Boulderdash

Before they fucked around with the cashpots being permanently on jackpot, they were always a free win on Bell Fruits. This was a wonderful way to compensate a club machine - it would save up to pay the cashpot but winning it had no effect on how the machine played, so casuals could always play it and hope for some wins. Otherwise when you win a jackpot it's on its arse for days or weeks as no one wants to play. So if you play Club Attraction, for example, you can merrily gamble out both cashpots, collecting nothing until they drop, then take back 88% of what you put in (on average) by collecting all the cash trail exchanges as the thing will be off its tits.

So we've got Hellraiser and Hot stuff which probably came first, then Vamp it Up, Supernova, All Fired up, Shark Raving Mad, Space Raiders, Max Power and Flash Cash(no, I've never seen either of those). There may be more, it was a very popular trail entry method on barcrests for years. What about Yabba Dabba Darts?

It really depends on the machine, and what you want from your game. Similar to AWPs, the value of the features increases as you make your way up the ladder or around the trail. But equally, it's very rare that any of these features will pay anywhere near the jackpot amount - in fact the only time they will is when the machine is enough behind to pay a jackpot anyway. Because the jackpot is so large in relation to the stake, they don't pay it very often. And the more money you take from features, the longer it will take to save for a jackpot.

Can people point me towards the best bingo ball themed clubbers? I remember some from the late 80s and early 90s but can't think of the names

I no particular order, Space Invaders, Galaxian, Missile Command, Galaga, Centipede, OutRun, Mr Do, PacMan, Phoenix and Moon Cresta. I could play them all today and get just as much joy (and pain) out of them. I once won a holiday to Florida by playing PacMan on the HeartFM website

Awesome selection! Loving the screen burn on RoadBlasters!

Happy Birthday Chris. Gone but never forgotten.

Windows 7 was great, but you gotta let it go, sir! https://youtu.be/jeK7NQnulbM

Love that artwork! Did you make it yourself, or is there a company that sells reelband pictures?

Win stopper. Didn't know about the stake switch.

There's a full emptier for WIYB of course...

I don't think it's an actual song, but it's clearly inspired by Depeche Mode. https://youtu.be/aGSKrC7dGcY

Looks awesome. For some reason reminds me of this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjslu02SLdI

Just reading through all these comments again, still in shock months later. Someone mentioned a Wizard's Day, but I wondered if there's any interest in an annual Wizard's Meet Up to honour the great man - either a few beers somewhere or even a short break at Butlins or Center Parcs (which, out of school holidays is not too expensive)?

Been recapturing my youth this year playing lots of Barcrest clubbers from the late 80s and early 90s, such as Club Celebration, Club Pontoon and Super Blackjack Club. All these machines had a pretty clever feature (for 1988) called George which would play the machine in quite a realistic fashion. He's cautious - he'll collect all reel wins and only gamble up the trail until he got a middling number - but he seems to do better than me! For example, on Club Pontoon I was struggling to achieve much more than 80% on a machine set at 88% RTP. My playing style yesterday was to gamble recklessly up the trail to get to the double bar picker, which is a great £10 base to go x3, x3, x1.5 for a jackpot. Super Blackjack Club was much easier to gamble out as you could get £10 from nudges quite low down, which was my favourite base to start at. But even easier, because it wouldn't autocollect £10 reel wins and would also allow you to 'bank' the next hi-lo card, you could often have a guaranteed x12 stored. Quickly gambling out a jackpot was a good way to make money in golf clubs because the members were generally old and cautious, leaving some value to be extracted. But the emulator seems to be objecting. Overnight, George has spent £1,000 but got nearly £940 back from his simple playing style. So it seems there is a lot of value in these machines assigned to lower features that you have to collect. You can't play recklessly and expect the machine to throw a jackpot onto the reels to pick up its percentage. Anyone else have any thoughts about George?

Yeah, those era Empire machines were really slow, almost retarded. Doctors and nurses by Extreme was similar. Don't know if the code is related

Hi Reg Barcrest clubbers from the late 80s were really, really slow. I suppose it meant you got more play time for your money, but I had to set the autoplayer to 2000ms to stop Celebration Club alarming because the plays went over 110 with coins at 10% of cycles. Which machine are you working on?

Spoons used to have crap, old machines didn't they in the 90s? Now they have the latest jizzmatics, and the profit has never been higher.

Unlikely.

There was a lad who came into the city to do it called Dan. He was awesome - got jackpot every single time! Must have been the drugs!

What's in your box? I used to have headaches dreaming about stopping that silly dot as it flew around.

Surely the definition of emptier is simply you can take every coin from the machine, leaving it empty. Something you can manipulate to get a few jackpots is not an emptier (if it then stops you getting more out), although a low floated machine might run out of cash and 'go empty'. So 1. No 2. Yes, but if it's already empty, what's the point 3. Yes, but what's the difference between this and 2? Examples 1. Vamp it Up 2. Donkey Kong 3. ?