CompostCORNER

Over a year since last post so sorry in advance.... I regularly boot up the Amiga emulator. Theres still some addictive games out there. Zeewolf for one, although graphically inferior to anythine even the 1st Playstation ran, gameplay was pretty top notch. I bought my first A500 based on a sound sample. My choices between the A500 or the Atari ST 520. The original game Lemmings, when the door in the ceiling opened, on the A500 a sample played 'Lets Go!'.... Nothing on the Atari 520. The irony, I bought the A500 because of a sound sample, but the Atari ST520 was used throughout the music industry for its sound capabilities.... I remember my days contributing stupid letters, Hot Topic stories and other experiences to the old Digitizer on ITV Teletext and C4 Teletext, earning myself a full 6 years of continuous subscription to Amiga Format (winning the star letter on the Hot Topic) many many times. Back then, the whole world blamed the demise of the Amiga on software privacy. But I remember picking up a few 'pirate' games of titles before the original game was even released. It was rumoured that the software houses themselves released 'unofficial' copies of their games, just like 'pirate' copies, pre-release for publicity. I think Amiga Format once mentioned in the dying months of the Amiga, for every full price purchased game, there were 40 pirated copies... Nothing will ever beat the Spectrum for piracy. A few versions of 'The Key' or 'Tape 2 Tape', then the Jet Set Will 2 bug where a few 'POKE's prior to loading, would allow the game to not only be fixed, but saved entirely onto a blank casette tape. That seriously upped my street cred at Hull Grammar School back in the early 1980s... lol, i'm still mentioned under 'BONES' on the Digitiser hommage site 'SuperPage58' http://www.superpage58.com/do-you-see-digitiser-a-to-z.htm Bring back the AMIGA!!!!!

Didn't ACE bring out a version of 'Play It Again' on System1? I seem to recall a 10p £4 Jackpot variant that even still had the REEL/BAND AID match on it. Shame Blue Chip didn't have the same REEL AID feature. You're right about Blue Chip though. They were everywhere. They were like the Campri ski jacket of the fruit machine world. You saw them everywhere. Infact, I was probably wearing my Campri ski jacket, in Hull city centre, middle of athe red hot summer playing Blue Chip down the old SUNSPOT arcade...

That looks awesome. Had to look twice to see which was the real deal.

Anyone come across one of these Famicom units? I think they are some sort of Chinese rip-off of the old Nintendo Family Computer. Like an original Japanese NES unit. They come with 2 reasonable joypads, plus a cartridge with hundreds of games on. Ironically, the bloody thing doesnt run with the cart in but runs fine with it removed. You need to have a TV capable of recieving RCA composite video (you know, those 3 jack connectors comprising of a yellow video jack and a red jack and white jack for audio). My SONY Bravia KD55 OLED UHD TV won't accept the video signal without a RCA to HDMI converter. My LG HDTV works fine provided you don't plug the cartridge in whilst the console is switched on. There must be some RAM on the Famicom unit as all the games on the cart are accessible on the console without the cart plugged in. I suspect that if you power up the unit with the cart in, the games are transferred to the console. But it seems you have to remove the cart to play the games. Theres plenty of original NES games on this unit, but the weird thing, theres Galaga, Space Invaders and other MAME games in the list leading me to believe theres some sort of MAME emulator on board. I'm pretty sure that this alone proves that this is some sort of Chinese rip-off. I bought 2 of em for christmas presents from Cash Converters in sunny Scunny (Scunthorpe) for £40 each. Pretty good value if I'm honest.

Thanks for the download. Hard to believe that Barcrest created this tech and only did like 3 games. That it appears in the emulator, time and effort to create by your good self, I'm certainly glad you took the time when it could have been deemed too much effort for so little return. (BFM Winfall on the cards? LOL). Gamewise, they are quite enjoyable. Feature exchange can be brutal. I did play for the 'reel aid/band' on this type of game. I'm having a bit of an MFME renaissance right now visiting games of the past.....

