My online slots videos (plus UK AWPs)

[PMKFRUITPRO]

Yes after u realised sub zero wasn’t the same kettle of fish one had to adjust one’s strategies.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Watched the Sub Zero one last night.

Strange how players from different areas play machines so differently.

Did really well on the Red Gaming machines including this one but none of our methods were as in this video or forces on the others

Pray tell then Jono, I'm sure it's not secret information twenty years down the line

I'm not adverse to the idea of making new videos if there's something worthwhile to make them about

 

[Jono777]

Pray tell then Jono, I'm sure it's not secret information twenty years down the line

I'm not adverse to the idea of making new videos if there's something worthwhile to make them about

No secrets here mate, just too tired last night to make a lengthy post lol.....

Long story short, we usually refill key check hopper balance, or no need if already backing (which surprisingly the Red around Wolves regularly were...) see if they were worth a punt.

Rarely took JP's unless they were literally thrown at us, take the value from playing to best strategy, only gambling 1-2-3-10-11-12, looking for largest "tell" was seeing 3/4 of the features red every 2-3rd board at least, taking the skills on normal features (EG: dapple - hit highest win" and basically built up the bank, walking when the boards started to cost more and the red features became thin on the ground.

This was basically it, helped being good at fast cash and reel match type features also

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Ahhh right so basically just taking all the value out of the machine through skilful play and knowledge of the features, almost like the old JPMs I suppose

 

[Jono777]

Ahhh right so basically just taking all the value out of the machine through skilful play and knowledge of the features, almost like the old JPMs I suppose

Pretty much, yes.

This being said, Red along with the later BFM's are the ones we tended not to really push our luck with, they always seemed that bit more stubborn, whether there was a system or simply experience as our aid.

Main targets were always the Barcrest's really, gosh I miss walking around after a days "bashing" having to hold my jeans up due to the overbearing weight of all the £1 coins

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Latest two reuploads. The Jurassic Trail one has a bit of a Chopley Waffle Story Time in it regarding one of the first jobs I got when I moved over permanently to the IOM in 1996.

 

[PMKFRUITPRO]

I’ve no idea why you got told to not take the IM!!

That’s what you play for!! After it’s SSS ready.

Sometimes it won’t come back from the bonus if you get it to quick before it’s board ready but that’s about it.

Most of these were also games you could do off the stake switch SH. But man it could take an age before landing something. But you also had the no. of credits blag on 10p before the switch if I wasn’t mistaken on some of the earlier clones.

Been a while tho, so maybe wrong on this front.

Could be thinking of ziggys etc.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Latest reuploads to the channel.

Just another smorgasbord of awfulness in the main, apart from The Crystal Maze SWPs, which were actually quite good and fair(ish).

 

[ChopleyIOM]

 

[ChopleyIOM]

One new reupload for today, this is the Barcrest clubber called Trailblazer Club, it turned up on loads of stake and prize combinations including this one here, the crackers casino version on 50p play with a £1000 cash jackpot, which was a serious proposition twenty years ago.

It literally took me years of on and off play to get this one ready to pay out the £1000 jackpot, this is a compensated machine, so it needs to take a LOT before it's £1000 happy.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Three new reuploads in the last week, no real methods or emptiers or suchlike, more just focusing on the machines themselves. Anyone who was in arcades in the early 90s will certainly remember 777 Heaven.....

 

[Jono777]

Project low tech reels (will aid when you have a boxed pair offering hold for 1 or 3 nudges)

When you press start...

Reel 1 - spins approx 8 symbols forward from starting position
Reel 2 - spins approx 4 symbols back from starting position
Reel 3 - spins 1-2 (occasionally 3) symbols either forward or back or returns the same symbol

 

[dunover]

Three new reuploads in the last week, no real methods or emptiers or suchlike, more just focusing on the machines themselves. Anyone who was in arcades in the early 90s will certainly remember 777 Heaven.....

The last video there sums up the hopelessness, futility and despair of the AWP addict. I can't comment on those machines post-£10 jp as I never played them as I had given them up by about 1999.

But I can relate to that Show me the Mummy farce. Sort of like: Person gets their £160-200 take home wages on Friday, heads off to play the filth. Never ahead, soon £40 down, and thinking 'Only a day's wages loss so far, great amusement should get it back with a main feature'..

Very soon, nearing £200 down, dread and regret nestling heavily in the pit of the stomach, fast shallow breathing, tension, heating of the body, tunnel vision and the blocking of all sensory reception bar the game. Unwelcome thoughts flash through the mind like 'I'm supposed to pay the rent/taker the GF out tomorrow/fill the fridge/I've worked 40 hours for 90 minutes 'entertainment' aarrgghhhh!'

Then the palpable relief as the last £20 gives signs at least some of it will be won back, the bizarre auto-adjusting gambler's logic that an escape with just the loss of Monday's and Tuesday's wages will be a win of sorts, the illogicality and irrationality of the situation levelled out against postponing the loss of the rest of the week's money until next time...

I actually felt your genuine stress there even though it's demo, the 'Low Ebbs' events fresh in your mind and reigniting bad memories.

This is why I must ask if your playing these emulators is some kind of retrospective self-flagellation, a kind of frequent reminder to scare yourself away from the consequences of AWP addiction, dampening down the old spark which you quite rightly dread reigniting. I suppose it's because my mindset and logic would eschew ANY contact with the machines, whether real or emulated, had I been through the wringer as you related to us in brutal honesty before.

That bit of pain in the video was something I would have spared myself, it's frightening and shocking to see.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

This is why I must ask if your playing these emulators is some kind of retrospective self-flagellation, a kind of frequent reminder to scare yourself away from the consequences of AWP addiction, dampening down the old spark which you quite rightly dread reigniting. I suppose it's because my mindset and logic would eschew ANY contact with the machines, whether real or emulated, had I been through the wringer as you related to us in brutal honesty before.

