Slot Stories of Yesteryear

[Jono777]

Take a butchers on ebay, I knew a small warehouse in Northampton that was stocked up, Not been there in a good few years so who knows about that now,

Also a few years back I used to travel to a few old private pubs, That used to get there own in and sell there old old old one's Now most pubs have been bulldozed or they just do the 50/50 split with the company's but all new machines

That's the first place I looked mate, nowt like the ones I'm after tho

 

[Jono777]

I had 4 fruit machines but was years ago, sold them cos was living at parents at the time and they wanted their garage back

Hit the Top, Silver Shadow and 2 Club Machines - £100 JP.

During the school hols the garage would be overrun with kids of all ages as we also had an Atari ST and Amiga set up whilst the older kids played the fruits the younger one play on the computers.

We called it 'Aladdins Cave' - Had to close it down once I realised one or two of my 'friends' were helping themselves to my £1 coins after I'd been trustful enough to allow them to be played for 'free' providing the coins to put in.

In relation to the rules regarding Fruit machine sales I may not be 100% accurate but do vaguely recall signing some sort of disclaimer to say they were not for public use etc.

Now for the 'quiz questions...'

Will give handful who read this thread bit longer to answer 1-5, The Red Hot Poker marked cards left to right are '2' 'Q' 'K'

Would buzz if you saw a 'K' or '2' at the final gamble as the repeat chance always started off with the last card shown so with these you were at least guaranteed the first 'repeat'

 

[davos11]

I live at the seaside which had 2 or 3 fairly large arcades , When i was a kid they still had the all wins over £4 paid in tokens , Every so often machines would come along that would take the flatter older pennies as 20p tokens , I remember making some serious cash at the time being only about 13/14 years old , I remember Sonic the hedgehog lasting for about 6 weeks before it was taken away , It paid for all my weekends up til then ,

I also remember the most ridiculous emptier for 'The Royle Family' £15/£25 jackpot machine ever , My only problem was getting chucked out the over 18s area before i could get enough out of it , This probabaly worked in my favour as again it was kept in for a good long while before they noticed something fishy was going on haha

Anyone else remember refill keys , At best gave a slight advantage in knowing if the machine had won or lost of the last customer and to what value , And for of course putting the volume up to full blast on certain machines to annoy the security / staff !

 

[spintee]

I live at the seaside which had 2 or 3 fairly large arcades , When i was a kid they still had the all wins over £4 paid in tokens , Every so often machines would come along that would take the flatter older pennies as 20p tokens , I remember making some serious cash at the time being only about 13/14 years old , I remember Sonic the hedgehog lasting for about 6 weeks before it was taken away , It paid for all my weekends up til then ,

I also remember the most ridiculous emptier for 'The Royle Family' £15/£25 jackpot machine ever , My only problem was getting chucked out the over 18s area before i could get enough out of it , This probabaly worked in my favour as again it was kept in for a good long while before they noticed something fishy was going on haha

Anyone else remember refill keys , At best gave a slight advantage in knowing if the machine had won or lost of the last customer and to what value , And for of course putting the volume up to full blast on certain machines to annoy the security / staff !

I keep a refill key on my key bunch, Always handy just in case some ones walked of with £50 b4 you start chucking your money in it?

 

[Jono777]

Yep I had a refill key too, although didn't rely on it much, used it occasionally when 'visiting' a Lotta Luck or a Thunderbirds, save buying a round of drinks if it wasn't full enough

My mate actually used one for its proper purpose! - Emptied a Thunderbirds in Telford and it went on a mad repeating spree so he turned key and pumped a few quid back in just to make sure they didn't swap machine etc.

Did do the volume thing a good few times tho after a losing (or rather playing machines where I should know better) day!

Bit miffed about the Royle Family emptier wasn't even aware of that one, although I couldn't name one place where I recall seeing it

edit to add: Just gone through 15 pages on EBAY and GOOGLE and nowt, really want a Barcrest Up 'n' Over

 

[Jono777]

1) 'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, you're going down in round 3' - Which slot's JP music and how did you know it was 'ready' or not from just one or two feature boards?

2) How did you know from the 'triggering credit' that Maygay's 'Search Light' streak had started?

