Boulderdash

Anyone who has ever been in a club or on a ferry has seen this machine. Probably the most popular clubber of all time in terms of locations, which is why it's arousing so much interest. The pot definitely isn't a free win on this rom. As I said elsewhere, it's a shame as I always thought this was an excellent way to compensate a club machine. If the pot is just a jackpot, you either have to pump it to get money back, or get very lucky, but either way it's on its arse for days when it's paid out. With a free cashpot you can win the jackpot but the machine still plays friendly for casuals who then fill it quicker. Ed.

Awesome memories. I am no pro, but it was just common sense to streak the ace machines on actual wins before leaving it with a few quid in so that people would play it and fill it. If there were two machines side-by-side and one wasn't an Ace I'd switch that off so the Ace got all the play. But as you say a lot of 'players' at that time were just pikeys on the rob rather than professionals making a living. Manipulations are far better than plugging or tooling, because no-one can ever accuse you of doing anything illegal. As far as you are concerned you are just pressing the buttons on the front and are getting lucky. I didn't get barred from a single pub for emptying on lines or spot the ball - in fact my only barring was a gentle 'don't come back' after collecting the money for a Donkey Kong I left with a £50 IOU, but that was because the manager had also sussed it and was taking money out at night. I don't think I ever saw a Surprise Surprize. I remember Flashback and Barcode from about that era, but I really don't recall ever seeing a BFM with winlines like the Ace ones. Presumably the developer that left that particular hole in the program was inspired by the Ace chap that went to jail! Pretty impressive to play them side by side. I could barely do it with two hands on one machine!

If it was London they were probably bumders trying to strike up a conversation in the hope of some quick action.

Sounds a bit like me. A couple turned up in Keele student Union looking for Ace machines. I watched them for a while as they were being fairly obvious about exchanging everything for the lines. Paid them £40 for the list of emptier programmes and we teamed up for a while as I had a car, but they were pretty pikey and we didn't really get on! After then I had limited success with stuff like Donkey Kong, Bling King Crazy and DOND WIYB but basically focused on my actual job(s). It all got too competitive, and when the machines got hooked up to the internet most manipulations didn't last more than a few weeks, unlike the Ace thing that was live for well over a year.

Almost all £4.80 machines had tubes, not hoppers, so would not likely hold much more than £85 in my experience

Barcrest had the full volume "hey, check it out" sound when it thought it was being strimmed or plugged. Frightened the shit out of me! Bell Fruit would alarm if you switched them in and off too fast as well.

I think plugging it is veering into criminality, although it's not your fault the code is bad. Lines and spot the ball were just 'methods' that happened to not be counted lol

Made a lot of money from the lines and latterly spot the ball, but didn't know about this one. Did it work for all ace coin machines at the time? Presumably a lot of the code was shared. There's no way I could have got away with plugging it so regularly in most pubs. Either the locals or the bar staff would ask questions. I'm not sure, without an accomplice sat next to the plug who can see the reels, it's even possible to do unless you fitted a circuit breaker...