coin operated gambling machine, coin operated gambling

Some of these arcade machines are based mostly on luck and you are technically gambling money in the hopes to win more money. For example, machines such as on those where you drop a coin in at the top, all the coins are hanging over the edge and there's a slider that moves back and forth.

Never made sense to me. OK, with coin pushers you're only gambling tiny amounts of money at a time but when I was a child I could easily spend £10 in an hour on them.

Hey memers! I have been robbed big time on dank memer. I would appreciate some help and donations but what is the best way to make A TON of DMC easier and faster?
Thank you for the help!

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975

ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.

March 3, 1976

ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.

First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.

I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983

Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."

Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982

'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."

Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982

Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.

This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:

Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.

The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003

A casino level.
I think it could've been a great setting and playground for assassinations. It could've also included fun like things like gambling. For example, inserting a coin in a slot machine and win even more coins and stuff.
Just a little idea I had.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A GET RICH QUICK GUIDE, YOU WILL HAVE TO SPEND TIME AND EFFORT TO BE ONE OF THE RICHEST IN THIS BOT. (or be incredibly lucky and win the lottery 24 times daily or 5 trophy giveaways daily)
Beginners Guide to Your First Trophy (for gambling)
Easiest way, win a giveaway or the Dank Memer Lottery. Lets assume that you aren't that lucky.
1, Trading, buy low sell high. You can find cheat banks for sale sometimes and there are many people willing to may much more for what you bought them for as long as you sell in bulk.
2, Voting, lets say you can get 13 votes each week, you'll get 29 banks and 29 pizza. (extra 3 banks and pizza from weekend boost). Banks at the moment sell for 250k each (or more) and pizza sells for 100k each. That's 10mil every week. (7.25 mil from banks and 2.9mil from pizza)
3, Heists, Join large Dank Memer servers and join the friendly heists held regularly by those servers. (Not giving a list of servers just incase this post gets taken down by the Dank Memer Reddit Mods) The Dank Memer Community Server has a lot of daily heists you can join. Make sure you don't have a lot of money in your wallet because of fines. You can buy items to get rid of wallet money, preferably pepe coins and pepe medals. Or you could find a friend to hold your money. (Don't use an alt or friend that doesn't use Dank Memer you'll get bot b@nned, Trust me it's a bad idea) You should be able to get a good 1-2mil daily or more from heists alone.
4, Rob Servers, After you've joined multiple large Dank Memer Servers, they will most likely have a rob server list. These servers have Dank Memer in them and rob enabled. With a robbers wishlist you can try to find people to rob. Not sure how effective this is but you can make an decent amount of money from it if you're lucky.
Use a mix or all 4 of these methods (Voting and Heists are the least risky safest ways to make money) Until you can afford a trophy, you can trade for one or buy from shop. Doesn't really matter. While your grinding for your trophy, I also recommend prestigeing as much as possible. You may get your trophy slightly slower but that extra multi 2% multi per prestige is worth it. You should be prestige 4-6 by the time you can afford a trophy if you're actively grinding and prestigeing once a week.
6 pepe medals, 50-60 pepe coins, or 500+ pizza is enough to guarantee a Trophy if you're trading with Others.
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Beginners Guide to Gambling
1, 80% multi (I would recommend 90% minimum) (some people gamble with 75%)
2, Decent sized bank (I recommend 5mil minimum, and also 10mil total bank and wallet. You can always go higher if you want to minimize the chances of going broke)
3, only pls bet maxnote: don't do slots max with low bank space or low multi, slots has extremely stupid win and loss patterns making slots max with low bank a bad idea. A slots losing streak and a bet losing streak with bankrupt you 90% of the time. However, if you have 100%+ multi and like 20mil+ bank space, go for it. (I've lost 30mil once to a bad bet and slots lose streak combined so don't say I didn't warn you [and before you ask, I did make it back the same day and then some] )
4, hope you get lucky and don't losing all your coins to a bad lose streak or a period of extremely low win rate.
Extra tips:
If you keep losing gambling games, switch a channel or server.
Break up your commands with other commands. I use "pls use tr" or "pls bj max"
You can also try changing from max to 500k or 5e5.
You can also try adding text to the end of your gambling games like saying "pls bet max hi".
I have no clue if any of these things help or is just pure superstition, but do it anyways, can't hurt to try (unless it's bj max lol)
This is my gambling stats: https://imgur.com/a/tbgiyEz (Outdated)
Here is a list of known Secret multipliers. (may be outdated)

