Some arcades were actually a bit more manipulative than that in that they’d get harder depending on how long it was since you last put a quarter in.

Mortal Kombat was one. I noticed this pattern on the snes version of MK3 (can’t remember if it was ultimate or not that I had): I’d easily win one fight, then get demolished by the next fighter. Then continue and that same fighter would be easy, only for the next one after that to be much more difficult. I didn’t have to put quarters into my snes but they just used the same tuning from the arcade machines.

Eventually when I played that game, I was spending much more time on the space invaders minigame lol.