YouTube Emulation Extravaganza

[Reg]

37 minutes ago, Chopaholic said:

Working my way through the M1ab list

 

 

Now we have the return of @Retrofruit there is no better timing then this !

[vectra666]

Are we saying retro fruit is back in making layouts that'll be good

[Reg]

1 hour ago, vectra666 said:

Are we saying retro fruit is back in making layouts that'll be good

Well he's back around FME - the rest is up to him !

[Retrofruit]

6 hours ago, Chopaholic said:

Working my way through the M1ab list

 

 

Great video Choppers.

I'll post some personal thoughts on these machines if I may as time allows.

For this post Inferno - This is definitely the most brutal of the three machines you reviewed in terms of feature frequency and bad mood but certainly not the most brutal Maygay by any stretch - there are some real horrors like Instant Win where it can take £20 to land on anything. Inferno is also up there with the best Maygays of this era in terms of a large win dump. Big Money can indeed go big, £20+ when it wants from a single feature which at the time when you were on a £3/£6 win selector was very satisfying! Definitely not as satisfying as Super Jackpot from Mystery Guest on Noels House Party which was probably the biggest successive credit dump there was during the Maygay £6 era - JP + 5 repeats being my personal record for £36. I am sure others may have done even better.

The best way to Big Money is to high/low up the middle as there is probably only about a 5-10% chance of getting past the top corner naturally. When it's in a good mood you can high low up the middle practically every feature until the value is taken. I have high-low gambled all the way from Step to nearest win many times.

Also the gamble on reel wins doesn't cheat. The number appears predetermined and if you choose right it won't reverse it. So if it is behind percentage or in a bad mood you can second guess it and go higher on 11 for JP for example. My most ridiculous high low was going from cherries up to JP where I went higher than 9 on bells to 10, higher than 10 on single bars to double, and higher than 11 on double bars to JP. I don't know if it is predetermined on the high-low climb to Big Money as well, I could test this in a virtual machine with saved state but know from gameplay that the reel wins high-low is good.

I always take the cashpot if on £3. It doesn't appear to affect the value or feature frequency. If a JP is offered anywhere on the board I always take it because if I don't it's almost certain to bin me off.

I don't think this was around on 20p/£6 for long. Every machine I ever saw in the wild was on 5p play and even then I didn't see many at all. Interestingly this machine is one of the few times I have had a fruit machine confuse itself and get into an unresolvable programmatic state. The situation in question was a skill stop "matrix add" on a bonus where I only needed one extra fireball to fill the matrix. Unfortunately the machine decided that my bonus was two symbols to add to the matrix but after the first one couldn't see that the matrix was already full and tried to force the second symbol on me which was impossible. Cue the ringing matrix add sample playing indefinitely with the matrix full and no way to proceed. Called the arcade engineer over, all they could do was turn it off and on. Of course when it came back on, no feature. Quite annoying as I remember it took about £12 to get to that state on 5p play!

In terms of the layout for those with an interest in FME history this machine was originally completed from some flash burned photos of a 5p machine hence all the trail values had to be changed as they were incorrect. Think difference between a blue and red Pink Panther and you will get the idea. Each incorrect trail number was rebuilt from scratch using the original font (which I think was "Machine" as used on Gladiators) and colour gradient matched using either Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop, can't remember which. Now that I have told you that you can probably see a slight quality difference between the numbers on the trail and the rest of the trail. On later layouts if a small replacement or new decal had to be created I learned to use the "add grain" function which makes the object look less drawn and more natural scan/pic like.

In fact thinking about I *think* this was only my second ever DX and I had zero graphic experience when I started out so I was quite pleased with the outcome at the time - but clearly Wild Zone after five years practice was immeasurably better! Some horrors on this layout as well like the bent red bars on the Gladiators machine to the side - still we all started somewhere! What happened to the right hand machines in your video? Does the new emulator cut these off or did you trim yourself?

Nice you touched on the 1280 debate in the video. Going to 1280 was certainly controversial at the time but absolutely the right decision. 1024 was just too restricting and lacking in detail. Still it seems to be the right decision now given that many years later there are now 4K layouts being released!

[vectra666]

Sideart can be cut off from the right hand side, you could do this with the old mfme but this time you can save it.