I genuinely enjoy playing fruit machines in the emulator, even after over twenty years there's still something quite magical about being able to play real fruit machines on my PC. (Well, real apart form the money!)

You have to remember that I basically spent ten years as an addict, from 1991-2001, and then in 2001 I finally started to get some decent info about how to play them and from 2001 to the present day, I'm overall very much in profit in them. (Albeit still down on lifetime stats, I don't know exactly how much I lost between 1991-2001 but it must be knocking on the door of around £40-£50K.)

Ultimately it's impossible to entirely disentangle real fruit machines from emulated fruit machines in my head, so sometimes, such as when I made the Show Me The Mummy video, my mind still remembers what it was like to be stood in front of a real fruit machine, down to my last few quid and with no chance in the world of stopping until every last penny had gone, so despite the fact that the emulator is of course entirely 'safe', the memories are still there.

But no, it's not any sort of 'punishment' or 'atonement' to play the emulated machines, I really enjoy doing so, and do so nearly every single day.

Here's an article I wrote about emulation and addiction back in 2001 (some of my predictions have turned out to be pretty accurate.)

------------------------

EMULATION CURES ADDICTION?
​

The sad truth of the matter is that fruit machines largely depend on addicts plunging themselves into debt and misery to make their profit. Casual play is at an all time low, I did have the figures at one time but can't lay my hands on them at the moment, sufficed to say that the number of people playing the change from the round, or a spare fiver for a bit of fun has dropped dramatically. But that's hardly surprising, any machine out there will happily take £5, about the most that a casual player would think about spending, and not give a single win or feature. (In reality just about any machine can take £10 and give absolutely nothing, some can go to £15 and higher. Fruit machine manufacturers must be stupid or really stupid, and think that we're even stupider).

I'd like to feel some degree of sympathy for Barcrest or any of the other manufacturers but I can't. Unscrupulous operators and corrupt staff do have to carry their part of the blame for setting machines to low %ages, and staff often have profitable rackets in watching machines and tipping off resident players or playing themselves (it doesn't take a genius to work out when a machine's going to pay if you can watch it every moment that it's turned on). However, manufacturers have been insufferably lazy and complacent in the face of falling revenues. As the years have gone by they've gone along with the rest of the industry's attempts to get prizes and stakes increased, yet have never considered the fact that there are still club machines out there with £200 JPs and 20p stakes. The day machines went from 20p to 25p play is the day they lost a lot of casual players, 30p is absolutely laughable. "Hey, here's a good idea, let's introduce a price of play that demands that people play in £3 chunks or chuck 10p down the grid for every pound they put in one of our machines, that'll win them over!".

They've also ignored the fact that with a minimum payout guaranteed by law of just 72%, fruit machines represent quite the worst value for money of just about any form of gambling (for example, even the most amateur of players can achieve an overall payback of between 92% and 98% on casino games such as blackjack and roulette). As the years have gone by and profits have decreased, operators have actually *reduced* payout %ages in an effort to maintain their overall take, fleecing those players left even harder, and alienating casual players further.

So where are we now? There's a £25 jackpot just been introduced and a potential stake of 50p per game (although I refuse to believe that there's an operator in the land who would even consider charging someone 50p to watch 3 reels spin for a second). People do not want higher jackpots (they certainly don't want higher stakes), they want value for money and entertainment along with the chance to win a few quid. Of course, the one group of people who will play whatever the stake, jackpot or %age are the addicts, from whom fruit machines, now more than ever, make the vast majority of their money from.

The fundamental problem with higher jackpot machines is the speed with which they need to kill the player on the feature or hi/lo gamble before they offer more than they can afford, and the regularity with which they can offer the feature is also decreased. Take the old classic "Indiana Jones" (a JPM machine), this was originally released with a £6 jackpot, and the feature took the form of a long start to finish trail. Along the way were many imaginative features in addition to the usual cash, nudges and mystery squares. The machine could allow the player to enter the feature regularly, and to progress a good way around the trail without offering more than £3. (It also used an "Escape" on the mystery square to give £2 or so when near the end of the trail). On a full streak it would pay out £50 or more, this would take the form of constant features and wins over an extended period of time.

Indiana Jones was fairly typical of its era, high feature and win frequency, along with involving and entertaining gameplay, and the chance of getting "the big streak". Compare and contrast it with pretty much any modern pub machine. These will regularly take £5 to £10 before offering any win or feature board, and will think nothing of losing on good numbers, or killing the player quickly on the feature. Why? Because, by design, higher jackpot machines offer higher wins early on. If one trail begins at nothing and ends at £6, and if another trail starts at nothing and ends at £25 - short of making the trail four times longer (not a practical proposition) - the £25 trail machine is going to let you enter the trail much less often and/or inflict a much hastier death on the player.

This is the main reason why start to finish trail machines have now all but vanished, to be replaced by frustrating wraparound trails and depressingly nasty hi/lo climb features. These style of machines are plagued by the same problem, they need to kill quickly and regularly, or too high a win will be on offer. Going back to the comparison with Indiana Jones, modern machines will very rarely streak for more than £50, and it's generally all over with a jackpot and a couple of repeats.

In short, modern fruit machines will take a lot more money, much more quickly, give a far less involving gameplay experience and still not offer significantly improved profit potential than their stable mates did a few years ago. Tempted yet?

So where does MPU3/4 come into this equation? Like most addicts, fruit machine addicts (and the terrible hold that they can place on someone's life should not be underestimated) are looking for a compelling reason to quit. They realise the destructive nature of their illness, the negative impact it has upon their lives, and the lives of those around them - but that realisation is often insufficient motivation for them to break away from the cause of their misery.