3) Which BFM machine had an exert from Shirley Bassey's 'Goldfinger' as the JP tune?

4) 'The Six dog is in the lead' - Which JPM machine. Not an emptier but how could you also 'force' a few extra wins by avoiding 'normal' play?

5) Re: BFM's 'Cash Force' - The reel match feature, how could you know 100% that the first reel would come to land/award the match attempt on either the melon(£2) or bell(£1.60)

6) Can you name these 'marked cards' from BWB's 'Red Hot Poker' (loved the streak on that machine!!)

View attachment 54972

Well either no one's interested, not sure or I took my fruit machines a bit too seriously - Here's the answers anyway

1) Fight Night (Maygay) - 'Cash ladder' would not go over £2.00 if dead, If feature started on £2.40 the Barcode would pay the Jackpot(s)

2) Once it offered the skill nudge 1-2-3 in order (stop when 3 lit) it would streak to around £40 mixture of tokens and cash.

3) Hi - Point (mis-matched golden bell on centre reel offered reel match feature, silver bells (£2.40) could repeat loads)

4) JPM's 'Hot Dog's' - mix and match the holds, swapping to the matching pair on 3rd or 4th hold it would drop the 3OAK

5) If either of those symbols were already there before collecting the feature, leaving the fast spinning reel one to 'stop itself' would return original symbol (did not work on £2.40 or Big Money symbols)

6) Deuce, Queen, King
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[vinylweatherman]

Maybe the time has come for a "Classic fruit machine owners' association" to be born. I expect we are half way there already, but it's split between a number of different forums where owning the machines is incidental to the main purpose of the forum.

There has been a "Pinball Owners' Association" for some while (I'm in it, so I should know). I was first told about it by the machine engineer that kept our student union games working. This was back in 1979-1982. Buying and selling of pinball machines took place via ads in the magazine. There was also a penny-slot association for the VERY old vintage "penny slots". It's only now that we are viewing the machines from the late 1980's through to the change of policy where stakes and jackpots were allowed to increase markedly as "true classics" worthy of collecting.

If I had more space, I would have quite a few by now.

If I won something really big like Mega Moolah I would be able to buy somewhere large enough to both live in and keep a collection of machines, plus a decent motor home for checking out the newer ones. Maybe a holiday home in Las Vegas

We already have this "Mr P's", a classic fruit machine arcade/museum in Kent. I only found out about this recently. I already knew about the "penny slot" museum in Brighton.

 

[Jono777]

Good idea!

Same reason as your good self, I neither have the space nor that sort of 'spare cash' to be able to even think about making a start.

Always had a desire to open my own arcade and watch everyone pouring their cash into MY slots but how 'dead' the 2 I occasionally still visit are, think I'll hold off

Based on your idea of a classic fruit machine collector's 'set up' - This could be operated on a small scale and although the following idea may sound arduous, it could work.

Maybe members could 'own' a machine for say 6 months and then 'swap' it (no cash involved) with another member, enough members this could work??

I am going to my local Quicksilver this morning and although probably wasting my time, going to make enquiries as to what happened to obsolete machines, they got to be somewhere and can't ALL be on piers or in Blackpool surely?

 

[vinylweatherman]

Well either no one's interested, not sure or I took my fruit machines a bit too seriously - Here's the answers anyway

1) Fight Night (Maygay) - 'Cash ladder' would not go over £2.00 if dead, If feature started on £2.40 the Barcode would pay the Jackpot(s)

2) Once it offered the skill nudge 1-2-3 in order (stop when 3 lit) it would streak to around £40 mixture of tokens and cash.

3) Hi - Point (mis-matched golden bell on centre reel offered reel match feature, silver bells (£2.40) could repeat loads)

4) JPM's 'Hot Dog's' - mix and match the holds, swapping to the matching pair on 3rd or 4th hold it would drop the 3OAK

5) If either of those symbols were already there before collecting the feature, leaving the fast spinning reel one to 'stop itself' would return original symbol (did not work on £2.40 or Big Money symbols)

6) Deuce, Queen, King
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I got a couple of those, but by no means all. I played different machines, so didn't always manage to figure these out.

I remember 5) working on the old BFM 10p and £4 machines, and again only on the lower wins, not the big money.