1. Level up rewards (+10%)
2. Tidepod (+25)
3. Own 69+ Pink Phallics (+0.5%)
4. Prestige 1-10 (+2% per)
5. 69+ Server Emojis (+1%)
6. #dank-memer (“dank memer” in channel name) (+1%)
7. Sharing GOD (+3%)
8. SANTA BUT BETTER (+3%)
9. Upvoted -vote for the bot w/ pls vote (+1%)
10. Auto-Lottery On (+0.5%)
11. Tips Enabled - tips enabled pls settings (+1%)
12. Streak - Daily streak 7-69 (0.25-2)
13. Premium Server (+2%)
14. Partner Server (+10%)
15. Staff Pet - name pet any DMO staff (+1%)
16. DM Notifications On (+0.5%)
17. Pepe Trophy (+15%)
18. Cupid Toe (+69%)
19. Spinner (+5-25%)
20. Vote Reminder On (+0.5%)
21. Won Lottery (+1%)
22. 📷 Old Mfer - @ Level 250 (+3%)
23. 📷 Donator - 50M (+3%)
24. Previously Black-listed (-1%)
25. Passive On (-5%)
26. 500+ trivia wins (0.5%)
27. 500+ fight wins (0.5%)
28. 500+ number guess wins (0.5%)
29. 500+ ttt wins (0.5%)
30. Level 69, nice (69%)
31. Level 30+ Pet (0.5%)

COST REAL MONEY!

1. Dank Memer Support Booster (+2%)
   
2. 📷 DMC Booster only in DMC (+3%)
   
3. Donor (2-45%)
   
4. Purchased Lootbox (+1%)
   

This list is from Bot Farm I claim 0 credit for making it.
The 📷 Means this multi only works in the Dank Memer community server
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Beginners Guide to Fighting
IDK ask an experienced fighter with 50+ trophies how to do it, I've heard that there are apparently "losing" and "winning" streaks during fighting too. Generally I wouldn't advise this but many people have gotten it to work. My friend has 3 blobs and 50 trophies from fighting so its definitely possible to make a lot of money this way.
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Beginners Guide to Trading
Just use your brain, it's not hard.
Well if you want to, then I guess just follow the principle buy low sell high. Try to find a loop of items to trade, sell or buy that gives you a net profit. Like buying and selling banks, or trading a Trophy for items you can then sell which gives enough money for another Trophy and some extra. You could always hope you get lucky and the item you stockpiled suddenly spikes in price. (Like how banks went from "30k is too expensive" to "200k each? that's pretty cheap")
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In the end just do whatever you want to make money, these are just some tips from a random person. It's your choice to trust or disregard this post.
If you think I missed anything or want to call me an idiot cause this post sucks or have questions. Feel free to comment.

As of right now, the bot needs a MASSIVE fix/restoration. The updates over the past month have made the bot worse quite frankly. There are a few issues and ideas I want to address to the devs and mods. Please hear me out.
Issue #1 Inflation: I think everyone is aware of this one. People with hundreds of millions of coins and inventory is not even a rare sight anymore. This really kills the fun because money is no longer as valuable as before because now people can literally obtain millions of coins easily by gambling, which leads to my next point.
Issue #2 Overpowered Gambling: Gambling used to be so much better. What happens now? 120% multiplier??? 25% for tidepod and spinner??? 500k max for each bet??? This is the ultimate source of inflation. People without prestige X can reach max multi easily right now, and generating millions of coins is just a matter of time if they keep "pls bet max" and "pls slots max". This also makes robbing and heisting pointless because why rob and heist when you can get so much more money from gambling? The bot is being turned into a grind fest. I would really like to see the multi and bet amounts fixed.
Here comes my ideas for future updates.
Future Update #1 Wanted Level and Jail: Wanted levels are given when you successfully heist someone. The bigger the target is, the more wanted levels you get. Under low wanted levels, police will try to bother you by making you type a short sequence of randomly generated codes in a limited time. If you fail, you get a small fine. If you type correctly, you will get rid of the wanted levels and be free to heist again. Under mid wanted levels, the length of codes increase and you might be put in JAIL (unable to use any currency commands for 30 minutes). Under high wanted levels, the codes will be even longer and the police will try to KILL and put you in JAIL at the same time. You can also type "pls bribe" to get the police off you immediately by paying a sum of money.
Future Update #2 Houses: You can use coins to buy houses to show off your wealth to others. You can also return to your home when the police are looking for you, but you can only rob not heist. Wanted levels will be gone if you stay in the house for a period of time.
Future Update #3 Stock Market: You can invest your coins in different meme stocks. You can earn and lose money. The stocks go up and down according to the likes on memes when you run "pls meme". Different types of memes are categorized into different stocks. Then you can put money into them like a simplified version of the real-world stock market.
Anyways this is just my opinion, let me know what you guys think.
Upvote pls if you agree so the devs and mods can see this. 🙏

1. Queen Hallie Chosen of Ozaris: - This homeless woman is the agent of “The God king of the vault of the heavens” thanks to her gargantuan pigeon god Hallie sees all and knows everyone. No matter what city you are in, you will never have trouble finding connections. All Investigation checks and History Checks related to the city have advantage. (Unitron92, sanorace)
   