MPU3/4 serves many useful purposes in this respect:

First and foremost, it lays out the workings a fruit machine for all to see. Playing a real machine at a single stretch with hundreds of pounds to spare and analysing every nuance and internal function is simply not possible. Now it is possible, and what people might have suspected all along is now made clear. Fruit machines cannot be beaten, "just another tenner" is never enough, the %age is immovable, the odds against the player are too great. Moreover, the way that fruit machines achieve their single goal of taking the players' money is insidious and exploitative. Near misses (known in the business as "heart stoppers") come up with suspicious regularity, just another nudge, just another move, just another gamble and the jackpot would have been yours..... Maybe next time, maybe if I play some more..... Hi/Lo gambles will lose on the best numbers when they need to, offering a tempting 2/3 or 10/11 on a pivotal gamble and then losing is commonplace. Features that give the minimum they have to (reel roulette and reel blasts spring immediately to mind), "skill" features that aren't, "random" awards that are fixed; name a dirty trick, and you can be sure that your average fruit machine has it in spades. MPU3/4's function here is clear, it debunks the myth, is unmasks the villain, now anyone can, and will, see what they're really up against - the clear, clinical realisation that the odds are insurmountable, separated for the first time from the emotional investment that the real machine demands, can be nothing short of a revelation.

Secondly, MPU3/4 allows you to play fruit machines for nothing. The truth of the matter is that for all their bad habits, fruit machines *are* fun to play, the basic structure of the games is simple and addictive, it's just a shame that it costs so much them to play them these days (hence the loss of many casual players). MPU3/4 separates out the fun from the financial commitment, it takes the entertainment and leaves the agony. Undoubtedly it's lacking the "kick" of the real thing, but when that kick can cost tens and hundreds of pounds, most people will be happy to leave it behind.

Thirdly, MPU3/4 allows you to play machines from years gone by, when they really were much better than they are today. The fundamentals (taking the players' money in any and every way possible) remain the same, but at least they had the decency to give you a bit of a run for it. Why spend £10 down the local to get on a feature that kills you in two spins when you can get much more for nothing sat in front of your PC at home?

Fourthly, and perhaps most significantly for the addicts, MPU3/4 offers enough of the real thing to sate the desire to play. It is the heroin addict's morphine, not quite the same as the real deal, but close enough to get through another day without giving in to the temptation.

So where does this leave us, and surely it's not a particularly good idea to post a piece of writing such as this on a fruit machine emulation site. Why not just post a message headed "Barcrest, I fart in your face" and be done with it?

Fruit machine manufacturers need to (and it pains me to steal a Tory slogan but here goes anyway) - "Get back to basics". I'm sure that, if challenged, Barcrest, or any other manufacturer would insist that they have no wish to make their profits from helpless addicts. Asked if they were happy with the fact that their balance book is made as healthy as it is by human misery, they would undoubtedly point to the fact that their machines are intended to be a form of entertainment for the masses. Of course, there may be some addicts, but they would encourage such people to seek professional help, they most certainly wouldn't like to think that their machines were taking a bankrupt's dole money again, or a single mother's pitiful wage, or a student's loan, or an old woman's pension.

The reality is that these are increasingly the sort of people on whom fruit machines rely to make money, in addition to a whole army of "average" people who are spending far more than they can reasonably afford feeding their addiction. As casual players continue to stop playing (known as "lapsed players"), it's left to the addicts to keep the money coming in. Seaside arcades have training camps for the next wave of victims, 5p play £5 jackpot machines introduce youngsters to the fruit machine fix, ready for the day that they can move into the bright lights and big jackpots of the "Adults only" area. Can you imagine a "Junior Betting Shop" opening up in your local high street?

The appeal of fruit machines to the casual player has all but disappeared, however, there's no good reason why it can't be restored. Rumblings within the industry suggest that video fruit machines are set to be the next big thing, historically, these have not found favour with players, but this has more to do with the fact that they have simply been video incarnations of their traditional reel-based counterparts than any fundamental lack of viability with the format itself. The "video screen fruit machine" (it even sounds quite snappy) offers a world of opportunity to get back the idea of entertainment first, profit second - it's only when this is achieved that the part-time players will come back on board. The novelty value alone would draw a wave of new and lapsed players into having a punt.

As one example, overlaid numbers on the reels, instead of an all or nothing "feature entry or not", could climb a long trail and offer regular feature drop-off points with a range of simple but enjoyable games on offer, similar to those found on the old Crystal Maze SWPs (Skill With Prizes). The higher up the trail you got, the better the games and higher the prizes, but the small stake player would always have the opportunity to get something back. A simple idea that could make the crossover from SWP to AWP (Amusement With Prizes) machines is a "take it now or risk it and carry on", therefore getting a couple of pounds back from a fiver would be easy, and sufficient to keep the "change from the round" brigade coming back for more, those who wish to play for more and knowingly risk their winnings (rather than never having been given the opportunity to get anything at all) could do so.

What is absolutely clear is that the model on which fruit machines are based has to change. It cannot be proper that an entire industry is dependent on the suffering of a relatively small number of miserable addicts for its very survival. Moreover, this immoral dependence is becoming more pronounced as time goes by, not less.

We can only hope that fruit machine manufacturers such as Barcrest have the desire, the ability, and the courage to wean themselves off the guaranteed cash flow from addicts' pockets into their bank accounts and move fruit machines forward to a time when they will become mainstream entertainment. It is true to say that all freedoms come with a price; alcohol, a bit of fun at the weekend for the majority, is a life-destroying curse for the few. A flutter on the horses, an occasional indulgence for the majority, is a consuming menace for the few.

The inequable reality of the fruit machine industry is that without the hard core of the few, it would not be sustained by the majority.