Have you (retro fruits) had a dabble with the new mfme 5_6.1 if not I highly recommend you do as even  1280's are small now, I mean I used to be only able to do 1024's but now the emulator as a scaling feature it means I can make em as big as I like, I think the biggest I've made on my 17" laptop is around 2000 X 2000 pixels in size.

I hope you come back to layout creating as we could do with a nice Big pink panther and it was a shame you never finished Manhatten skylines, of which I made one, or do you??

[Retrofruit]

20 minutes ago, vectra666 said:

Sideart can be cut off from the right hand side, you could do this with the old mfme but this time you can save it.

Have you (retro fruits) had a dabble with the new mfme 5_6.1 if not I highly recommend you do as even  1280's are small now, I mean I used to be only able to do 1024's but now the emulator as a scaling feature it means I can make em as big as I like, I think the biggest I've made on my 17" laptop is around 2000 X 2000 pixels in size.

I hope you come back to layout creating as we could do with a nice Big pink panther and it was a shame you never finished Manhatten skylines, of which I made one, or do you??

Hello Vectra

I will be doing an assessment of what I do or do not have shortly as to be honest I just cannot remember, it is literally years since I touched anything. I remember that Manhattan Skylines was quite advanced development wise but whether that was a releasable state I don't know. Clearly if I do look at anything there is some familiarisation with new tools required and MS may be too small for current standards. I may also need some new hardware.

[fjustices]

One of the worst ones I can remember was putting in something like £50 for a board on Maygays double top I think it was called. Did that ever have a trick ? Surely it must have ! 
I've just done a video on cashlines btw..........
 

 

[Chopaholic]

14 hours ago, Retrofruit said:

Great video Choppers.

I'll post some personal thoughts on these machines if I may as time allows.

Thanks Retro really interesting post, great to hear your thoughts and memories of the machines

It was a shame I didn't get the Mystery Guest on Noel's House Party as it does tend to be where it goes bonkers, although I did directly reference this in its video. TBH all the videos are a trade-off between the amount of time I have to spend on them and what I want to get in them (which is mainly why Part Three of FME History hasn't been done yet, I just can't commit that much time to a single video at the moment), so compromises are necessarily made in terms of content.

I do make a point in all the M1adness videos of imploring people to dig these layouts out and play them again, because not only do the layouts still really hold up fantastically well today, but the gameplay on the machines themselves is absolutely timeless.

[Cavey]

Ah! Allow me to briefly chip in at this juncture, just to say it’s bloody good to see you again Retrofruit - legend mate.

[Retrofruit]

Part 2 - Wild Zone

Machine design:

To a historical player like me the overall design of a fruit machine didn't change much. Designers were constrained to a particular cabinet size, button location, trim etc and further constrained by the limitation of the technology platform. Anything out of the ordinary adds cost. It may need special interface design, moulded parts, logic etc.

Historically there have been machines where the designers seemed desperate to break out of that vanilla specification. Who could forget Barcrest Gamball with it's ball launchers, BGT who had a win repeater using a mini bagatelle in the top glass, Chase Invaders with it's dual purpose number reel and rapid switching lighting, the very first multiplayer machines, huge imposing Party Times with moulded plastic balloons, the list goes on.

Wildzone is Maygays contribution. A design where theme authenticity and attention to detail was paramount. It wasn't enough to just follow the usual scheme, print some graphics and add some buttons. There have been other pinball themed AWP's. A Maygay pinball themed machine needed an edge, something to standout and cross boundaries between AWP and pinball players. Of course as usual you can go mad on the sample package and fill it with authentic pinball sounds but the machine needs that visual hook that makes someone walking past do a double take and think "WTF?!" - so why not put some real pinball bumpers inside the machine? Better still let's have them inside a mirrored box and just for good measure let's have them light up as well. Then have them flash like they are being hit by a pinball whilst some authentic pinball bumper sounds play!

A personal doff of the cap to the design team. Outstanding work.

