What’s more seductive than a claw machine? After all, how hard can it be to snag that $2 teddy bear that is practically poking out of the pile of merchandise? But after 20 quarters, you realize you’ve spent $5, and you still don’t have anything to show for it.
[CreativeGuy88] decided to build his own claw machine (that way, he gets to keep the quarters). This sizable build is as much woodworking project as anything. However, the motors and control joysticks require electrical wiring and [CreativeGuy88] used Lego bricks to make much of the carriage.
The only part he didn’t create from scratch was the actual claw. Instead, he bought a replacement claw for a commercial machine. It uses an electromagnet to engage the grip. You can see a video of the machine in action, below.
We’ve seen claw machine builds in the past. We’ve even covered one that had a connection to the Internet.
All the claw machines that I knew only let you have one grab, and that was it.
I remember a few having time limits instead of auto-grab & drop sequence. You had two joysticks and had to apply constant pressure to keep the claw engaged, while lifting up and navigating to the drop chute with frustratingly little time.
But you could dig deeper moving stuff you didn’t want, out of the way, at the cost of more quarters.
Agreed I prefer the time limit ones, but I think all of them are programmed to drop the toy and not allow a win before they have earned a certain amount of cash.
I would expect the alogrithms to be written based on psycology, to either drop the toy or not pick it up at all to make someone think ‘so close that time’ and maximise the amount of cash each player likely to put in.
I guess the only way to get something out of them is to spot someone else walking away after playing a good few times and making sure you have the cash to play until you win!
There’s the ones with a more ‘cup’ like claw to pick up bags of sweets and chocolate which are ‘prize every time’ and seem like a much more honest game as its basically a gamified vending machine!
It moooves
The ultimate claw machine:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv6zQr1_C9Q&w=640&h=360%5D
Any idea if the prison where this was recorded is a low or high level security facility?
The claw decides who stays and who goes!