Some might see MPU3/4 as Barcrest's enemy, especially if it helps a number of that few break free from the pernicious hold of addiction. The truth is rather different, the fruit machine industry as it stands is destined for failure. People cannot be taken for a ride indefinitely, sooner or later they will come to terms with their addiction, as it cannot be sustained forever. MPU3/4 may bring that realisation about sooner rather than later, but with or without MPU3/4, it will come regardless.

MPU3/4 helps to highlight what is already no secret, the time for change is now. The question is, are the manufacturers ready and willing to face that challenge?

20th October 2001.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Latest reuploads, the James Bond video caused me all kinds of copyright issues including a hard ban for the jackpot sequence, so I had to replace that with some music from the YouTube music library.

The Rainbow Riches one is another amazing Barcrest fuck-up, this was a real thing on real machines out in the wild.

 

[k6kaysix]

Latest reuploads to the channel.

Just another smorgasbord of awfulness in the main, apart from The Crystal Maze SWPs, which were actually quite good and fair(ish).

My favourite part of trapping these was remembering 'EXTRA BOX EXTRA BOX EXTRA BOX' (or PHONE in the case of Live The Dream) rather than accidentally deciding to select ooh I don't know...EXTRA NOEL which may have happened once or twice

Also fair play to the poor intern at BFG who must have been forced to sit through and watch hours of Edmondo to nick soundbits and graphical theme ideas for the machines

 

[Jono777]

Another video which had me gutted, the Rainbow Riches were widespread locally and pretty sure they were "hot off the press" at the time so would have been unchipped.

Strange after all these years when I watch your and other videos, I always seemed to come across the more complicated emptiers and always missed out on the much simpler stuff.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Another video which had me gutted, the Rainbow Riches were widespread locally and pretty sure they were "hot off the press" at the time so would have been unchipped.

Strange after all these years when I watch your and other videos, I always seemed to come across the more complicated emptiers and always missed out on the much simpler stuff.

Unfortunately we never got any of the £35/£70 era Barcrests here on early chips, and there was some outrageous stuff on them. It was extra annoying because I had a guy in the UK who was giving me all the top-tier info, but every machine I tried was chipped! (IOM operators of fruit machines wised up in the £15/£25 era, and decided to let the UK be the beta-testing ground for machines, and then bring them over here once they were all chipped up.)

That said of course, a lot of stuff was still doable even on later chips, such as the P4 Aliens (there's a video on the channel about those), the 'Flickers', many DONDs, £70 Reds, the Betcoms and so on.

A guy I know managed to get hold of an Alien fruit machine running early P2 ROMs (we never had any on this chip over here), watch how the stupid thing keeps letting itself get trapped in the corner for £70.....

 

[dunover]

Unfortunately we never got any of the £35/£70 era Barcrests here on early chips, and there was some outrageous stuff on them. It was extra annoying because I had a guy in the UK who was giving me all the top-tier info, but every machine I tried was chipped! (IOM operators of fruit machines wised up in the £15/£25 era, and decided to let the UK be the beta-testing ground for machines, and then bring them over here once they were all chipped up.)

That said of course, a lot of stuff was still doable even on later chips, such as the P4 Aliens (there's a video on the channel about those), the 'Flickers', many DONDs, £70 Reds, the Betcoms and so on.

A guy I know managed to get hold of an Alien fruit machine running early P2 ROMs (we never had any on this chip over here), watch how the stupid thing keeps letting itself get trapped in the corner for £70.....

One of the most shocking and depressing videos ever on this thread. What kind of industry, what lack of checks and balances allows an 'amusement' with prizes machine to be able to be left in a state where the unsuspecting public could put 97 consecutive £1 coins in without a single win? Even Bonanza cannot manage that.

So let me get this right - you play £1 spins until a board is offered, refuse it and revert to 25p, box off the £70 jackpot and win it, revert to £1 spins and spend average £25 MORE than the £70 jackpot you just won to repeat the same again? WTF? I know he was proving a point, but my god this shows why these AWP's should have been banned 2 decades ago.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

One of the most shocking and depressing videos ever on this thread. What kind of industry, what lack of checks and balances allows an 'amusement' with prizes machine to be able to be left in a state where the unsuspecting public could put 97 consecutive £1 coins in without a single win? Even Bonanza cannot manage that.

So let me get this right - you play £1 spins until a board is offered, refuse it and revert to 25p, box off the £70 jackpot and win it, revert to £1 spins and spend average £25 MORE than the £70 jackpot you just won to repeat the same again? WTF? I know he was proving a point, but my god this shows why these AWP's should have been banned 2 decades ago.

Yeah Barcrest at this time were truly shocking, they never seemed to get on top of the £70 jackpot. (The fuck ups they made with the £35 > £70 upgrades were legendary.)

There was a whole thing on Alien with playing through £40 on £1 stake that did funny things to the code, this persisted through to the P4 chips which could still be done, albeit using a different method. (These are the ones I had over here, I've linked to my video on them below.)

In the end Barcrest basically gave up and put this 'overwatch' thing on their machines, which did a hard check on money in versus money out, and if the percentage was taken too far over target, they would go into a CRITICAL ALARM state which the machine could not be recovered from without direct intervention from Barcrest themselves. (There's a video I need to get reuploaded to the channel where I get one of their machines to do this in the emulator, it literally says CONTACT BARCREST on the display and refuses to do anything else.)

The entire history of compensated machines is awful, the regulators failed entirely to get on top of them, the manufacturers constantly put out machines that could be done by those with 'the knowledge', as a result of incompetence and/or corruption - and the price was paid by addicts up and down the UK (including myself....) who dared to presume that they might actually be getting a fair game.

 

[dunover]

Yeah Barcrest at this time were truly shocking, they never seemed to get on top of the £70 jackpot. (The fuck ups they made with the £35 > £70 upgrades were legendary.)