Gameplay:

The sound and vision experience is outstanding of course, so much so that (sad as it sounds) for several years I had an mp3 of the feature entry and board samples as my mobile ringtone! Now unfortunately although the gameplay is good it doesn't quite reach the same standards. There are a few reasons for this but primarily it's the excessive use of "TILT" on the feature which really starts to grate. Not surprising as there is no other way for the machine to bin you off without a win. It's not that difficult to overcome, just put a "LOST BALL" or something for a bit of variety! It is also far too difficult to get some things on the machine, such as 1,000,000 nudges. The fact this is 1,000,000 is of course a nice pinball touch and you could of course argue that it is as rare as obtaining the elusive 1,000,000 bonus on a pinball, so could well be designed that way, however it is also difficult to get to Shoot to Win which is a bog standard stopper also seen on a few other Maygay machines.

Thankfully the feature is reasonably frequent just a tad frustrating as it can be too difficult to get past the bottom left hand TILT.

It's not all negative of course. There are no obvious blocks on the machine and the Score meter is happy to exceed 300 regularly. Crazy Cash is a good achievement for the player particularly from a visual perspective although somewhat the £6 era equivalent of a Raging Rhino feature. Low win guaranteed with a rarer chance of hitting big. It is often a credit breaker if just a bit too obvious as it stutters slightly whilst it takes one so you already know if you are going to get another win or not.

Layout creation:

The difference between Wild Zone and the layouts that came before it is pretty obvious. First the lighting is more suited to the theme, the darker corner of the arcade where the pinballs usually are. Also my creation techniques had come on leaps and bounds since I started. There were a number of challenges at the time. First the emulator still only supported a red seven seg on a black background with the segments square. That was a big no-no for machines like this, 7 seg boards have the numbers tilted slightly and are all red. Thankfully Maygay drive the individual segments as lamps, therefore like EastEnders the 7 segs were lamped from a real large size 7 seg board that I scanned in, lit then shrunk down, with each individual segment cut out and a transparency applied around it. The effect is not always perfect and it took a long time to do but was always the chosen method given the alternative at the time.

The images were created by scanning machine glass. This was also a challenge given the targets in the top left and those pinball bumpers in the bottom right! As I mentioned in another post on here it requires a scanner that has a very decent light source that can cope with images beyond 1mm of the glass which rules out the majority of scanners you can buy now. It also required back lighting of the targets and rescanning in multiple positions.

Overall I was very happy with the result and consider it my best work from that era.

 

[Chopaholic]

DOND - The Deal Wheel

Just having a bit of fun with this one really.

 

[Chopaholic]

The Death of the Fruit Machine

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

I talk about the near-extinction of the traditional fruit machine on the Isle of Man.

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

 

Edited June 29, 2018 by Chopaholic

[fjustices]

I did a live stream last night which seemed to go ok. I'll be doing more soon so if anyone has any machines they want to see or questions to ask that's a good place for it. I'm going to do a video where you can comment your requests for the live stream to keep an eye out for that if you are interested.

[serene02]

Hey, Fjustices.   I enjoy your channel, always find old legal emptiers interesting ...    bit of an obscure one, but wonder if you could do Astra Classic Slots.  We have the version that can be emptied already running in emulation.   A mate of mine used to do them, not seen him in many years now but I think it was something to do with a setup for bars that was free.   Worth doing a vid even if you don't do the emptier as I'm sure someone will know the correct method.

J

[fjustices]

OK do you have a link to the ROM set at all ?

[serene02]

Not sure if I'm allowed to upload the layout, but it's available at dadsfme.  You might need to sign up to download it.

Here is a link to the layout, (as long as you are registered)

http://dadsfme.co.uk/index.php?topic=498.msg8038#msg8038

 

J

[wearecity]

On 29/06/2018 at 08:24, Chopaholic said:

The Death of the Fruit Machine

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

I talk about the near-extinction of the traditional fruit machine on the Isle of Man.

I think the Weatherspoons pubs will have a lot to do with when AWP's die out in pubs in the UK.

Nearly every Weatherspoons I go into, including the one I went into Saturday, have 2-5 machines, depending on the size of the pub.

The only difference I see, is that sometimes one of the AWP's has been replaced by a random (IIRC) £100 multi video slot unit. I did note however, in the 90 minutes we were in the pub, the only machine I saw being played, was the multi video slot.

[Chopaholic]

The randoms will do it IF they can get the stakes/prizes/percentages correct. The £500 jackpot was a big draw here, and percentages were on a very respectable 94% (they have crept down a bit over the years to 92% and 90% in some places, but a lot remain on 94%). Once AWPs went up to £1 play with a £70 jackpot, and the randoms were on £2 play with a £500 jackpot, and people understood that the AWPs were bent as fuck and the randoms were fair, that was basically it for the AWP.

