You will have seen them in hundreds of roadside bars, in game rooms and in more than one shopping center. Hook machines are everywhere. Known for their wide collection of hideous stuffed animals and figures, these machines now have the appeal of offering prizes as succulent as the latest generation tablets, smart watches and all kinds of gadgets. But did you think it was the last thing you were going to see?
SEGA Catcher Online, or how to play bar hook from home
SEGA's latest idea amazes us and horrifies us in equal parts. Set up in Japan, this classic hook machine called SEGA Catcher Online allows users to connect from an app on their mobile phone to remotely take control of the hook. Thus, with the help of the simple controls that appear on the screen, we will have to move the hook to the chosen place to try to reach one of the prizes.
But what happens if we win one of the products? No problem. The system is in charge of identifying the prize achieved and relating the user who was handling the hook from the application, in order to proceed with the shipment of the product completely free of charge.
After more than a year in operation in Japan, the service is now landing in the United States, where they are already accepting registrations to play and see the long list of prizes that can be obtained by playing the machine, items that basically consist of Kirbi plushies ( curiously from Nintendo being a SEGA machine), anime figures, cushions with anime character prints and other very similar items.
How do these machines work?
As we can see on the channel Tokyo Otaku Mode, SEGA has large warehouses where it has installed dozens of machines accompanied by a webcam that allows remote viewing of the users who connect. As you can see, there are machines labeled with the number 328, so you can get an idea of the number of daily requests they could receive from users.
The mobile app only has two control buttons, one to move the hook to the right, or one to move it down. It seems simple, but as you can see in the video, the hook clamp doesn't have enough strength to grab the box, so all it does is move it slightly (we're not going to discover the hidden tricks of this type of system right now). entertainment, right?)