There was a whole thing on Alien with playing through £40 on £1 stake that did funny things to the code, this persisted through to the P4 chips which could still be done, albeit using a different method. (These are the ones I had over here, I've linked to my video on them below.)

In the end Barcrest basically gave up and put this 'overwatch' thing on their machines, which did a hard check on money in versus money out, and if the percentage was taken too far over target, they would go into a CRITICAL ALARM state which the machine could not be recovered from without direct intervention from Barcrest themselves. (There's a video I need to get reuploaded to the channel where I get one of their machines to do this in the emulator, it literally says CONTACT BARCREST on the display and refuses to do anything else.)

The entire history of compensated machines is awful, the regulators failed entirely to get on top of them, the manufacturers constantly put out machines that could be done by those with 'the knowledge', as a result of incompetence and/or corruption - and the price was paid by addicts up and down the UK (including myself....) who dared to presume that they might actually be getting a fair game.

Yes, I remember your 'panic alarm' video from ages ago. In fact, that in itself shows the degeneracy of the industry and failure of the product offered, the equivalent of the 'Blue Ring of Death' in AWP units. So little confidence in the programming that it was easier to incorporate a death mode in case someone won to much through a missed exploit. tut....

 

[Jono777]

Plugging the Cash Attack during the streak IIRC??

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Plugging the Cash Attack during the streak IIRC??

Aye that's the fella, I'll get the video reuploaded in due course, it was one of the last ones to go up on the old channel so I was intending to leave it towards the back end of the reuploading process.

 

[PMKFRUITPRO]

One of the most shocking and depressing videos ever on this thread. What kind of industry, what lack of checks and balances allows an 'amusement' with prizes machine to be able to be left in a state where the unsuspecting public could put 97 consecutive £1 coins in without a single win? Even Bonanza cannot manage that.

So let me get this right - you play £1 spins until a board is offered, refuse it and revert to 25p, box off the £70 jackpot and win it, revert to £1 spins and spend average £25 MORE than the £70 jackpot you just won to repeat the same again? WTF? I know he was proving a point, but my god this shows why these AWP's should have been banned 2 decades ago.

Obv most ‘players’ wouldn’t keep going round agsin. Was pretty much £8-£10 back on 25p to see if boarding. Was only when constantly done it would take £90+ to feature. Think I witnessed a £117 once.

Again you assume every AWP released was left in a state like this and therefore should of been banned ages ago which simply wasn’t the case.

Hundreds if not thousands were perfectly OK for casual players.

Of course doing 1000x stake on bonanza to see a dog shit feature is perfectly acceptable??

 

[pinnit2014]

Obv most ‘players’ wouldn’t keep going round agsin. Was pretty much £8-£10 back on 25p to see if boarding. Was only when constantly done it would take £90+ to feature. Think I witnessed a £117 once.

Again you assume every AWP released was left in a state like this and therefore should of been banned ages ago which simply wasn’t the case.

Hundreds if not thousands were perfectly OK for casual players.

Of course doing 1000x stake on bonanza to see a dog shit feature is perfectly acceptable??

I've never waited longer than 50x down to see a decent win on Bonanza

 

[Kroffe]

I've never waited longer than 50k down to see a decent win on Bonanza

Fixed.

 

[jasonuk]

they would go into a CRITICAL ALARM state which the machine could not be recovered from without direct intervention from Barcrest themselves.

HEY! Check it out! HEY! Check it out!

As they went through various owners - Bass PLC to IGT in 1998, IGT to SG in 2011 - and the volume of sales continued to fall as casual players increasingly shunned them, you can imagine the beancounters took a tighter grip on that situation given how often the machines needed to be chipped.

Purely from a design perspective, adding an "overwatch" mode is good because it introduces "defence in depth", the curiosity is inevitably going to be what took them so long to do it - because at the point they did, it very much felt like they were throwing in the towel.

You could understand that they didn't want machines to be out of action - especially with shiny new machines erroring out and requiring field support - but similarly when the errors are so severe that they're getting fleeced or emptied by players on the regular, at what point do they draw the line? As Chop says, neither the regulator or the developers got a proper handle on compensated machines.

If it was feasible to add such a feature in the £6+ days, you could envisage a scenario that they got a handle on the worst of it (and possibly made it prohibitively expensive for "professional players", which would have been half the battle) - but of course there's a very big question mark about genuine errors vs incompetence vs corruption... so even if the intention was there, there's no guarantee it would have been actioned!

Which leads me to one question - in the later eras there's a lot of talk about "getting through the blocks" and the machine paying out something it doesn't want to, was there any scenarios in the wild where the overwatch module didn't catch something it should have?

 

[PMKFRUITPRO]

*terms and Pinnits apply!!!

 

[PMKFRUITPRO]

HEY! Check it out! HEY! Check it out!

As they went through various owners - Bass PLC to IGT in 1998, IGT to SG in 2011 - and the volume of sales continued to fall as casual players increasingly shunned them, you can imagine the beancounters took a tighter grip on that situation given how often the machines needed to be chipped.

Purely from a design perspective, adding an "overwatch" mode is good because it introduces "defence in depth", the curiosity is inevitably going to be what took them so long to do it - because at the point they did, it very much felt like they were throwing in the towel.

You could understand that they didn't want machines to be out of action - especially with shiny new machines erroring out and requiring field support - but similarly when the errors are so severe that they're getting fleeced or emptied by players on the regular, at what point do they draw the line? As Chop says, neither the regulator or the developers got a proper handle on compensated machines.

If it was feasible to add such a feature in the £6+ days, you could envisage a scenario that they got a handle on the worst of it (and possibly made it prohibitively expensive for "professional players", which would have been half the battle) - but of course there's a very big question mark about genuine errors vs incompetence vs corruption... so even if the intention was there, there's no guarantee it would have been actioned!

