Arcade Game Prices are Finally Catching Up With Inflation

I've been playing arcade coin-op games since I was a little kid. When I started playing these games, they were 25 cents a throw. If you were good at them of course your quarter could go a long way. For example, there was a game called WonderBoy that I could play for about 45 minutes on one quarter.



Somehow despite 20 years of inflation, the price of an arcade game was stuck at 25 cents. Eventually, the prices went up by multiple credits being required, especially for newer games. The current arcade games seem to cost on average $1-2 per contest.

But if you went to the back of the arcade, you could still typically find an old Galaga, Gyruss or Pacman sitting in the back still running for a quarter a throw.

Well not so fast anymore - I was in one of the last arcades left in the city and these older games have now been replaced by emulators which allows the arcade owner to change the price and also house multiple video games in a single console. This makes sense - given the size in memory of any of these old video games, you could house hundreds of them on a single memory chip.

So I had fun today playing the old favourites, but I'm a bit disappointed that it cost me 50 cents. I guess after 20 years of dwindling attendance and increasing costs, the prices have finally gone up.

Thankfully, I have MAME which allows me to play any old video game for free!