Slot Stories of Yesteryear

[vinylweatherman]

Cheers for the pic, couldn't find that any where, must be a bad googler

Gonna take a look at that emu-link later this thread got me wishing I had a Tardis.

Regarding your initial challenge not a clue, played it back 7-8 times and I can't even think of an answer that would be classed as even close!

1) Maygay's 'Screen Play' Find the Knight was one of the £1 or £1.20 'exchange points' and was very similar in play to (2) Find the Lady. For an AWP it was genuine skill and if you selected correctly it would award you as it should (no jumping or pretending you'd got it wrong)

2) Spot On! - As you say rare, I knew of 2 in Wolves, a local chippy and Eve's Nighclub.

3) Spot on again! - No emptier my end etc but a slot I was genuinely very lucky on (helped that I knew you could nudge up during XS feature and most of the other players didn't)

4) Yup! - The arrow symbol was the one I meant (apologies, not a very well worded question) The combination in your screen shot (I Think) is ready for a 'Hold the lot' and nudge up either the Bar or Hit the Six symbol for a JP?

PS: You gonna keep me hanging on VWM ???

Most definitely

However, here's another clue.

3 out of 4 isn't bad either. I vaguely remember that Maygay screen play shite, but not the features, so I had to try a bit of educated guesswork.

 

[Jono777]

Defo remember that!!! - But from where

 

[dunover]

Anyone remember these:

The one where you had to escape the cat on the trail (you were the mouse carrying the cheese wedge)? Bonzo the Bulldog would occasionally protect you for a go by stopping the cat. £4.80 JP

Frog Hopper (early 80's)?

Safe Cracker circa 1984 £4 JP (The 'Safecracker' feature was the one you wanted the flashing light to land on).

 

[vinylweatherman]

Defo remember that!!! - But from where

Another clue - it's easy

I'm sure they had one of these at almost every services.

 

[Jono777]

Anyone remember these:

The one where you had to escape the cat on the trail (you were the mouse carrying the cheese wedge)? Bonzo the Bulldog would occasionally protect you for a go by stopping the cat. £4.80 JP

Frog Hopper (early 80's)?

Safe Cracker circa 1984 £4 JP (The 'Safecracker' feature was the one you wanted the flashing light to land on).

I recall the cheese £4.80 slot, dunno the name tho.

The others I don't recall, may have gone my the time my 'gambling career' started around 1990.

 

[Jono777]

Another clue - it's easy

I'm sure they had one of these at almost every services.

Blumin useless I am

Was it 'Hot Rod' the Barcrest sister slot to Road Hog ?

 

[vinylweatherman]

Blumin useless I am

Was it 'Hot Rod' the Barcrest sister slot to Road Hog ?

Sadly no.

 

[Jono777]

time to sleep on it

 

[spintee]

I auto thought it was hot rod but than there's some foot steps that sounds like one of the versions of andycapp

 

[Mabby2000]

Think i remember the cat and mouse... What tech was it?

Remember electrocoin's labyrinth?
Then pyramid
Then Sphinx ! (I had a sphinx on 20p £8 cash) very popular in the arcade!
I can just about to remember another, Star Trek? Plays similar to above...
There was another with 5 reels with cards as fruits...
I could try my best to listen to see if I name the fruits! (I'm deaf mind lol!)

 

[vinylweatherman]

time to sleep on it

I will describe the action from that clip.

After spinning the reels, nudges are awarded. A win is then nudged in and exchanged for the feature, which is a blackjack based one (in this go) where the player has 3 hands and the dealer one. Provided the player wins at least one hand another set is dealt. When the player loses all 3 hands, the feature is over. Other features are possible, and once in the feature game it's possible to keep throwing a pair of dice to move around a feature selection board. There are 2 squares that will end your go, so you can't just keep going until you get the feature you like the most.

 

[Jd666]

I know it but its not my question lol.

Loving this thread, bringing back some memories.

Arcades are just full of Astras, reflexes, electrocoins and the video cabs nowadays, oh and that bloody Noel Edmonds, but a lot of arcades dont even have hi-tecs in any more.

 

[vinylweatherman]

I know it but its not my question lol.

Loving this thread, bringing back some memories.

Arcades are just full of Astras, reflexes, electrocoins and the video cabs nowadays, oh and that bloody Noel Edmonds, but a lot of arcades dont even have hi-tecs in any more.

I have noticed this trend. The £500 Jackpot is probably being used as the lure as these machines charge £1 or £2 a spin, whereas the hi-tec games are limited to £100 jackpot, take longer to play each go, and stakes range from 25p to £1. Better value for the players, but the units can't take in money as fast.