I just wish we could have quiz machines and pinballs and stuff back.

[Reg]

+1 for the pinballs, by god yes.

I can't recall the last time I physically played a pinball in real life.

Future Pinball has some great tables but nothing beats the real thing - the feal, touch, sounds and vibrations.

[Chopaholic]

Surprise Surprize and Party TIme by BFM.

Sorry I didn't get chance to upload the RAM+GAM file before I set off, I'll do that this evening

 

 

[Retrofruit]

On 06/07/2018 at 08:00, Chopaholic said:

Surprise Surprize and Party TIme by BFM.

Sorry I didn't get chance to upload the RAM+GAM file before I set off, I'll do that this evening

 

 

Great stuff. One of the machines I was desperate to see again when I first got involved with FME.

My local Quicksilver had both of these, Surprise Surprize and Party Time. Surprise Surprize was the more foreboding machine for us. Speed of play (as you show in the video) was unreal and a real balance eater if caught wrong. The machine (at least in my memory) seemed bigger, darker and more menacing than Party Time.

What you are seeing on this video is the feature streak. Surprise Surprize had two types of streak, one feature and one Jackpot. Back in the day when being a fruit machine addict usually meant spending quite a few hours in the same arcade (sometimes playing sometimes watching, getting to know staff and fellow hopelessly addicted players, playing just about anything regardless of whether we hated it or not, consuming those hideous freeze dried cup tomato soups) we used to see 2 or 3 Jackpot streaks then a Feature Streak. Feature Streak would spin in a random feature every few spins, but sometimes up to £2 apart. Jackpot streak would do up to 6 JP's on successive credits.

They seemed to save separately and trigger when ready with a definite bias towards the JP streak (no doubt because it was tokens so better for the owner). However this did mean it was perfectly possible to trigger both in quick succession. Obviously if regularly forcing it (madness, but hey we were addicts) the more likely of the two was JP streak which of course was the machines USP and unlike anything we had ever seen before. The excitement/adrenaline the first time I got it was incredible! JP after JP, all in tokens, an age to payout. You felt like the King of the amusements whilst it took several minutes to thump out all the tokens with numerous jealous eyes watching you.

The Quicksilver was usually busy and you would see a JP streak every £60-100 or so depending on what wins had been collected and recycled (and how often it had forced a silver bells multiple repeat on you, as you see in this video). So the streaks would often be seen several times a day which caused some annoyance to the staff who had to keep refilling the tokens. Probably one reason for their demise.

Sometimes the feature streak would "show" it was ready as it got happier by spinning in a few random features sporadically for £10 or so before dropping the full streak. So if we had seen the tell and then got the JP streak we would stay on it and recycle the tokens, taking all cash wins with the feature streak. I don't remember the streak having to finish on a JP or anything like that, it would just stop spinning them in once exhausted.

Unfortunately much of the excitement of many AWP's from that era is lost on successive chips which start watering things down to placate pissed off operators who don't want to keep refilling the tokens. Streak values tumble, small wins get forced on you more often, little tricks like Hi on 12 or Lo on 1 get removed.

I have played a good few sessions on the emulator with this all cash ROM and have never had the same level of streaks that we used to see. Maybe some of that is addicts selective memory at play with the mind exaggerating the good times whilst burying the bad times - who knows.

Another great video Choppers, thanks!

Edited July 9, 2018 by Retrofruit

[mufcmufc]

On ‎03‎/‎07‎/‎2018 at 14:05, Reg said:

+1 for the pinballs, by god yes.

I can't recall the last time I physically played a pinball in real life.

Future Pinball has some great tables but nothing beats the real thing - the feal, touch, sounds and vibrations.

http://www.ukpinfest.com/

[Chopaholic]

Something a bit different this week.....

 

[fjustices]

AE - I signed up to get that ROM but never had my account approved, hmmm.

I'm hopefully going to do a live stream tonight if any of you crazy cats want to join me ?

I also wondered about possibly setting up some kind of google hangouts thing or whatever where we could actually chat voice wise in real time etc, could be cool possibly.

[serene02]

Check you PM fella

J