2. Quinnari the Devil Jester: - Allows you to cast disguise self. And gamble your life when you would normally die. Giving up items or gold in your possession for a chance proportional to the items monetary value. (UnkillableMikey, PxllDude)
   
3. A Xorvintaal Dragon: - Get exarchs coins that teleport the PCs to the Dragon's Lair. Wyverns to ride. Gain access to a small breath weapon. (speedsterp)
   
4. Erlking Fey lord of the Wild Hunt: - Call forth the hounds of the wild hunt to hunt down or track an enemy (Vinvladro)
   
5. Perriceletas - The Mad Aeon: -Party is masked from scrying and other divinations, and once per day can transport themselves through a doorway to another that they have personally seen before (like transport via plants, but doors) (DracoAdamantus)
   
6. Mother Matches, the fire Hag: - gives the party seeing stones (detect magic) and eldritch candles that when lit can be used to cast flaming hands once per long rest or add a 1d6 fire damage to unarmed melee attacks for 1 minute. (kozykalamari, PxllDude)
   
7. Charon the Ferryman: - After a PC drops to 0 HP other PCs can pay a fee of a few 200gp to get his soul back, silver coins must be placed in the mouth and on the eyes of the dead PC. (PxllDude)
   
8. Forest spirits: - fairy rings are a haven for the party. The fairy ring functions as the spell Leomund’s tiny hut. Some faery rings are interconnected and can be travelled between. The party take on a fey appearance (ArtGamer)
   
9. The Kraken: - Summon tentacles from any seawater (Evard’s Black Tentacles 1/long rest), resistance to lightning and breath underwater. But can’t stay on land for more than 24 hours or start taking levels of exhaustion.
   
10. Nimue the Lady of the Lake: - The group get a shared pool of lay on hands. Radiant damage for 3 rounds and Summon a Pegasus.
    
11. A Circle of Standing stones: - Call forth magic from this arcane place to get extra spell slots. And perform grand rituals to summon powerful creatures.
    
12. The Ghost of a Cadrian the Tempest: - When a Character hits 0HP the ghost possesses the PC to come back for 3 rounds Cadrian is a Vengeance Paladin 2 levels higher than the Party.
    
13. A Holy Chalice: - Grants +1 AC, +1 proficiency, 10 temp HP and the Bless spell on the whole party for 3 rounds once a week.
    
14. Zimboon the Watcher (Beholder): - Eye amulets that can cast identify, and once per long rest per party member use a beholder eye ray, roll on the table for which ray.
    
15. Borlaf the Storm Giant: - Call lightning or summon a giant foot from the sky to crush your foes.
    
16. Nairthep the Sphinx: - Answer riddles and solve mysteries to gain animal abilities via a shape change for limited times. Such as spider climb, fly, Water breathing and claw attacks
    
17. Iqbal the Scorned: - A free use of Arcanists Magic Aura once per long rest, a +2 to all religion and arcana checks and can make a stealth check to make spell effects invisible. (RavenTheNarrator)
    
18. The Shadow without End: - The party has advantage on stealth rolls in shadows and can cast darkness once per long rest but only while inside of a shadow or existing darkness spell from which the new darkness extends. In addition, for 1 minute per long rest the party can invert light and dark, bright light becomes darkness and vice versa. (DDrizzin)
    
19. Pinkie Pie the Pony: - The party gets advantage on all reflex saves once per long rest due to a minor precognitive ability known as "The Pink Pony Sense". +1 one to all performance skill checks. Also, every time the party completes a mission for Pinkie, they will make a big cake for the party that provides the equivalent of a maximized Heroes' Feast spell. (Moon_Dew)
    

