Cigarette machines?

[Nethiar]

Do they serve any purpose? I beat the game, but never found a use for them.

[Gandrake]

Originally posted by Nethiar:

Do they serve any purpose? I beat the game, but never found a use for them.

No, just a decoration and to establish the time period better. You don't see those anymore really, and especially not around a family establishment primarily for children.
This is 1990, though, before smoking in public places was banned, and in fact, parents often smoked everywhere and didn't worry about their kids being around. Everybody smoked and it wasn't a big deal.

It's kind of a similar thing of how the Mermaid game intentionally only has questions with incorrect answers that were nevertheless correct during that time, like the tongue-tasting thing being related to different areas of the tongue or bread and carbs being the thing people were told to eat the most of despite that no longer being the case.

[Null Winter]

They serve as a hint that Mara is both a minor and terminally ill, both of which prevent her from smoking.

Granted, those barriers will soon not be issues and the first was not as much of an issue in 1990.

They also set the time period.

[Nethiar]

Originally posted by Null Winter:

They serve as a hint that Mara is both a minor and terminally ill, both of which prevent her from smoking.

Granted, those barriers will soon not be issues and the first was not as much of an issue in 1990.

They also set the time period.

I figured it was something like that, but they only needed one to do that. It just seems weird that compared to the trash cans and vending machines they don't serve any kind of gameplay purpose for how prevalent as they are.