>>12005906
1. It was more like $250K to 300K for a Ridge Racer Full Scale, but they still made money off them.
2. You weren't around for the peak of the arcade era (Or maybe you didn't go out much during that time?). Arcade businesses were EVERYWHERE. Malls, shopping centers, bowling alleys, grocery stores, laundromats, hospitals, dentists offices, pizza places, restaurants, dentist waiting rooms, museums, etc. If they spare room, they would shove an arcade cabinet there. Sometimes it was just 1 or 2 cabinets, sometimes it would be a room of arcade machines, and sometimes even bigger.
Seeing a Ridge Racer Full Scale machine was not THAT super rare of an occurrence. Some Large arcades had them, Theme parks had them, Some Namco arcades had them, several Sega arcades had them, Even some private arcades had them, military bases had some, and even airports had a Ridge Racer Full Scale. This is how it wad during the peak of arcades until around 1996 or 1997.
It's only today 20 years later do Zoomers want to play these machines and make up stories about how ultra rare Ridge Racer Full Scale was. And write random articles about how only a handful existed. This simply isn't true. Namco probably made around 100 ridge racer full scale machines. The problem is that arcade owners all trashed and destroyed the old RRFS machines. The idea of "preserving" old arcade machines wasn't really a thing back then. Back in the golden age, arcade cabinets were plentiful and considered disposable. After 2 to 5 years, it wasn't uncommon for arcade owners to simply throw these machines in the dumpster once they stopped earning big money. No one talks about this much.
When Time Crisis 2 came out, what do you think happened to the Time Crisis 1 cabinets? When Time Crisis 3 came out, whag happened to the TC2 cabinets? Customers never seem to ask these questions. They went in the dumpster...Unfortunately.
It's only recently do people think about preserving these once plentiful machines.
