Note that this wasn't a global phenomenon. We had SF2 in Spanish arcades, and I a lot of people wanting to play, but basically nobody played versus in the arcades I visited: The game was too expensive to make someone's investment last a single 3 round fight. So instead you'd see a line of people waiting to play single player, and helping each other out.

The multiplayer games that did well were all PvE, like Gauntlet or Knights of the Round. A very different culture.

> The game was too expensive to make someone's investment last a single 3 round fight. So instead you'd see a line of people waiting to play single player, and helping each other out.

Custom among my friends was to put a quarter in, and wait to press start until the computer was about to win its second round. Then the challenged essentially got to play you for free.

Doesn't work as well when it was two coins to start, one to continue though; in that case, the next challenger would rather pay one coin to challenge right away rather than letting the winner play the computer until almost dead at the price of two coins.