Arcade UFO

This is kind of what an Arcade UFO Token looks like.  “What?!  Arcade UFO doesn’t use tokens!”

I know that’s what you’re thinking–don’t freak out.  We can explain.

This is actually a change that has been in the planning stages for several months, and if you’re a regular, you probably knew about it already.  There are three main reasons we made the switch;

The dollar coin/quarter system, while it had its merits (the ability to carry fewer coins in your pocket), was very confusing to non-regular customers.  After a busy weekend, we would always discover quarters and/or dollar coins in the coin return slots of games that didn’t take them, so a lot of people were losing money for no reason.  Not cool, since a first-timer shouldn’t have to feel confused or cheated by a system that’s difficult to understand (not a ton of places used dollar coins, and most first-timers would exclaim that they’d never seen one!).

We get asked, all the time, if there’s any way we can make (insert your favorite game here) cheaper to play.  Well, with the old system there wasn’t any really way we could do that without hurting our business.  Making a popular 50 cent game 25 cents is a 50% cut, as is making a popular 1.00 game 50 cents.  What if we could give you a 10% discount though, just for being a regular?  Now we can:

.25c = 1 token
1.00 = 4 tokens
5.00 = 20 tokens
10.00 = 44 tokens (4 extra!)
20.00 = 92 tokens (12 extra!)

Now, if you purchase $10 or $20 worth of tokens, you receive a bonus. a $10 gives you an extra $1 worth, while a $20 gives you an extra $3 worth. Here’s what that breaks down to value wise:

$10 = 9% off all games
$20 = 13% off all games

So, if you visit us in any frequency, it really makes a lot of sense to purchase $10 or $20 in tokens. Furthermore, we carry a limited amount of change now, so if you need to exchange smaller bills for a larger bill, you can. You can break down larger bills to smaller bills as well, although I have no idea why you’d want to do that!

Right! I said there were three reasons. The third one probably affects you the least, but for us, it was the tipping point.

Our bank cut off our supply of dollar coins. They simply told us they would no longer be able to supply them like they had before, unless we were willing to pay exorbitant fees to have them shipped. Not cool, since the reason we actually switched to our current bank is because they assured us a steady supply of coins!

So, for the reasons above, we concluded that the timing is right and we have rung in the New Year with a system that finally rewards our loyal regulars and is less confusing for first-timers.

And, since it hasn’t been mentioned yet, R.I.P. Einstein’s Arcade. Three years went by awfully quick.