mods please lmk if this violates the rules. i’m posting here because I write about the mob/casino and many relevant themes that are important elements of the Sopranos, in my opinion. I think they’re of the same medium and genre so wanted to post here. Hope that’s alright. Cheers! (11 min read) ————————————————————————
EDIT 2: TL;DR -
Casino is a story of sexual and financial intrigue, mob violence, union pension fund embezzlement, a “love” story, and the protagonist's masochist addiction to the pain and chaos his lover inflicts on him. It turns out that the sharp-minded genius who meticulously runs the casino, is no more rational than the gamblers who routinely frequent the casino, coming back to lose their money and hoping that the odds will magically shift in their favor.
———————-
Every good filmmaker makes the same movie over and over again—Martin Scorsese is no different
Scorsese's Casino is a phenomenal story of the condoned chaos and "legalized robbery" that happens on a daily basis to gamblers who bett away thousands of dollars and return each day for more “FinDom,” but without any of the sexual sadism. The whole scam only persists because the house always wins: the odds are stacked 3 million to one on the slot machines, but the same shmucks return wide-eyed each day hoping for a different outcome, devoid of any rational re-evaluation required to maintain their grasp on reality, and the liquidity of their bank accounts.
Casino is a story of sexual and financial intrigue, mob violence, union pension fund embezzlement, a “love” story, and the protagonist's masochist addiction to the pain and chaos his lover inflicts on him. It turns out that the sharp-minded genius who meticulously runs the casino, is no more rational than the gamblers who routinely frequent the casino, coming back to lose their money and hoping that the odds will magically shift in their favor.
Robert De Niro plays Sam "Ace" Rothstein, recruited by his childhood friend Nick "Nicky" Santorno to help run the Tangiers casino, which is funded by an investment made with the Teamsters’ pension fund. Ace’s job is to keep the bottom line flowing so that the Mafia's skimming operation can continue seamlessly. De Niro's character felt like half-way between Travis from Taxi Driver (of course, nowhere as mentally disturbed) and half of the addictive excess, greed, and eccentric business-mind of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Ace’s attention to detail gives him a rain-man-esque sensibility; his ability to see every scam, trick, hand signal, and maneuver happening on the casino floor make him the perfect manager of the casino, and take his managerial style to authoritarian heights in his pursuit of order and control over what is an inherently unstable and dynamic scheme; betting, hedging outcomes, and walking the line to keep the money flowing and the gamblers coming back. I’m not claiming Ace is autistic, I'm no clinician, but his managerial sensibilities over the daily operations of the casino, from the dealers to the pit bosses, to the shift managers, are to the point of disturbing precision, he has eyes everywhere, and knows how to remove belligerent customers with class and professionalism, but ultimately is short sighted in “reading” the human beings he is in relationship with. Ace is frustratingly naive and gullible in his partnership with Nicky and the threat he poses to him, and in his marriage with Ginger.
Ace has no personal aspirations to extract millions of dollars for himself out of the casino corruption venture. Ace simply wants the casino to operate as efficiently as possible, and he has no qualms about being a pawn of the bosses. While Sam, “the Golden Jew”—as he is called—is the real CEO of the whole enterprise, directing things at Tangiers for the benefit of the bosses “back home.” Ace’s compliance is juxtaposed with Nicky’s outrage upon feeling used: he gripes about how he is in “the trenches” while the bosses sit back and do nothing. Note that none of the activity Nicky engages in outside of the casino—doing the work of “taking Las Vegas over”—is authorized by the bosses. Ultimately Nicky’s inability to exert control over his crew and the street lead to his demise.
In the end, capitalism, and all that happens in the confines of the casino, is nothing but “organized violence.” Sound familiar? The mob has a capitalist structure in its organization and hierarchy: muscle men collect and send money back to the bosses who do not labor tirelessly “in the trenches.” The labor of the collectors is exploited to create the profits of their bosses. The entire business-model of the Mafia is predicated on usury and debtors defaulting on loans for which the repayment is only guaranteed by the threat of violence. But this dynamic is not without its internal contradictions and tensions, as seen in Casino.
In a comedic turn, the skimmers get skimmed! The bosses begin to notice the thinning of the envelopes and lighter and lighter suitcases being brought from the casino to Kansas City, “back home”. The situation continues to spin out of control, but a mid-tier mafioso articulates the careful balance required for the skimming operation to carry on: to keep the skimming operation functioning, the skimmers need to be kept loyal and happy. It’s a price the bosses have to pay to maintain the operation, “leakage” in their terms. Ace’s efficient management and precision in maintaining order within Tangiers is crucial for the money to keep flowing. But Ace’s control over the casino slips more and more as the movie progresses. We see this as the direct result of Nicky’s ascendance as mob kingpin in Vegas, the chaos he creates cannot be contained and disrupts the profits and delicate dynamics that keep the scam running.
