of the experience.

And then in the middle of the spectrum, you have games like the ping pong drop or hit the clown that have middle-of-the-road ticket payouts, but they're also middle of the road fun to play.

Now, since the games on this side were a lot more popular, they earn a lot more money for the arcade even when you factor in the higher ticket payouts.

We found that for a medium sized arcade on a busy day, the less popular games were played 25 times and the more popular ones could be played up to 250 times or more.

At an average game play of $1, that means each game makes $25 to $250 per day or about $7000 to $70,000 per year.

And finally, we found that if your sole goal was to win tickets, coin pusher games like this Avengers one seemed to be the best return on investment.

But honestly, you can just ask one of the workers there who are hanging out making minimum wage and are probably pretty chill because chances are, they'll just tell you which ones they regularly see pay out the best.

- All right. So finally, let's get to the real juicy part and talk about which games we discovered were basically scams.

- Now, I actually have some experience in this area because a few years I built my original backpack arcade robot to dominate this game.

Basically, it would sense the light turning on a few lights in front of the jackpot light, then it would hit the button with sub millisecond precision and then we would touch nothing in between runs and yet it would alternate between missing both short and long.

In other words, the timing on the jackpot light doesn't match up with the duration that's lit, and it's very different from all the other lights.

You can actually test this yourself by picking a random light and you'll find miraculously, you could somehow hit that random light every single time you try.

Now, this caused me dig a little deeper.

And after a bit of research, I was able to locate a copy of the owner's manual.

At which point I discovered the arcade owner could just manually set how often a jackpot should be won.

So this time around, I was curious what other games were essentially running the same scam where you think it's a game of skill, but in reality, the arcade owner is controlling when a jackpot's won.

And as it turns out this really popular game called Stacker employs the same trick. This other really popular game, Key Master and this Cut The Rope game are also in fact running the same scam.

In all three cases, I was able to get a hold of a copy of their owner's manual, and each one has some language around how the arcade owner can specify how often a jackpot occurs.

I also found many but not all claw machines have language around how it will close with full strength, but then back off to a much weaker strength of whatever is set by the owner.

For this reason, it's best to try for prices closest to the exit hole to minimize the amount of time it's held in the claws.

And I call these games scams because they present themselves as winnable games of skill, when in reality, it's essentially a random dice roll that is heavily stacked against you.

And just like at the carnival, the most lucrative games are those where people overestimate their chances of winning because they seem to get close, but they don't quite win. In gambling psychology, this is known as the near-miss effect and it will lead to increased play of the slot machine.

But this is much worse than a slot machine because at least in that case, you know, it doesn't matter how you pull the lever because it's random chance.

And on top of that, those games are regulated.

So there is a minute payout required by law.

So for every dollar, for example, put into a slot machine, they have to pay out at least 80 cents back to the players.

But for those scam arcade games, I just mentioned the default payout rate is on average 20 cents for every dollar you spend.

But a shady arcade owner could basically set that to zero and no one would know and that would be perfectly legal and that's especially messed up because it's primarily played by kids.

So if you remember nothing else, just try and pick games that avoid any sort of digital winning element that can be rigged because in those cases, you just never really know what your chances are.

These games, however, are all great options to at least have a better sense of your actual odds of winning.

I've checked the manual for all of these and what you see is exactly what you get and I can vouch some arcades are more fair about this than others.

For example, my home arcade here refuses to carry any of the games that could be rigged against you, which I think is pretty cool.

However, if they happen to see this, my only suggestion is that moving forward, they should probably institute a no backpacks allowed policy.

And perhaps also don't let people redeem tickets for Pez dispensers.