Counters in Polybius game?

[Generic Eric]

I wonder about these counters...  Would it be a mechanical high score board?  Sounds nutty.

Polybius: Video Game of Death

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4362

Not only that, but there were, in fact, government agents poking around Portland area video arcades at that very same time. Just ten days after Mauro and Lopez crashed, state, local, and federal agents raided video arcades throughout the region. It turned out that some arcade operators illegally used their video games for gambling, by modifying them with counters that allowed owners to pay out cash to players based on how many points they made in their game, and thus increasing business. In preparation for this raid, FBI agents had been going around to arcades and taking photographs of player initials on high-score screens, hoping to identify potential witnesses. And officers had gone into every business in the city that had video games, and poked and prodded around the back of the machine, looking for these illegal counters.

The Star Wars coinbox has a counter, but I can't imagine its the same counter.


Also, if you like podcasts, this guy's is pretty good.  Its snackable, over 10, under 15 minutes in a wide variety of topics.

[yotsuya]

The Star Wars coinbox has a counter, but I can't imagine its the same counter.

It's not. That's just a standard coin counter.

[compute]

The counters referred to in that context are basic 12v coin counters, but they're used to track credits in and out of gambling machines.  Since location owners typically pay out of the till, those meter numbers are used to track how much goes in and out of the games so they can be set tighter or looser.  Nowadays operators will have a printer system, as well as use machines that keep track of this in software.  But the hard meters are a good backup.