Of course I can’t help myself here! We should view Scorsese’s discography, and the many portrayals of capitalist excess not as celebratory fetishization, but a critique of the greed and violence he so masterfully captures on film. See the Wolf of Wall Street for its tale of money as the most dangerous drug of them all, and the alienation—social and political—showcased in Taxi Driver. Scorsese uses the mob as a foil to the casino to attack the supposed monopoly the casino holds on legitimate, legal economic activity that rests on institutionalized theft. When juxtaposed with the logic of organized crime, we begin to see that the two—Ace and Nick—are not so different after all.
The only dividing line between the casino and organized crime is the law. Vegas is a lawless town yes, “the Wild West” as Nicky puts it, but there are laws in Vegas. The corruption of the political establishment and ruling elites is demonstrated when they pressure Ace to re-hire an incompetent employee who he fired for his complicity in a cheating scam or his stupidity in letting the slot machines get rigged; nepotism breeds mediocrity. In the end, Ace’s fall is the result of the rent-seeking behavior that the Vegas ruling class wields to influence the gaming board to not even permit Ace a fair hearing for his gaming license, which would’ve given him the lawful authority to officially run Tangiers. The elites use the political apparatus of the State to resist the new gang in town, the warring faction of mob-affiliated casino capitalists. While the mob’s only weapon to employ is that of violence. The mafia is still subservient to the powers that be within the political and economic establishment of Vegas, and they’re told “this is not your town.”
I’d like to make the most salient claim of this entire review now. Casino is a western film. The frontier of the Wild West is Vegas in this case, where the disorder of the mob wreaks havoc on, an until then, an “untapped market.” The investment scheme that the Teamsters pension fund is exploited for as seed capital, is an attempt to remain in the confines of the law while extracting as much value as possible through illegal and corrupt means for the capitalist class of the mob (and the ultimately dispensable union president). Tangiers exists in the liminal space of condoned economic activity as a legal and otherwise standard casino. While the violence required to maintain the operation, corrupts the legal legitimacy it never fully enjoyed from the beginning. This mirrors the bounty economy of the West and the out-sourcing of the law and the execution of the law, to bounty hunters. There is no real authority out in the frontier, the killer outlaw on the run is not so different from the bounty hunter who enjoys his livelihood by hunting down the killers. Yet, he himself is not the State. The wide-lens frame of Ace and Nicky meeting in the desert felt like a direct homage to the iconic image of the Western standoff. The conflict between Ace and Nick, the enforcer and the mastermind, is an approximation of the conflicts we might see in John Wayne’s films. The casino venture itself could be seen as an analogy of the frontier-venturism of railroad pioneers going to lay track to develop the West into a more industrial region.
I would have believed that this was a documentary about how the mob took over control of the Vegas casinos in the 1970-80s … if it were not for the viewer being expected to believe that Robert De Niro could play a Jew; it's hard to believe a man with that accent and the roles he’s played his entire career could be a “CRAZY JEW FUCK!!” I kid! But alas, De Niro is a class act and the last of the many greats of a bygone era. At times, it felt like Joe Pesci lacked talent as an actor, but his portrayal of the scummy, backstabbing bastard in Nicky was genuinely remarkable, but I might consider his performance the weak point of the movie. It’s weird to see a man that short, be that much of physical menace. There are a number of Sopranos actors in Casino. I’m sure Vincent Chase watched the movie and said to himself, “bet, i’ll cast half of these guys.”The set design and costumes were gorgeous. The styles and fashion of the time were spectacular. Scorsese’s signature gratuitous violence featured prominently, but tastefully. The camera work, tracking shots through the casino and spatial movement was incredible and I thought the cinematography was outstanding, the Western-esque wide lens in the desert was worthy of being a framed still.
The Nicky//Ace dynamic is excellent and the two play off of each other well. The conflict between the two of them escalates gradually, and then Nicky’s betrayal of Ace by cheating with Ginger marks the final break between the two of them. Nicky’s mob faculties represent a brutal, violent theft that is illegal and requires the enforcement of violence by organized crime. Despite the illegal embezzlement and corruption at play with the “skimming” operation at work at the casino, the general business model of the casino stands in contrast to the obscene violence of the loan sharks. Ace operates an intelligent operation of theft through the casino, and his hands-on management approach is instrumental to the success of the casino. Nicky’s chaos pervades the casino, and the life and activities of “the street” begin to bleed into Ace’s ability to maintain order in the casino. “Connected” types begin frequenting the casino, and Ace unknowingly forces one particularly rude gambler to leave the casino, who happens to have mob ties with Nicky. The “organized violence” of the casino cannot stay intact perfectly, because the very thing holding it together is the presence of the mob. Nicky is in Vegas as the enforcer and tasked with protecting Ace but his independent, entrepreneurial (shall we call them?) aspirations lead him to attempt to overtake what he realizes is a frontier for organized crime to brutalize and exploit the characters of “the street” (pimps, players, addicts, dealers, and prostitutes) and the owners of small private businesses.
