Obsolete Skills

[Moozik: Nitzer Ebb - Control I'm Here]

I was reading the list of things we used to know that are of no use anymore and came across one that made me grin. I so used to do this in arcades in my youth. Stacking a quarter on an arcade game to indicate you have next. Well, they were 10p coins not quarters obviously ;-)

Stacking coins on an arcade game was the defacto way to say 'The next game is mine'. It was also an easy way to reserve a machine for your own exclusive play. By placing a coin on the machine you are effectively saying 'I have an active interest in playing this and I'm going to as soon as its free', this is in contrast to the many viewers that would gather around units to watch with no interest in actually playing. By using the coins you eliminate having to work out who's go is next or who wants to play.

It should be noted that any touching of the coins "whatsoever" was a severe breach of arcade etiquette. It's also not unknown for the current player to get annoyed or put off by an aggressive coin stacking. You are effectively saying "hurry up and die, I'm up".