I didn't play Fight Night that much. Hot Dogs was good, but pretty rare. I think I only ever found a couple.

I also spotted a few other things. The BFM skill climb machines would allow entry to the feature off a 6 on the ladder if there was a 1 on the reels. It would hold, even though the holds didn't light up.

Some Barcrest machines would indicate that the streak was close by suddenly starting to kill you on good numbers, something they rarely did otherwise. If I saw someone lose a gamble or two from a 10,11,12 or 1,2,3 I would be straight on it. Machines like Luxor, Crystal Maze, etc all had this tell. At other times, they would give you a bad number at the block, which you would usually lose on. During a streak however, you would win every reasonable gamble simply by going with the best displayed odds, even on bad numbers.

Knowing that you were in the core of a streak was useful, you could adapt play so as to go after the streak pot in cash, rather than tokens.

 

[Mabby2000]

Maybe the time has come for a "Classic fruit machine owners' association" to be born. I expect we are half way there already, but it's split between a number of different forums where owning the machines is incidental to the main purpose of the forum.

There has been a "Pinball Owners' Association" for some while (I'm in it, so I should know). I was first told about it by the machine engineer that kept our student union games working. This was back in 1979-1982. Buying and selling of pinball machines took place via ads in the magazine. There was also a penny-slot association for the VERY old vintage "penny slots". It's only now that we are viewing the machines from the late 1980's through to the change of policy where stakes and jackpots were allowed to increase markedly as "true classics" worthy of collecting.

If I had more space, I would have quite a few by now.

If I won something really big like Mega Moolah I would be able to buy somewhere large enough to both live in and keep a collection of machines, plus a decent motor home for checking out the newer ones. Maybe a holiday home in Las Vegas

We already have this "Mr P's", a classic fruit machine arcade/museum in Kent. I only found out about this recently. I already knew about the "penny slot" museum in Brighton.

Yes Mr p was in grave send, (moving to new location) he also has reelfruits with over 140 classic fruit machines and loads more in storage!
I would start up an arcade again... But not yet!

 

[Jono777]

Hmmmm.... Casinomeisters - 'Members Retro Fruits'.....na, needs work

 

[randomiam]

the day i beat the jackpot raiders with a 15 cent spin

It was a quiet night at my local sitting there on a classic aristocrat machine watching the reels turn endlessly on 15 cent spins trying to get the freaking feature.
Being quite merry after a few Bourbons also a tad grumpy as i was on my last 20 .was quiet chilled relaxed the way i like it .
Then after a short time i see a large group come in .They had many nicknames they where the jackpot raiders they way it worked is when the jackpot is set to go off at a certain amount they come in and take up every machine with a few on big bets trying to get it to pay the jackpot to there machine.
I had not noticed it was so high as soon as they walked in i looked it was about $100 of its pay by level. i thought oh well i wont get it on my bets. Every machine filled anything linked to the jackpot was taken and i was being slightly hassled by two people behind me bumping my chair standing over me nothing to big that would get them kicked out of the venue. the buttons started to mash around me this jackpot was being pushed to pay and im still sitting there with a strong determination to get this feature on my 15 cent bets not even full lines on the machine pompai was the machine .
all of a sudden my machine wont spin im like fu$k it broken now ill never complete my mission to get this feature.
I look around and there a large group off pissed off jackpot raiders looking at me i had won the 5000 aud and they had lost out and where all lined up at the window to cash in the tickets.they had been beaten a few times buy locals over the years all big betters never a 15 cent drunk
i took my 3k check and my 2k in cash and i played on called a few mates down shared the wealth .Decided to get a cab home the whole 2 streets just in case.

 

[mlover22]

Back when US Players could play at Micro Gaming Casinos, I had made a deposit(I think $75) at Casino Share and played it down to .27 cents and quit. About a week later, logged in and decided to spin the .27 cents before making a deposit. Wagered 3 coins on the 9 line game Spring Break and got 5 of a kind of the symbol I cannot remember, which gave me about $200. I immediately raised my bet to 2.70 per spin, and got the bonus round on the very next spin...wouldn't you know it after the free spin feature was over, I had over $1100! Played for a couple of hours and cashed out $2000.