Nicky is reckless, “when i plant my flag out here you won’t need your [casino/gaming] license” Nicky thinks he, and Ace, can bypass the regulations and bureaucratic legal measures by sheer force of violence alone. But ultimately Nicky is shortsighted and doesn’t have a real attachment to the success of the casino. After all, he isn’t getting profits from it (or much anyway) and isn’t permitted to play a real, active role in its daily functions because of his belligerent, untamed personality. Nicky has no buy-in that would motivate him to follow the rules or to work within the legal parts of the economy, it’s not the game he knows how to play, and win. All that he is loyal to, or deferent too, is the bosses back home; for whom he maintains absolute, uncompromising loyalty to, but still holds intense spite for.
And now to the more compelling element of the narrative. Sam “Ace” Rothstein is positioned as remarkably intelligent, he makes informed decisions that aid in his skill as a gambler, he can read people to determine whether he’s being conned, he has an attention to detail—aided by the casino’s surveillance apparatus which monitors cheating—that is almost unbelievable. Ace knows when he’s being cheated, he knows how to rig the game so that the house always wins, enacting psychological warfare to break down the confidence of would be proficient gamblers, who could threaten Tangiers’ bottom line. But in the end, the greatest gamble Ace makes is his marriage to Ginger. Ginger is the seductive, charismatic, and flirtatious madame who makes her money with tricks and her sexual power. Ginger works as a prostitute, seducing men, and extracting everything she can, almost as a sort of sexual-financial vampirism.
Ginger is the bad bet Ace can’t stop making even when she destroys his life, her own, and puts their daughter Amy in harm’s way. Ginger is the gamble Ace made wrong, but he keeps going back to her every time, trying to rationalize how she might change and be different the next time. Ace is not a victim to Ginger’s antics. Ginger makes it clear who she is: an addict, alcoholic, manic shopaholic who will use all of her powers to extract everything she can from everyone around her. She uses everyone to her advantage and manipulates men with her sexual power in exchange for their money and protection. Ginger had a price for her hand in marriage: $1 million in cash and $1 million worth of jewelry that are left to her and her alone as a sort of emergency fund.
Ace’s numerous attempts to buy Ginger’s love—and the clear fact that no matter how expensive the fur coat and how grand the mansion, none of it would ever be enough to satisfy her—mirrored Jordan Belfort’s relationship with Naomi in The Wolf of Wall Street. Both relationships carried the same manic volatility and conflict over child custody was found in both films, with the roles reversed in the respective films. Ginger may be irredeemable and a pathological liar, but Ace can’t claim that she wasn’t clear with him; when he asked her to marry him, Ginger said she didn’t love Ace. Ace replied that love could be “developed” but required a foundation of trust to develop. That trust was never there to begin with. The love was doomed from the start to destroy the two of them; two addicts, two gamblers, lying on a daily basis to one another and themselves about reality to justify their respective existences, the marriage, and Ace’s livelihood. And as Ginger pointed out, “I should have never married him. He’s a gemini, a triple gemini … a snake” Maybe astrology has some truth to it after all.
Now I’m not licensed (but hey neither was Ace, and he ran a casino empire!), but Ginger has the inklings of a borderline personality: her manic depression, narcissism, drug and alcohol abuse, and constant begging for forgiveness all seem indications of a larger psychological disorder at play. In the end, Ginger runs away with all the money Ace left her and finds her people in Los Angeles, the pimps, whores, and addicts she fits in with, in turn exploit and kill her for 3 grand in mint coins by giving her a ‘hot’ dose.
Overall, Casino is an incredible cinematic experience. I highly recommend watching this and seeing it as part of Scorsese's anthology of commentary on our economic system and its human victims. I’d argue that Casino, Wolf of Wall Street, and The Irishman all fit together nicely into a trilogy of the Scorsesean history of finance and corruption from the 70s to the 90s.
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EDIT 2: TL;DR —
Casino is a story of sexual and financial intrigue, mob violence, union pension fund embezzlement, a “love” story, and the protagonist's masochist addiction to the pain and chaos his lover inflicts on him. It turns out that the sharp-minded genius who meticulously runs the casino, is no more rational than the gamblers who routinely frequent the casino, coming back to lose their money and hoping that the odds will magically shift in their favor.