However, the compensated lo-tecs can and do drop the occasional exploit into the scene

The hi-tec scene seems to mostly consist of DOND variations, even though many are no longer themed on that show, it's still the same game underneath, and so can still be emptied if they screw up another ROM upgrade (here's hoping )

It seems the industry are targeting the games at a more basic level, and other than DOND, are not producing games for the seasoned players who are up for the intellectual challenge. It could of course be that their programmers are not up to the intellectual challenge of producing a game that the supplier can be confident won't be getting reamed as soon as it's on site

 

[Jono777]

I auto thought it was hot rod but than there's some foot steps that sounds like one of the versions of andycapp

Hmmm the mind boggles. It's the 'Im Rich, I am ...' that really rings a bell, together with the sound of the engine turning over. Still ain't got it and beginning to bug me just a little

 

[vinylweatherman]

Hmmm the mind boggles. It's the 'Im Rich, I am ...' that really rings a bell, together with the sound of the engine turning over. Still ain't got it and beginning to bug me just a little

I'll bug you some more with 2 further clues.

1) It was striking, ahead of it's time in a way, compared with the other machines surrounding it. One might sometimes think it was in the "wrong part" of a motorway services area until one got closer and realised it was a fruity. It had a legendary "massive token streak".

2)

 

[Mabby2000]

I'll bug you some more with 2 further clues.

1) It was striking, ahead of it's time in a way, compared with the other machines surrounding it. One might sometimes think it was in the "wrong part" of a motorway services area until one got closer and realised it was a fruity. It had a legendary "massive token streak".

2)

Bwb based... Reno reels?
Or mami dice...

 

[Jono777]

I'll bug you some more with 2 further clues.

1) It was striking, ahead of it's time in a way, compared with the other machines surrounding it. One might sometimes think it was in the "wrong part" of a motorway services area until one got closer and realised it was a fruity. It had a legendary "massive token streak".

2)

Geez How on earth didn't I get that - Its 'Monte Carlo or Bust' (slaps own face) I spend hours upon hours emptying them.
Features included, 21, Dice, BJ, Roulette, Horse Racing, 5 line Fruit Machine and some others, you could also get 'Super' features which paid much better than a 'normal' feature.

'That's a win' - 'and we have a winner'

The emptier was one of the easiest to do and even if you messed up it was quick to 'get going' again.

Basic refusal of the wins and the 'game on' (similar to 'watch for my hidden treasures' on Ace) would get it buzzing and then basically 'bad holding' such as holding one red 7 on the win line and one red 7 above when the machine 'wanted you' to hold the 2 mixed 7's on the line for a £1 win.

You could actually take the wins this way and the 'super nudges' made it easier once 'flying' as you could bring 2 or even all 3 reels down together.

The features would almost always be a 'super' which helped empty quicker and before the re-chip (which would still do it but cut off a lot quicker) the repeat chance on the £4 and £8 could actually repeat on 'bad cards' and go all the way to the 4th repeat.

They had 2 of these side by side in our main arcade which we had 'established ourselves' in (used to do lunch n fag runs for owners etc) and they seemed to allow us to benefit from these for weeks, even building up IOU'S when empty. (it was a very busy arcade with plenty of clueless players too so a lot of the time these would re-float themselves too)

We travelled miles in search of these and found loads, cannot believe I didn't get it from the 2nd clue onwards

 

[vinylweatherman]

Geez How on earth didn't I get that - Its 'Monte Carlo or Bust' (slaps own face) I spend hours upon hours emptying them.
Features included, 21, Dice, BJ, Roulette, Horse Racing, 5 line Fruit Machine and some others, you could also get 'Super' features which paid much better than a 'normal' feature.

'That's a win' - 'and we have a winner'

The emptier was one of the easiest to do and even if you messed up it was quick to 'get going' again.

Basic refusal of the wins and the 'game on' (similar to 'watch for my hidden treasures' on Ace) would get it buzzing and then basically 'bad holding' such as holding one red 7 on the win line and one red 7 above when the machine 'wanted you' to hold the 2 mixed 7's on the line for a £1 win.

You could actually take the wins this way and the 'super nudges' made it easier once 'flying' as you could bring 2 or even all 3 reels down together.

The features would almost always be a 'super' which helped empty quicker and before the re-chip (which would still do it but cut off a lot quicker) the repeat chance on the £4 and £8 could actually repeat on 'bad cards' and go all the way to the 4th repeat.

They had 2 of these side by side in our main arcade which we had 'established ourselves' in (used to do lunch n fag runs for owners etc) and they seemed to allow us to benefit from these for weeks, even building up IOU'S when empty. (it was a very busy arcade with plenty of clueless players too so a lot of the time these would re-float themselves too)

We travelled miles in search of these and found loads, cannot believe I didn't get it from the 2nd clue onwards

How can I be sure you got it without help, half an hour before the answer is more or less posted

I preferred this one over the others due to the sounds. I didn't know it was an emptier, but I was taking advantage of the "bad holds" and "super nudges" as part of my strategy, and did manage to empty a few of all their tokens.

 

[Jono777]

Here's a few teasers for today, will put answers in thread early evening ish...

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!!)



Re above,

That's the beauty. Yes it was one of the 'less challenging' emptier I came across, virtually no concentration needed

Also my fave too out of those 'set' of machines. They did 'upgrade' a couple of the later versions in our arcade to £10 cash but after 3-4 JP's at most the bad holds would no longer award the nudges.

