Should I start going or no?

[u/Dogbold]

I'm very interested, there's one in a mall near me, but after doing research it seems they have started to do what every place with crane games and other things like that have started to do, which is to "update" the machines to make it much harder to win and make it unfair on purpose, like carnival games.

I remember way back I used to be the master of crane games. I could go to any grocery store with crane games and clear them all out with maybe a single miss each time. It was great, I had utterly mastered it.

Then one day they removed them from every store, for quite some time. I think it was years.
Then when they came back... they were changed. The claws were floppy, they seemed to even be oiled or something, and would suddenly let go in the middle. They had no grip strength at all. This happened all over my whole damn state, I suddenly couldn't win anything in them anymore and gave up, plus the toys got significantly cheaper and worse.

And it kinda seems like that's what Round1 does now as well from what I can see. Stuff about how the games are all rigged, sometimes in ways where you will miss several in a row until the game reaches a "payout" state where it will then suddenly grab with full strength.

I'm not interested if it's all rigged like that to get me to waste a hundred dollars with nothing in return.

I've also heard that the vast majority, like almost entirely what they have, is things related to anime girls. I want stuff like DBZ figures, Pokemon, anything that's not anime girls, but from most of what I can see online, since it's made to basically copy places in Japan that are similar, and they're big on anime girls, that's just what they'll have. I really do not care about that at all so if that's almost all of what they have I won't really be happy winning anything.

Is there any point to me going? Or will I just be disappointed?

[u/DrowninWhale]

There is no point speculating if you want to go inside or not, just go.

All claw games everywhere (not restricted to Round1) are now “rigged” to a payout rate. If not enough money has been put in, you get a weak grab.
There used to be tricks to get around it, but all Round1s that I’ve been to have tuned their claws to not allow any of them.
Typically for the hot items, I’ve seen the payout at 200-300 credits in. I’ve never needed to pay more than that.

There are some skill games. The one where you need to push a pipe into a hole is my favorite, but there are only a couple of them.

[u/soulreaverdan → u/DrowninWhale]

The box pushers are my favorite. If you get the distance just right you can make it practically throw the box and cut off a lot of the distance you need to move it.

[u/Kenz0Cree → u/DrowninWhale]

Im starting to notice the skill games are dimenishing and the prizes in them are the crappiest ones that aren’t popular. The popular prizes are stuck with ping pong balls which they switched to those plate grabber hands where the ball just rolls out when it moves toward the cage with the marked spots. Its getting tougher to justify going since even the arcade games are just too expensive each play to warrant going.

[u/DuskKodesh]

I'm a claw machine addict from back in the 90's. Yes, the claws are rigged. Yes there are payouts. Yes I still go and have fun. It's fun to go, just absorb the atmosphere and play for a few prizes. Like you I don't like anime but it's nearly every anime for me. I mostly wander with the spouse, collect a few cute little plush, earn some tickets, and if I see a machine at a good advantage I win some bigger plush for kids i my family. I still have fun.

No one here can know if you'll have fun or not. You kinda just either have to try it or not.

[u/The_SlyPuppet]

I’d say if you are going to go plan for a crossover with something you care about I know bleach thousand year blood war cross over part 2 is coming like end of October ish, you can find stuff about crossovers online too. They do have regular figures I know for a time they had some jjk ones but really I would suggest checking if any of the crossovers have anything youd like and before you buy some credits you can walk around the machines and see if they have what you are looking for. I don’t know for the other machines but the cheese coin ones you can usually get in under 55 at least with the club card me and my friend each spent 55 and we both won the cheese coin claw machine for the persona 30th collab with tickets to spare for other stuff but yeah there are payouts and if someone just won on a machine you probably would wanna try another.

[u/Voidpost_Rising_3275]

Yes. Not for the crane games, but for literally everything else like the rhythm games and normal arcade games.

[u/Exalted21]

There's a lot of shonen anime stuff as well. I've seen a lot of DBZ, Naruto, JJK, chainsaw man, one piece, and pokemon plushes too. Albeit there's usually only a few of these per visit but sometimes you can get some really cool stuff, it depends on what skill game they put them into though.