Which leads me to one question - in the later eras there's a lot of talk about "getting through the blocks" and the machine paying out something it doesn't want to, was there any scenarios in the wild where the overwatch module didn't catch something it should have?

Only ‘some’ barcrest hi-tecs had it. Other manus and certainly crest lo-Tec games didn’t.

 

[jasonuk]

Only ‘some’ barcrest hi-tecs had it. Other manus and certainly crest lo-Tec games didn’t.

Apologies, I thought that had already been inferred earlier in the conversation - otherwise makes it more difficult to follow that I'm talking about both the barcrest hi-tech "overwatch" system and more generalised theoretical discussions!

I guess it'll be one of those "follow the leader" situations - if developer X introduced such a feature in the early days, and it made a visible positive impact to the cashbox, you would expect others to be copying it at the first opportunity (and perhaps exposed some of the alleged corruption going on).

I say early days because once the casual play dried up, developers would be reliant on that player playthrough to get through test and/or stay on site - which causes a vicious cycle.

 

[PMKFRUITPRO]

Well it may have been introduced earlier if indeed it was an issue. But in the ‘early days’ and I mean early days, way earlier than when £25-£70 jackpot Info spread like wild fire, there wasn’t the need to. It was just a select sensible lot that didn’t need to go over the top. Or couldn’t get round the country quick enough. It simply wasn’t a wide spread issue back in those days.

Later on, Bellfruit, Maygay, Project, CMS, SG, all had loads of games that could be fully exploited right up to £500 jackpots that never had such an alarm coded in.

I’m guessing probably because the site operators not the suppliers were the ones funding all the refills!!!

 

[dunover]

Obv most ‘players’ wouldn’t keep going round agsin. Was pretty much £8-£10 back on 25p to see if boarding. Was only when constantly done it would take £90+ to feature. Think I witnessed a £117 once.

Again you assume every AWP released was left in a state like this and therefore should of been banned ages ago which simply wasn’t the case.

Hundreds if not thousands were perfectly OK for casual players.

Of course doing 1000x stake on bonanza to see a dog shit feature is perfectly acceptable??

I don't assume anything, merely state the fact that once the small jackpots of say £4.80, £6 etc. were superseded the effect of compensation was magnified exponentially as the jackpots rose. I accept the video demonstrated the absolute extreme effect of compensation brought about by an exploit and resultant jackpot paid when not 'ready' but these AWP's lost any right to be called 'amusements' and transformed into hard core gambling pretty quick, over a decade or so.

The majority may have been OK for the casuals (if no emptier or exploit was present, or if it was nobody had 'done' the machine) because naturally, even after a streak there would have been some low wins available for the next player before the 'bar' was lifted. As @ChopleyIOM videos clearly show, when you got into £25+ territory they became horrendous for the casual player as their need to compensate was far greater than before on the lower jackpots. I mean, a £6 JP Eastenders say would be 20p a play, so after paying out the casual could still get £1-1.60 on the bar so make a few pence and have some spins. Nowadays at 50p or £1 a spin pro-rata the 'bar' after paying out is only a few times stake in comparison, with the stake being far higher.

I suppose in a roundabout way I am stating they went from amusements to pure evil very fast. I get it the player wouldn't go round again having stolen the £70 as you say, but regardless the poor fucker next on the game would be hammered absolutely - zero 'amusement' and zero chance of winning. They've had their day now, killed by greed and incompetent programming exploited by the few at the expense of the many - I suppose @ChopleyIOM would say "In the £6 era we had socialist AWP's and now we have extreme Tory ones..."

 

[PMKFRUITPRO]

Yes fair point about the amusement getting on the lighter side as the jackpots increased.

Won’t disagree that the true classics were indeed from the earlier era of tokens and low cash jackpots.

However when the likes of betcom and reflex for example attempted to cut out the jackpot shortcuts and make the games more flat profile so the casual could indeed get a fairer game it just didn’t really work at all. Mainly because everything was so controlled you were back to playing a £10/£25 jackpot unless you were prepared to force them out. Again something which a casual would never do.

Both pro players and casuals hated them.

I will reiterate again tho that many games from the £25 jackpot era onwards were not that bad at all from a casual player point of view. I can assure you this was the case as when ever I was waiting for a casual to finish on one that I knew was showing value they’d somehow recycle £10 for half an hour!!!!!

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Latest reuploads, the Big Bucks video is just me banging on about how great the machine is, The Italian Job 2 videos are about a horrible old Maygay that did have something on it but was absolute dogshit besides that, Part 2 starts to go into some of the details behind compensated machines and how the way Maygay did it may have even been illegal under the terms of the legislation at the time.

I'll reupload Part 3 tomorrow.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Finishing off The The Italian Job 2 series, and a little thing I genuinely worked out for myself back in about 1991. (I'd be the first to admit it's not very impressive, but it is something I cottoned onto.)

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Latest couple of reuploads, I suspect @Jono777 might have been into the ACE machines back in the day (at least one of their coders ended up in jail for deliberately coding dodgy shit into his machines), the other one is a £70 DOND machine that was (as usual) possible to completely smack the arse out of if you knew the tricks.

 

[Jono777]

Yes, was well into the Ace emptiers back in the day, somewhat spoilt by my naivety and inability to think "Tomorrow is another day"

Spending profits on booze and fags and 501's Jean, designer T-Shirts etc etc, you get the idea lol, hindsight eh as we made a small fortune from these, could have saved thousands, yes honestly thousands.

Did amass about 7-8 pint glasses full of £1 coins on my bedroom window sill, together with a mountain of tokens we used to use for beer and fags as well as bar snacks.

