Anyone who has ventured into an arcade or supermarket knows the thrilling crane-game objective of "drop the claw into a batch of stuffed animals / jewelry / live lobsters."

Rumor has it these games date back to the Renaissance, when serfs would run out into a bog until their lord yelled, "Stop!" then the serfs would drop their nets and announce if they had caught any quality oak.

Players have hotly debated the ease of winning the modern version of the game, with opinions ranging from, "They are rigged to lose every time" to "My little brother always wins. His room is full of plush toys and my dad drinks a lot."

Our investigative journalists got curious and spent days and our collective life savings researching this, and we have found out the dark truth, due to the ACC-1 Arcade Crane Controller manual.

This upgrade board controls nearly every element of a crane game, from how long you have to play to how much strength the claw "grabs" with. The board comes with something called a "Guarantee Loser" option. To quote the manual, "this helps ensure that a prize is dropped on the transition from closed claw power to loser claw power."

In other words, the grip strength of the claw slowly drops to 0 percent, low enough that it couldn't hold on to a wet napkin, much less that prized stuffed Pikachu. The conclusion? The next time you're at a restaurant and you want to play the claw game, do what we do and spend the money on hard liquor instead.