Thats fantastic pal. Thanks for that. Much appreciated. Early roms do have an enormous sentimental value for me. See back in Hull, in the late 1980's and well in to the mid 90's, there was a place called 'Sunspot'. At the time i just thought it was a run of the mill, high street amusement arcade but it held a sinister secret. All the machines in the arcade were on test from new. one of the lads working there said that they were subsidised in some way to cover any losses. Thing is, back then, i was on shitty YTS money. £27.30 was a weeks wage. My mum would take almost half of it for board and lodgings, which wasn't all that bad considering she made 'out of this world' Yorkshire puds from scratch, and even though I was pretty much grown up, i'd regularly get Birds Eye waffles, Bernard Matthews turkey twizzlers and proper HP baked beans for tea. Anyway, enough of that... So, I'd have about £15 left. Any night out with the lads had to involve a visit to Sunspot to hopefully boost the cash pot. I didn't always improve my financial situation but strangely, and this is something of a big deal for me where fruit machines are concerned, and may well have contributed to my addiction to the things back then, I'd have something like a 80% chance of winning some money. It was very rare I left the place with less money than I went in. Sure enought though, equally, there were machines that were awful and took your money. I stayed well clear of those. In Sunspot, they had a fruit machine based SWP called Hang Man, prize Space Invaders and the new ACE SpACE machines were in evident. Grand Prix was my new payday. Once I mastered the 'Nudge Quick' on those machines, I was in the money. Now from what I remember, Ace's Grand Prix must have had a free win for the Nudge Quick feature on early roms as I kid you not, no matter what win I took, providing it was from the Nudge Quick feature, the game just got happier and happier. Many many times I maxed the bank out at £50. I'd have to play the tokens on something else but my nights around Hull City Centre sometime around 1990 or so were paid for by Grand Prix. I never had time to try to empty the machine as my skint friends were nagging me to get off... Ironically, that machine was replaced after 6 months and I never did see it anywhere in the wild. Open the Box was the next time I saw anything like it.

I'll check it out pal. Not sure what the woman will say as her brand spanking new ipad already gets what she deems as 'weird' YouTUBE notification beeps from such things as BeardvFood, Mystic7's Pokemon channel and Sandwell Mobiles Scratchcard Sunday This YouTUBE stuff is gonna be my undoing....

Oh no... I've just stumbled on Choppers you tube channel. 'Oh no' as in i had a fully booked up weekend of appeasing the woman and doing stuff that looks like we both agreed to do, but was actually her idea and forced upon me where I said YES just to keep the peace. All that and I aint even married..... Anyway, checking out your channel, looks like I've a fair few videos to watch. I can't believe the 'Find the Pea' feature on ACE's Pay Rise was a free win... Did the scene ever have any success in finding many 1st revision roms for any games? And if so, where can i find them?

For those a lot younger than me..... Bet you've never seen Phil Collins dressed as a sunflower before ha ha. Oh, Pork and Windy..... there was a show in the very early 80's that was massive at the time with the late great Robin Williams called 'Mork and Mindy'.....

Hi De Hi... Hows this thread gone from usernames to Hi De Hi....? I'm gonna be looking around my files for that Hi De Hi layout posted earlier by Reg. ACE games were some of the most brutal but also sometimes entertaining games ever to hit the arcades... As for my username... the veterans of the scene will know where my name comes from as I'm sure we did this thread on Fruit Forums, then Poundrun and probably at Dads... CompostCORNER, my name, was from an ill-fated Muller yoghut based product that never saw the light of day. I'm still bitter to this day that you cannot tip soil into yoghurt for a delicious crunchy treat. The bastards!!!!! OK. so back in the early 80's, ITV used to have a show that rivalled Noel Edmonds SWAP SHOP (Jesus.... another ACE machine). TISWAS was its name.... TISWAS stood for Today Is Saturday Watch And Smile. A segment of the show would have Lenny Henry pretending to be Percy Thrower.... the old Blue Peter gardener.... or David Bellamy. Anyway, i had my own T-Shirts and .....