Never come across so many token mech jams though, few times left the machine 'flying' having not had chance to take a few regular wins to kill it off after we'd buzzed them up.

Did hear Chinese whispers of the prosecuted staff but never the full story, guess it is fraud after all?

I was ok on these, my mate must have studied the line set ups a bit too much as after 10-15 machines he could empty one and build up a £50 IOU in about 1/2 hour.

I'll stop now as I could talk about this empty trick and the associated stories and situations we ended up in for ages lol

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Yes, was well into the Ace emptiers back in the day, somewhat spoilt by my naivety and inability to think "Tomorrow is another day"

Spending profits on booze and fags and 501's Jean, designer T-Shirts etc etc, you get the idea lol, hindsight eh as we made a small fortune from these, could have saved thousands, yes honestly thousands.

Did amass about 7-8 pint glasses full of £1 coins on my bedroom window sill, together with a mountain of tokens we used to use for beer and fags as well as bar snacks.

Never come across so many token mech jams though, few times left the machine 'flying' having not had chance to take a few regular wins to kill it off after we'd buzzed them up.

Did hear Chinese whispers of the prosecuted staff but never the full story, guess it is fraud after all?

I was ok on these, my mate must have studied the line set ups a bit too much as after 10-15 machines he could empty one and build up a £50 IOU in about 1/2 hour.

I'll stop now as I could talk about this empty trick and the associated stories and situations we ended up in for ages lol

Crikey it must have been nuts to be doing them back in the day, I had no idea whatsoever, I just kind of assumed that these fruit machines that were all over the place would, at the very least, actually work properly Fuck me I used to take some kickings from these ACE 'lines' machines, and I learned many years later why that was!

I don't blame players for one second for taking advantage of what they knew and the information they had, the second I started to get some decent information in the £15 era I was smashing everything I could to pieces.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, good riddance to bad rubbish, compensated machines never worked properly, but fair play to those who managed to make bank out of them back in the day. I repaired a decent chunk of the damage in my 'clued up' phase, but overall I still lost a fuckton of money on UK AWPs, and they nearly killed me on more than one occasion.

 

[Jono777]

Crikey it must have been nuts to be doing them back in the day, I had no idea whatsoever, I just kind of assumed that these fruit machines that were all over the place would, at the very least, actually work properly Fuck me I used to take some kickings from these ACE 'lines' machines, and I learned many years later why that was!

I don't blame players for one second for taking advantage of what they knew and the information they had, the second I started to get some decent information in the £15 era I was smashing everything I could to pieces.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, good riddance to bad rubbish, compensated machines never worked properly, but fair play to those who managed to make bank out of them back in the day. I repaired a decent chunk of the damage in my 'clued up' phase, but overall I still lost a fuckton of money on UK AWPs, and they nearly killed me on more than one occasion.

Understood, I too occasionally had, lets say 'mixed feelings' along my AWP journey, thinking about it, I am pretty sure ACE was my first real exploit before the fllod gates opened.

Trouble was, fresh out of college & Uni, I did go through the addict phase so lost a good chunk of cash in "normal" machines, this being a big contributing factor into easing any guilty type feelings when I left a machine on its arse.

Also thought, If I don't "bash" it someone else most certainly will so why not.

The ACE were literally everywhere and we were almost always for a good 12 months in some sort of arcade, pub, nightclub or motorway services somewhere or another.

Re-chips did start to become more common but alas there were always more doable machines still about than ones to avoid.

Think they held about £100 as best I recall, with the £70/£80 £1 cash tube as well as the 20p tube. Taking the tokens as well ensured extra profit next visit.

Quick story among many lol, we were in Hilton Park services on the M6 about 1am the once and we just emptied an Open the Box and a Hi Flyer, what he was doing there at this hour I will never know, however an engineer turned up and refilled them straightaway.....

"I wouldn't do that just yet" said my mate "We'll just empty them again"

he replied "I'd like to see you try" (obviously thinking they'd maybe just done a huge streak and the compensation would now take effect

So we did!

Amazing to see a week or so later when we returned thinking "gone or rechipped" they were there still ripe as anything!

 

[k6kaysix]

Totally unrelated story here but before I got into fruit machines (or any gambling at all for that matter) during my college days I became weirdly hooked on those premium rate phone in TV quiz show things

Not in terms of ringing a £100 a second premium rate number 100 times, but because you could also enter via the web for free so I started doing so and found myself getting through to the studio quite often and winning £50 here, £200 there, by the end of it all (when they all got shut down for some more than shady practices basically!) I think I had built up around £20k if not more - back in those days it was a cheque in the post every time so I kept a folder of all the winning letters but sadly I lost it a few years ago

There was one particular Corrie themed show which had several 'pub quiz' style rounds to kick off every night which I did ring in for as there was no web entry (although it was a fair enough deal as it was a guaranteed 'go' at the entire pub quiz), but again I found myself winning far more often than I should have - not helped at all by a laptop next to the TV with Google open so I could quickly research the answers or anything like that of course

I was becoming so successful they even invited me to join them in the studio one night but sadly I couldn't make it, perhaps for the better as I was 17 when I first started entering so had to remember to knock my year of birth back a year every time I went through the winner phone operator process! (you would think they might have asked for proof of ID at some point...but they never did :/)

Here is a quick clip of it that I found but one of the more traditional 'list' games than the actual pub quiz bit



My best result was probably when I managed to get through on a web entry to the prime time ITV1 version (well, midnight!) of one of the shows, they usually stuck on one of the more impossible 'guess the number' games or whatever about an hour in but kicked off with some simple games to rope the callers in, all I had to do was unravel an anagram as simple as OSNICA...thank you very much £2000!

 

[mack341]

Simple I had to use an anagram site to solve that!

