Talk:Stacker (arcade game)

How the darn thing actually works

It dynamically adjusts the required timing to hit the right block. If the game cannot afford to give out the prize you are attempting (usually the major prize), it will randomly pick one of the rows between the minor and major prize rows. It will change the timing so that if you don't hit it exactly halfway between the light before and light after's time (roughly 1 ms) it jumps to the one after it. Since no human being can hit a 1ms window on command, no one gets it, even though it's technically possible. Once it's taken enough money, it starts stretching out the timing such that it's actually as hittable as it looks, or close to it.

Every stop the light game does this when it doesn't want to pay out. It makes the timing MUCH tighter than it appears to be, and if the right light is on, but your press is not inside the shrunken timing window, it jumps off (on those cyclones it jumps off randomly up to 2 or three lights in EITHER direction, to deny you the information on of you are really too early or late). Even though technically every game is winnable, the true timing window is not shown so you do not have the information or the reflexes required for the win. They get away with this because it's really hard to tell without a high speed video camera, and because of the way the bulbs also light up the neighboring bulbs.

The only way to reasonably win the machine is to be able to tell when it's jumping, and play when it's not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.211.60.25 (talk) 18:57, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

This article has become full of POV and needs to be edited

I saw a product brochure for Stacker online on the website for LAI Games that said that operators can change the skill level to be from very easy (approx. 1 in 20 tries), to easy (app. 1 in 50 tries), to medium (approx. 1 in 100 tries) etc all the way up to 1 in 800. BUT it said those amounts of plays per win are approximate because it is a game of skill. I think when the odds are 1 out of 800 (approximately) it probably isn't much of a game of skill anymore.

I am itching to play this game but there aren't any around me locally! I suspect that if you play one with cheap prizes a few tries of stopping the block ahead of time should work. I've seen a lot of people online talking about winning them.

Imerson 23:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The Manual

Shafferdistributing.com used to have the manual in a pdf format, but they took it off however, you can still see it using the wayback machine: http://www.shafferdistributing.com/manuals/lai_Stacker_SKILL_1st-Ed_manual.pdf

Adding a new source for the operators manual.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060509142318/http://www.shafferdistributing.com/manuals/lai_Stacker_SKILL_1st-Ed_manual.pdf 78.151.39.219 (talk) 19:11, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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hello there cyber all i fucking need is a new stacker machine 142.114.199.99 (talk) 02:27, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Distribution POV issue

Hi Wikipedia,

I joined earlier today and while looking through articles to help contribute, I noticed that the section on the distribution was only mentioning Europe. If anyone could help me out on this it would be greatly appreciated! EarthCore9999 (talk) 20:46, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

The claim Stacker is rigged is false.

Currently the article states that "However, despite this claim, some variants of Stacker have settings that allow the operator to adjust the frequency of payouts by making it impossible for players to stack rows beyond a certain height; usually just before the major prize. Even if the player pushes the button at the right time, the blocks will skip a column, causing the player to lose."

However, this is entirely based on a section of the owner's manual being taken out of context. The cited manual is here: www.manualslib.com/manual/1800756/Lai-Games-Stacker-Vendor.html?page=20#manual

Here's another manual for a different model of Stacker: http://ohwow-arcade.com/Assets/Game_Manuals/STACKER.pdf

All versions of Stacker are winnable, with adjustable difficulty to lower the window of success. The owner false cites the adjustable difficulty as proof you can not win, when in reality it's simply much more difficult. Unless better evidence than a clickbait youtube video can be provided, this claim should not be kept on wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edcellwarrior (talk • contribs) 01:34, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

It is a well established fact that (all) arcade games with high value prizes have mechanisms built in to them to prevent players from winning until a certain play threshold has been reached. Otherwise, the game would not be profitable and it would be bad for business. The mechanism built in to Stacker is jumping a block. How else do suggest that the game lowers the win ratio to cater to the 'skill setting'?

While the manual does not explicitly state how it controls wins, there is an overwhelming collection of video evidence online supporting the claim as well as testimonies from Stacker owners themselves.

The term 'approximately' is used in the manual to specify that the major prize will pay out either as soon as the play threshold has been achieved (on the 800th play, if a player skilfully wins) or thereafter when a player skilfully wins. Until then, the game will not let the player win.

It is an absolute myth that any play prior to the threshold being reached is skilful. The lower levels are skill, then on a random level below (or on) the major prize, the game intervenes. That's all there is to it.

This is fundamental information that shouldn't be omitted. Attydatty (talk) 02:41, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

> It is a well established fact that (all) arcade games with high value prizes have mechanisms built in to them to prevent players from winning until a certain play threshold has been reached.

A claim like this needs a citation.

Many of these machines simply make winning a near impossibility by lowering the possible window to win to incredibly short amounts of time, while still leaving it possible to win. Otherwise, they would not be legally allowed to be sold as "games of skill" in most US jurisdictions. For further evidence, see the manual for Cyclone: http://ohwow-arcade.com/Assets/Game_Manuals/CYCLONE.PDF

Cyclone does the same thing as Stacker, allowing for the approximate amount of wins to be adjusted by lowering the window that a game can be won (to as low as 1 millisecond or as high as 20 milliseconds) and when it gets to the desired ratio and wants to have a winner, it bumps the window up to the maximum (in this case, 20 milliseconds).

