Penny pusher arcade machine

I haven't seen one of these in ages. As a kid the holiday arcades used to be full of them, usually themed to the latest movie blockbusters if I recall correctly. I guess the video games took over.

I'm pretty sure that Ben could merge one of these with a pinball machine . Various pinball hot shots or high scores could release additional coins onto the pile.

Could also be a fun way to try and lure people into putting their loose change into charity bottles.

We were just talking about one of these machines today. I got a large portion of my Pog collection from a similar machine in the 90s. That's an interesting idea. Can you think of a fun spin on the project?

In the old days the coins were inserted into the machine via a steerable guides which allowed you to aim the coin at specific points. 

A different take on this might be to drop the coins through a Galton board type arrangement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YDHBFVIvIs

Perhaps some of the pins could be retracted though as part of some sort of game play. Also opportunity to have the pins light up as they are struck.

Im in the uk and they still have them at the seaside, I am visiting some family and we went for a day out and were using them in an arcade which made me think it would be an intresting idea. They have the ones like the picture where you have 3 slots above the glass to choose from then the coin then goes through a board of pins as Dave said then onto the first table but I was using a Mario one where you put the coin in below the glass and it got fired at the back board and onto the first table then acted like a normal machine.

As Dave said a pinball infused machine could be intresting or another idea could be doing it totally upside down so put the coins into the bottom and collect the winnings from the top. I suppose that could be done with magnetic tokens or possibly having normal coins between two pieces of vertical perspex and having the moving platform going up and down instead of back and forth.

Sounds like it could be the making of a Rube Goldberg machine.

Might be tricky but how about a retro platform game style with conveyor belts and elevators ?

Fischertechnik created this platform conveyor in some of their dynamics construction sets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZMadLpLuo

which might be able to lift coins from the bottom to the top.

This desktop 'penny pusher' arcade machine project may be of some interest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXyccpBoVvA

That's really neat! Makes me want to make one for the next Maker Faire.

How would you modify it though ?

Could embellish it with some pixel LEDs on the pusher or perhaps even add a video display to allow it to be themed or to display a live feed from social networking sites.

I suspect that their days are numbered however as we move toward electronic cash. Will need a NFC contactless payment type interface to purchase play tokens and to redeem any winnings.

It looks like someone had similar ideas for a Galton board style coin drop mechanism and interactive video display.

https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/09/23/interactive-donation-box-build-raspberry_pi-piday-raspberrypi/