Disclaimer: this is just speculation based on personal experience, logic with a teeny bit of maths (rough).
TLDR: This might be a P2W server with micro transactions and crates...
Edit 2, just discovered that all pre-existing enchantments get deleted if the tool is repaired after being broken by a book
Edit* This is meant to be a harsh critique as a warning to the admins about where this server might be going so that it can improve to be better in the future. Don't get me wrong, my first impressions were very good, I would only wish they did two things before launching for open Beta:

1. Discuss the monetisation of the server and how (imo) it should be mostly in terms of cosmetics when it comes to things you can purchase in game.
2. Created a wiki/ info page on their website about how to do most of the things in game (I mean half the people didn't know how to fill up a planting pot with water and dirt) as there are many non-vanilla features that are not self explanatory.

*Please grab a drink and some popcorn before reading this*
Let's get started...
​
So, everyone who has played a little bit of Origin Realms has experienced the new enchantment system. One that is heavily based around enchanting books on the enchantment table and applying them to tools on an anvil.
​
At first glance, this all seems good, as you can get high tier vanilla enchantments with just 2 levels (even mending!), and custom enchantments with 6 or 9 levels (or something similar). The only other cost is Rubies, which can be earned most easily (as of right now) either by mining for Platinum and selling them on the auction house, or planting the custom crops to get 5 star yields that sell for 8 Rubies a piece.
Now, as you hold your first enchantment book obtained from the enchantment 101 quest, you might be wondering, what is the destruction chance mean? Well you see, all enchantment books now have a high chance to destroy your piece of equipment and 'shatter' it, rendering it useless, and destroying the enchantment in the process. So now you would have to go to the repair shop essentially, and pay 1 ruby plus an entire Minecraft day worth of time to get it back.
You might say, oh, no big deal, I can get many books and try this over and over again to get an enchantment that stays on, and you might be right, but it would also be a very tedious process as most of the useful books have a very high chance of destruction: eg. Looting 3 (around 50%), protection 4 (around 52%), efficiency 4-5 (around 48%).
​
The crux of the issue doesn't lie with the destruction chance, however, it lies with the fact that some pre-existing enchantments can be taken away along with the book you were trying to put onto the item.
An example of this is from personal experience, I had a mending, silk touch and siphon (puts mined blocks straight into inventory, like the telekinesis enchantment on Hypixel Skyblock) pickaxe, and I was trying to put another enchantment on: smelting (I know that in hindsight, this would contradict with the silk touch enchantment, but the item preview on the anvil had all 4 enchantments on so I paid no attention to it).
The item then broke and the efficiency/unbreaking book along with the siphon enchantment were both destroyed, leaving me with a broken pickaxe that only had mending and silk touch on.
​
Furthermore, the shop on the official Origin Realms website sells an item called the Protection Rune, which, if you applied onto a piece of equipment, could protect the item from shattering. They sell for $3.59 USD each, and only protects the piece of equipment from 1 or 2 enchantment books, meaning that it is not a permanent addition to your equipment.
This means that, if you wanted to make Platinum god armour, you would have to buy a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 20 or more protection runes depending on your luck (including some custom enchantments like the one that increases experience orbs collected, ones centred around travelling on the boots etc.), not even taking into account the extra enchantment slots you can add with another rune that is bought at the store for the same price of $3.59 USD(you do get a free one when you complete an easy quest, but that's not the point).
As most of the enchantments are basically a 50/50, when applying 20 enchanted books, statistically with a binomial distribution, there is a 0.0000954% chance you will not have to buy any runes (not even taking into account how lucky you need to get to obtain those enchanted books)!
And if you have average luck, you would need roughly 10 protection runes, (17.6% chance), costing you $35.90 USD. **
Even just for a good pickaxe with efficiency 4, silk touch, unbreaking 3 and mending, you would have to buy an average of 2 protection runes, and you have to get all of those books by buying them from other players or getting very lucky with the enchantment table.
Why do I give such a specific list of enchantments? Well, you see, with a single level 30 enchant on the basic vanilla enchantment table, you can get efficiency 4, unbreaking 3 and silk touch, having only spent 3 levels and remaining at 27 levels. You would then have to find a village and get roll a librarian for mending books, but this is all relatively easy, and just takes time, with very little RNG involved (getting all 3 enchantments is lucky, but nothing is taken away if you don't get lucky, unlike how enchantments can get destroyed in Origin Realms. Villages are not very hard to find, and rolling the mending books just takes time).
​
This brings me back to my title, why did I title it the Dark Side of Origin Realms if I'm just going to talking about the broken enchantment system? Well, you see, on the surface, this is a very well coded, textured and organised server, with very friendly and helpful staff and interesting cocepts and additions to the vanilla experience.
However, you will soon realise that behind the scenes, this server is very much driven by the almighty dollar. Let's compare this to Hypixel Skyblock, a very grindy server gamemode, but probably the most comparable.
On Hypixel Skyblock, they have irl purchasable things like ranks, but all they do is allow you to skip certain queues for playing, some utility buffs (like adding on more slots for easy armour swapping, more profiles I believe, and cosmetics like furniture etc.), but barely anything that heavily advantages paying players versus non-playing players (I am aware that for other gamemodes like skywars etc., buying coins can give you somewhat of an advantage).
But as for the Origins Realms store, just the runes section is very much P2W, and that's not even mentioning the crates...
CRATES, a word that may bring horror, instill fear in you, or keep you awake at night. If you have played any mobile games with microtransactions, or even PC games with microtransactions, you would know how game destroying these things can be, giving an unfair advantage to paying players (like in Origin Realms) while making them 'gamble'; which is essentially what crates are, a small chance of getting something really good, but a better chance of getting something not as good.
This is especially apparent in the Origin Realms shop, where the Basic and Legendary crates (costing $3.59 USDand $5.39 USD respectively) can give you items such as totems of undying (allowing you to have another life), shulker shells for superior and mobile storage, platinum and extra resources that you now do not need to mine for, but only pay for. Essentially, paying so you get better items while having to spend less time on obtaining them.
To be honest, I was very much looking forward to the launch of this server, and had a great experience on the first day establishing my base and setting up some farms. But as I play for longer and get deeper into the mechanics of the server, I get more and more disappointed at how P2W this server is, it heavily reminds me of the mobile game: Marvel Future Fight, where if you did not pay, you would have to spend at least 5x the amount of times playing and micromanaging resources to even get to a similar level of progress as paying players, with some items still being off limits (sound familiar yet? cough* totems, cough* shulker boxes).
Now, Origin Realms is very new and still in the Beta phase, but I can't help but worry for the future of this server, whether or not it will end up being another great idea corrupted by $$$.
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If you've managed to read this far, thank you so much, and please let me know what you think in the comments below :)
** Realistically, the number of runes you have to buy is even higher, since the enchantment books that broke are now gone, and you would have to take another chance at applying a 50/50 book onto your armour. And if you decide to risk not using runes, then your pre-existing enchantments will slowly get wiped, making sure that a set of not even god, but GOOD armour is almost impossible to do, free to play.

