Why the 10p machine always wins

Insert coin, player one.

A lot of you wrote in after last week's table asking why you can lose a whole pocketful of coins to one game in an afternoon. It isn't bad luck. Arcade games were built to be hard enough that you wanted one more go, and easy enough in the first minute that you believed you could win.

The first minute is a trick

Every classic cabinet gives you a gentle opening: slow invaders, a quiet maze, a few easy barrels. Then the speed ramps and the mistakes cost you. That curve is the whole design. If you want to see how the designers thought about it, the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield is worth a visit if you want to see how the originals were built.

This week's high scores

• Donkey Kong, the one with the sticky joystick: 74,200 before the third barrel.
• Asteroids, rescued from a closed bowling alley: 12,060 and one cracked bezel.
• Defender, with the notoriously heavy thrust button: 41,500 on a single credit.

See the full score table

That's the table for this week. Reply with your own best score, I read every one.

Ruth