Sparkling game starts :)

[Level42]

Just a funny story...

Something happened tonight while working on my cab. It was up and running a game in demo screen and when I turned on my TL light that lights my workplace (of course this starts with some flashes), it automaticaly started a game
The cab and the TL are connected to the same outlet so it figures...but...

this made me remember that LOOOOOONG ago I was on vacation in a holiday park, there was an unattended (!!!!) place with some 15 games (I was still a kid) and there were some kids that used gasburner igniters (is that correct English ??) I mean those Piezo powered things that give sparks to start up a gas fire. They had bent out the pin from which the spark comes and put that to (or near) the coin doors of the poor machines and by pressing down some ten times, you'd have a ton of credits for free

They were kind enough to help me to plenty of credits on the Frogger machine I was playing....it didn't work on all machines however....

Now, I don't want to bring anyone to ideas, and it probably is not a good idea for  either the machine, or you in an attended arcade, but it was a cool memory that I had forgotten about for a long time....

[88mph]

Yep, that trick is right up there with the classic 'tape the coin to the string and jiggle it trick'.  A friend of mine in college used it on a Cruisin USA. 

In the end, the spark trick is about generating an appropriate amount of voltage on one of the wires connected to the coin chute switches.   

Reminds me of a more primitive approach someone took on the Tekken machine in the arcade at my college.  Someone had kicked a hole in the front of the machine, allowing free credits.  (Maybe they got inspired by all the kicking in the game?)  Anyway, when the company responsible for putting the machines in the arcade came back, they punished the people who trashed the machine by replacing it with 'Roller Bowling'.     It didn't get played as much as the Tekken, but they probably made more money! 

Later,

88mph

[tommy]

In the end, the spark trick is about generating an appropriate amount of voltage on one of the wires

Doesn't that have something to do with the "Flux Capacitor" also.