Application

Discord Name: shellshock3d#3620 / Ace
Name and House: Corwyn Piper
Age: 41
Cultural Group: Andal
Appearance: An older man with dark red, almost auburn hair that sticks out in all directions. He has a similar colored goatee and mustache. His eyes are a pale watery blue. He is fit with a decent amount of muscle to him.
Gift(s): Duelist
Skill(s): Swords (M), Footwork, Hale
Talent(s): Fishing, Gambling, Hunting
Negative Trait: --
Starting Title(s): The Purple Knight of the Queensguard
Starting Location: The Queen's Progress
Alternate Characters: Cedric Lannister, Coryanne Dayne (This is my KL Slot)

Biography

Corwyn Piper was born to Addam and Gwenys Piper in 174 AD in the castle of Pinkmaiden. He was an only child as his mother died mere minutes after he was born. His father never remarried nor had any more children afterwards. He spent much of his youth with his similarly aged cousin so much so that they were like brothers more than anything else.
When he was still barely large enough to swing a sword on his own he uprooted his life and moved to Harrenhal to squire under the lord at the time, Symond Strong. There he trained alongside one of the Lord’s younger sons. He learned all the things he needed to know in order to be a knight. The art of the sword, the donning of armor, riding a horse and shooting a bow.
Unfortunately his skills were put to the test much earlier than anticipated. When House Frey let through the armies of Barthogan Blacksword their next stop was Harrenhal itself. The forces of House Strong, including the then thirteen year old Corwyn, sallied out in an attempt to stop the oncoming northerners. In the ensuing battle Corwn got his first kill against an older man but he suffered a grave injury. He was hit with a dagger to his chest which shattered on impact with his rib. Small fragments of metal were left embedded in his muscle that still pain him to this day. They lost the battle but won the war when the crown intervened.
Once he became a proper man he was knighted by Symond Strong and sent off into the world. He went back to Pinkmaiden for a few years and served as the castle’s master at arms but realized the position was not for him. In 194 he was hired by Oswald Tully to work as a knight in service to Riverrun. An odd choice considering the rivalry between Houses Strong and Tully but at the time there was nothing more glorious than working for a lord paramount.
During part of his time working under Lord Tully he was sent out to deal with a small group of bandits led by a man calling himself the last surviving member of House Teague. Corwyn led a group of knights and armed men to the bandit camp. Leading the charge himself, his men slaughtered every last one of the bandits even down to the teenage boys who surely were not much of a threat. This was the event that got him quite a bit of recognition though it also worsened the constant pain in his chest.
In early 204 tragedy struck when a fire engulfed much of Pinkmaiden’s castle and killed many of his family members. He came home to mourn with his cousin but when he did so he was told by his cousin, the current lord of Pinkmaiden, that it would be best if Corwyn disappeared somewhere in case there were ever a crisis of succession. Instead of just disappearing off to Essos somewhere he joined the Queensguard through word of his deeds and good word from his old master Symond Strong.
Now as Corwyn Piper of the Purple Cloak he did his duty to protect the royal family from any and all harm that would come to them. He kept their secrets if that was what was needed of him. Living in King’s Landing was dangerous for him. Having never been in the big city he started succumbing to the things the city had to offer. He began getting involved in gambling dens and spending his coin most unwisely. He also began to self medicate his chronic chest pain with milk of the poppy. Not enough to impair himself but enough to get by.
When the Conquest of Dorne happened, Corwyn was one of the few Queensguard to stay behind and protect the royal family while the others went to war. It was a blessing and a curse. He lived but so many of his other brothers in arms died down in Dorne. He gained new brothers but it was not the same for him. Since then he still did his duty and never once complained. He now guards Queen Daenerys herself along with the Lord Commander and picked up a squire named Beron Mooton.

Timeline

174 - Born in Pinkmaiden
185 - Begins his squireship to Symond Strong
187 - Participates in Blacksword’s Folly, killing mountain clansmen and getting injured
191 - Gets knighted by Symond Strong and goes off into the world
194 - Begins working as a knight in the service of Oswald Tully
196 - Leads the charge against a Bandit claiming to be a false Teague
204 - After the fire in Pinkmaiden, joins the Queensguard with the blessing of House Strong
208 - Stays in King’s Landing during the war to protect the queen
213 - Becomes the second full time protector of the Queen
215 - Follows the queen on her progress

Family Tree

https://www.familyecho.com/?p=YQ3NQ&c=7dxeo3vj6m&f=881757679864224049

Supporting Cast

Beron Mooton, 15, Warrior (Axes) - Corwyn’s Squire