Alot of modern arcades actually have unlimited play models or "play as much as you want for X time". They make their money off food/drinks/alcohol.

At least the last few I have been too. I guess people for the most part had decided if you were gonna drop 50 bucks you might as well buy a new videogame and play it at home. The scummy part is the "ticket" games, where you have a chance to win below dollar store grade prizes and exist to waste your game time away from games that have actual game play in them. (ski ball is still fun even if its a ticket game)

Last one I went to it was kind of neat to finally be able to beat one of those old school 90s arcade games that in retrospect had their difficulty tuned to do nothing but eat all your quarters.....

Those arcades you mention (where you pay a flat rate and get unlimited playtime) are sadly the minority. What you see in most places these days are ticket machines, claws and other pseudo-gambling machines.

both Main Event and Dave and Busters have unlimited play cards that are popular? (you can't play the ticket games with the cards though) What big arcades are there still other than places like those?

Maybe this is a regional thing. In the U.K. have a few arcades like you describe but the vast majority of arcades are side businesses and populated with gambling machines. You see them in places like bowling alleys, sea side amusements, larger family camp sites, etc. Most of those places might throw in an air hockey and pool table or two but aside from that it’s just ticket machines.

Yeah, even in American bowling alleys seem to have "play as much as you want for an hour!" cards. At least the last one i went to did for its arcade.

Bowling alleys make their money off the alcohol and overpriced appetizers in any case. The other stuff is just to get you inside the door.

Console games were so polluted with arcade bullshit design (see: Battletoads) that Super Mario World was instantly notable for being designed to be fair.

A lot of the problem is longevity. In the 8 bit, and to some extent the 16 bit era too, the memory constraints were so great that games were often pretty short. So the difficulty bar was set as a method of ensuring longevity.

There was an actual slang term for this used by western developers, the name of which I’ve forgotten, but it directly talks about how games should take longer to complete than your average rental loan.

Didnt the designers of popular rpgs like Dragonquest and Final Fantasy admit they added leveling grinds so customers would be outside the allowed return window if they beat it too soon?