 

[Jono777]

AWP's

Does anyone know of anywhere that maybe sells a selection of the older AWP's (such as the ones we've being discussing etc)

I would have thought these would be easy to find but nope. Found a few sites but there all £35 JP's and over the £100 mark to buy.

I'm after one of the following, Cash Force(BFM/£4.80 tokens), Hi-Point(BFM/4.80tokens), Lotta Luck (Barcrest £15 all cash JP) or the main one Up 'N' Over - Barcrest £15 All cash JP (Original Chip))

 

[spintee]

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

 

[dunover]

Here's a few teasers for today, will put answers in thread early evening ish...

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

Re above,

That's the beauty. Yes it was one of the 'less challenging' emptier I came across, virtually no concentration needed

Also my fave too out of those 'set' of machines. They did 'upgrade' a couple of the later versions in our arcade to £10 cash but after 3-4 JP's at most the bad holds would no longer award the nudges.

4 2 and queen or 2 jack and queen IIRC...

 

[vinylweatherman]

Does anyone know of anywhere that maybe sells a selection of the older AWP's (such as the ones we've being discussing etc)

I would have thought these would be easy to find but nope. Found a few sites but there all £35 JP's and over the £100 mark to buy.

I'm after one of the following, Cash Force(BFM/£4.80 tokens), Hi-Point(BFM/4.80tokens), Lotta Luck (Barcrest £15 all cash JP) or the main one Up 'N' Over - Barcrest £15 All cash JP (Original Chip))

"red tape" tends to drive private sales underground. eBay don't really like them being listed because they are gambling machines. However, sellers will convert them to "free play" in order to get around this, and buyers merely convert them back if so desired.

Now, strictly speaking, private owners need a "machine licence" to sell an old fruity, it's £25. This means that they tend to sell them to bigger vendors who have their own licences, and some specialist vendors will deal in older machines for the enthusiast market.

Apart from emulation, the various fruit machine forums do arrange peer to peer swaps of these older machines, and this is probably where they can be found.

There are a couple of "vintage arcades" offering these classics for play as they were, tokens and all.

It would appear that we have reached a time where those who used to play these in their misspent youth are becoming collectors, so the machines that remain are becoming "collector's items".

I have three from the 1980's, a Nudge Double up and 2 "melon meter" games from JPM. Only one will boot up and work now, the other two have developed faults and have been put into storage in my garage. Probably too niche (and heavy) for the average garage thief to bother with. I also have a "Hi Deal" electro-mechanical pinball machine, currently residing in the lounge.

Now, if I had more space...........

 

[Mabby2000]

"red tape" tends to drive private sales underground. eBay don't really like them being listed because they are gambling machines. However, sellers will convert them to "free play" in order to get around this, and buyers merely convert them back if so desired.

Now, strictly speaking, private owners need a "machine licence" to sell an old fruity, it's £25. This means that they tend to sell them to bigger vendors who have their own licences, and some specialist vendors will deal in older machines for the enthusiast market.

Apart from emulation, the various fruit machine forums do arrange peer to peer swaps of these older machines, and this is probably where they can be found.

There are a couple of "vintage arcades" offering these classics for play as they were, tokens and all.

It would appear that we have reached a time where those who used to play these in their misspent youth are becoming collectors, so the machines that remain are becoming "collector's items".

I have three from the 1980's, a Nudge Double up and 2 "melon meter" games from JPM. Only one will boot up and work now, the other two have developed faults and have been put into storage in my garage. Probably too niche (and heavy) for the average garage thief to bother with. I also have a "Hi Deal" electro-mechanical pinball machine, currently residing in the lounge.

Now, if I had more space...........

Could ask for technical help over on Mecca.

 

[Mabby2000]

Does anyone know of anywhere that maybe sells a selection of the older AWP's (such as the ones we've being discussing etc)

I would have thought these would be easy to find but nope. Found a few sites but there all £35 JP's and over the £100 mark to buy.

I'm after one of the following, Cash Force(BFM/£4.80 tokens), Hi-Point(BFM/4.80tokens), Lotta Luck (Barcrest £15 all cash JP) or the main one Up 'N' Over - Barcrest £15 All cash JP (Original Chip))

I have owned loads of fruits!
I have 2 in my shed, 1 is electrocoin's mk2 baby super bar x on 20p play £4.80 tokens and I have mab's £10 cash roms. Awesome on nudges for jackpot nearly every spin! Best streak I managed is £80 ish.
The other is jpm's casino crazy impact cab was on £15 roms. I sold off mpu, cards and psu.
Just the cab and reels!
I've been looking for party time plasma for a long time.
Seen one on eBay 4 player but 2 player worked for... £310!
I didn't have the space back then.
Another Bfm, force five £4.80 cor I would love to have it!
Nice selection of fruits... eBay is getting stupid with fruits, if there's one that you want, message the seller for a phone number in case eBay pulls the ad.

 

[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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[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.