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Latest two reuploads, the one about random machines killing compensated machines was more of a prediction piece based on what I'd seen on the IOM, as the UK still had loads of compensated machines at the time, that prediction worked out pretty well as random machines do indeed now dominate in pubs and arcades in the UK.

The Overload emptier is a fascinating one, as an example of a compensated machine where the code was utterly and completely incapable of controlling its percentage, and indeed being infinitely emptiable, given enough time and enough money held by the machine, you could literally make a million quid out of it.

 

[Jono777]

Bit embarrassed to post, need some further explanation with the Overload emptier.....

Watched the video, paused, rewind, put nose on screen and I still don't fully get it.....

Getting the initial Barcode, entering 1-2-3, no problem, fully understand that part

It is what you do after that during the feature as the reels shuffle?, what do you look for and when it comes in view what do you press?

cheers

Ps: Does it work on the £5 converts lol

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Bit embarrassed to post, need some further explanation with the Overload emptier.....

Watched the video, paused, rewind, put nose on screen and I still don't fully get it.....

Getting the initial Barcode, entering 1-2-3, no problem, fully understand that part

It is what you do after that during the feature as the reels shuffle?, what do you look for and when it comes in view what do you press?

cheers

Ps: Does it work on the £5 converts lol

You basically press whatever button would make part of another barcode, so once you've put in the 1-2-3 barcode and are in the feature it's:

REEL 1 - Triple or single bar
REEL 2 - Double bar
REEL 3 - Triple or single bar

You just press whichever button you see one of those symbols on, and it awards a jackpot.

Here's a direct timestamped link to the bit in the video where I explain it:

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Sorry I've got behind a bit again.

Nothing wildly earth-shattering in this batch, the DOND Deal Wheel video was just an experiment to see if the player could beat the machine by cheating (spoiler alert, it compensates itself to fuck and you can't), the DMD series (three videos) covers a very interesting but also very brief period where Barcrest experimented with expensive DMD plasma screens in their fruit machines (it didn't last), The Great Escape & Clones video is another one where Maygay were absolute garbage and players could make out like bandits at the expense of everyone else, and finally today's reupload was trying to find out how much a £100 compensated AWP might want for a jackpot (turns out it's a lot).

 

[ChopleyIOM]

 

[Jono777]

Had to pause video and post, currently watching the Maygay Italian Job/ Great Escape method video......

Far from an expert as you know, especially when it comes to MFME, however I have my doubts over the ROM's you used in the video mate.

These machines were everywhere and I was "on them" everyday, making my beer and fags money lol - My point is that when the Red / Invincible boards came up, they ALWAYS started on one cash (£1), one Nudge (very rarely any win available) and the bottom feature.

Never did they add to the cash trail before you pressed start, in fact we never pressed start, just collected the £1 win and carried on.

Any ideas, I'll watch the rest of the video now but either way, the query has got me curious as I never saw a single machine we hit do this, ever!

Edit: Think I may have sussed it, if I am correct, then it is an eyesight problem rather than a ROM's problem, can't tell but if you have 3 white mini's to trigger the feature entry then this would add to the cash trail before starting the feature. If this turns out to be the case, then you would need to avoid entering the feature this way when it is invincible / red board ready and go for 3 mixed mini's (also avoiding red-white-blue) - Always collect just £1 without pressing start.

This wasn't a problem on The Great Escape IIRC as all feature symbols were the same and there were no "super starts" or none red invincible set ups as there is with Italian Job.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Latest couple of reuploads, the video titles pretty much explain what these are about really.

The £4 jackpot machines video has a little story at the end that had it panned out differently, could have ended me and Mrs Chopley's relationship before it had even properly got going, because that's what addiction does to you.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Had to pause video and post, currently watching the Maygay Italian Job/ Great Escape method video......

Far from an expert as you know, especially when it comes to MFME, however I have my doubts over the ROM's you used in the video mate.

These machines were everywhere and I was "on them" everyday, making my beer and fags money lol - My point is that when the Red / Invincible boards came up, they ALWAYS started on one cash (£1), one Nudge (very rarely any win available) and the bottom feature.

Never did they add to the cash trail before you pressed start, in fact we never pressed start, just collected the £1 win and carried on.

Any ideas, I'll watch the rest of the video now but either way, the query has got me curious as I never saw a single machine we hit do this, ever!

Edit: Think I may have sussed it, if I am correct, then it is an eyesight problem rather than a ROM's problem, can't tell but if you have 3 white mini's to trigger the feature entry then this would add to the cash trail before starting the feature. If this turns out to be the case, then you would need to avoid entering the feature this way when it is invincible / red board ready and go for 3 mixed mini's (also avoiding red-white-blue) - Always collect just £1 without pressing start.

This wasn't a problem on The Great Escape IIRC as all feature symbols were the same and there were no "super starts" or none red invincible set ups as there is with Italian Job.

TBH Jono I'm not overly qualified to comment, by the time I got the info on these we were well into the £15 era and these machines were becoming rarer and/or rechipped, I had a few round here but never an Italian Job from memory, I had Great Escapes and Simpsons.

Maygay were an absolute pile of wank from the £8 era onwards IMO, with their ridiculous block and 'pots' system, if you didn't know the tricks you were basically screwed.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Latest couple of reuploads, the 2p play machines video will only really resonate with anyone of a certain vintage (they were largely extinct by the mid 90s), but they are arguably about the closest compensated machines ever got to being truly AMUSEMENT With Prizes.

The Spellbound video is about a Skill With Prizes machine that could be genuinely emptied if you were really, REALLY good at it. I wouldn't have thought it possible myself but a member over at Desert Island Fruits used to empty them and explained how he did it. I needed to use a 'debug hack cheat' in the emulator to replicate it, and even then it was hard!