As school and work wrap up, crowds fill Tokyo's many bustling arcade halls -- not to battle it out in fighting games, but to snag plush toys from claw machines. In one of these gaming meccas in the ...

The crane machine—also known as claw machines, crane games and, in Japan, as “UFO catchers” due to their proclivity for aerial abductions—first gripped the public imagination in the early 1900s. Even ...

s Taiwan's economy stagnates, claw crane arcades where customers lower a grabber to try to pick up a prize from a glass box are booming as affordable entertainment, while operators see them as a way ...