Pac-Man Ticket Mania
Bandai Namco (2013)
One of my favorite games that I played for the first time at The Great Canadian Midway was Pac-Man Ticket Mania. It's one of the most fun ticket-based games that I've ever played. It might even be more fun than Skee-Ball, and it definitely lasts longer if you're pretty good at Pac-Man.
Pac-Man Ticket Mania is like a neon remix of the original Pac-Man where the amount of tickets you win depends on how many dots, bonus items and blue ghosts (after eating the power pellet) that you can much without getting eaten by the ghost monsters. If you clear all of the dots, you have five seconds to go to the ghost box in the center of the screen to win the Pac-Pot (jackpot), which is a massive amount of tickets.
The Great Canadian Midway had a machine that I haven't seen at an arcade before, and it's a really good idea. After you've won a bunch of tickets, you come over here and feed them in to the Ticket Eater and it automatically counts them and prints you out a voucher with your total number of tickets that you've won. I suppose it's only a matter of time before the industry switches over to having a plastic card that will keep a record of your points digitally, but for arcades that want to keep it old school with prize tickets, the Ticket Eater is an excellent way to manage your winnings without having to carry around a big plastic bucket full of tickets.
There was also a Pac-Man Coin Pusher at The Great Canadian Midway. These have been around for decades in just about every arcade that has a prize counter, but this is the first time that I've ever come across one that was Pac-Man themed. I never really could get the hang of Coin Pusher games, so I didn't play this one.