> ...there is an overwhelming collection of video evidence online supporting the claim as well as testimonies from Stacker owners themselves.

Unfortunately, many of these videos are filmed on video equipment that can not accurately capture the millisecond windows that you can win on. As for the testimonies from Stacker owners, a quick google search on forums for arcade owners, which I would consider to be more credible, reveals the opposite; actual owners of these machines know they are not rigged.

Finally, I'll leave on the point that a claim as large as this, especially one with legal ramifications, requires a serious amount of proof beyond 1-2 random youtube videos and a few anonymous "Stacker owners" on social media. Wikipedia should not host false information, and when making an extraordinary claim like you currently are, it's on the people making the claim to prove it. I have shown multiple official sources as to why this claim is false. Edcellwarrior (talk) 09:34, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I see - you are not arguing that Stacker is not rigged. I was led to believe the contrary by the title of this section.

The Cyclone manual does state that there is a dynamic window but that is not the game in question. The Stacker manual is very vague on the matter so how can you be so sure that this is how the game works?

I don't understand how the camera's capabilities are relevant to the win window. You can clearly see the block jumping in that video consistently so the idea that the camera happens to be skipping frames is unreasonable.

Please provide links to the forums you are referring to. The information I am seeing supports my assertion.

Where you mention most US jurisdictions regulating the usage of 'game of skill'; do you have source(s) for this? I can't speak for the United States, but my jurisdiction does not have any regulations on these games. It is one thing for a law to be on paper, but whether it is actually enforced is another. I would imagine that laws in such jurisdictions are rarely enforced since most people do not clamour about it. If it were taken to court, the judge would probably laugh and throw out the case almost immediately because most courts wouldn't waste their time looking into a claim about someone losing a dollar to a rigged arcade game, especially since it's such a commonplace belief that arcade games are rigged (fun fact: LAI Games, the manufacturer, has had a number of lawsuits against them).

To clarify, I am not the person who added that information. It has been published for a long time which is why I asked you to not remove it until a consensus could be reached. I do agree that the citations are not perfect, but frankly, this 'window' has even lesser evidence to support it. So -

Rather than continuing to argue an unwinnable battle, I would like to propose retaining the information and re-writing it to sound more like a criticism than a fact. It is negligent to not a replace a significant portion of the article such as this (which in your view is accurate to an extent). Wikipedia readers should be as well informed as possible. How's that sound? Attydatty (talk) 12:01, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

> The Cyclone manual does state that there is a dynamic window but that is not the game in question. The Stacker manual is very vague on the matter so how can you be so sure that this is how the game works?

Check page 17 of the Mega Stacker manual, which is much more specific in this regard: https://files.winwithp1ag.com/products/redemption-games/ticket-redemption/LAI-Mega-Stacker-Manual.pdf

> Where you mention most US jurisdictions regulating the usage of 'game of skill'; do you have source(s) for this? I can't speak for the United States, but my jurisdiction does not have any regulations on these games.

Without delving too far into the US Legal System, arcades are heavily regulated and only allowed to admit children when their games that offer prizes are considered "skill based". Gambling is defined with games that are not decided by skill, rather, luck is the determinant factor of if you win or lose. Breaking these laws and allowing children to gamble would get these manufacturers in legal trouble, and their games would not be allowed in the United States.

Here's two sources that mention the distinction of "Games of Skill" vs "Gambling". I'm only posting two for the sake of brevity, since each state and municipality has its own intricates:

https://www.firstamendment.com/skill-gaming-legal-guide

https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1286&context=nlj

It's also worth looking at the history of Pinball in the United States and how its legality changed over time, which is briefly mentioned on wikipedia: https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Pinball#Pinball_and_gambling

> I don't understand how the camera's capabilities are relevant to the win window. You can clearly see the block jumping in that video consistently

You can see the block "jumping" at multiple points during the video, not just when it is supposedly skipping over the winning space. Regardless, slowing down the video to .25 speed on youtube will let you see that it is in fact NOT skipping over the winning block (such as at 2:34 into the video).

> Rather than continuing to argue an unwinnable battle, I would like to propose retaining the information and re-writing it to sound more like a criticism than a fact.

I feel the most appropriate solution would be to describe that while technically possible, the game can be set to be so difficult that it is infeasible to win, with wins occurring in as low as 1/800 games played for regular Stacker or as low as 1/1,500 games for Mega Stacker. Edcellwarrior (talk) 03:35, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I'm satisfied with that. There is a high likelihood that Mega Stacker's skill setting operates in the same way it does in the other models.

However, I would just like to reiterate that the block does skip a column. The light is lit for an equal amount of time on all columns when the block is moving (including the winning column, giving the illusion that the window is the same for all blocks). Then, when the block is stopped, the light shifts (if the button is not pressed within the win window).

Sure, would you like to add that to the article? Attydatty (talk) 01:10, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

You can add the actual section to the article - I don't think I'm good enough at formally wording things. I'm glad we reached a resolution on this. Edcellwarrior (talk) 03:45, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Great, I will do that as soon as possible 🙂 Happy to have learnt more about the game from this too. Productive discussion. Attydatty (talk) 15:01, 17 April 2022 (UTC)