Zone X (Changi Airport Terminal 3)

Zone X is on Basement 2 of Changi Airport Terminal 3, the public shopping level, so you can walk in without a boarding pass.

It is a compact floor built around claw machines and coin pushers, with ticket redemption feeding a prize counter and Wangan Midnight cabinets for anyone who would rather drive. The coin pushers are what people remember: when a run finally goes, the tickets come out in a burst rather than a trickle, and that is most of the appeal. It gets loud when the machines and the children are going at once, so it is not a quiet corner in which to kill an hour.

The staff are what make this one work for visitors. They are used to explaining the token and ticket system to people who have never seen it before, and to doing it across a language barrier — a translation app comes out when it needs to. If you are early for a flight or waiting on someone else’s, that is the difference between standing at a machine working out what to press and actually playing. Come with a set number of tokens rather than an open wallet, and treat the prize counter as the bonus.