GeorgeJG
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Posts posted by GeorgeJG
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Well in direct answer to the thread title, me and me.
Once fixed odds betting terminals appeared on the high streets, in abundance, that was the most pertinent death knell. It has been a long and painful journey. The patient is not even dead yet, just terminally ill.
Quality of AWP output declined as the market shrunk and budgets to make AWPs similarly shrunk.
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This whole social media malarkey gives away too much personal information doesn't it
If I get questioned as to stupidly early hours WhatsApp activity, I was merely getting up to use the toilet and briefly checked my phone. Hmmmm. No they don't believe it either!
I have drastically reduced the time I spend watching videos about gambling (for various reasons), so I'm very late to the thread having promised myself a Chopley binge at some point in the future. Alas now, that will never happen, such is life.
I totally respect the decision to hard delete and can relate to the work, hobby stream crossing dilemma. A channel borne of passion and carried on as such, rather than one with ulterior business motives is a rare find in the world of gambling videos and is a point of merit in my book. So long and thanks for all the nostalgia.
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Yes for sure, if it was rejected somehow a very simplistic way would be to put the residual value into the base game for example and yes on a less soft platform such as £100 communities it'd have to be a harder save for the jp rep, agreed.
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On 12/05/2021 at 21:50, Chopaholic said:
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IMO the core of the problem is compensation, it's just never really been done properly, and indeed one could argue it can't be done 'properly', to my mind the only fair machine is a random machine.
I was reading this quickly and about to suggest Dulcolax or Senna
However an idea I have had which never seems to have been implemented into compensated profiles is as follows.
Let's simplify. Imagine I have a game I want to set to run at 80%, a compensated game. I'm saving 10% to the streak pot and 70% to the base game. The base game is reasonably soft and inoffensive, but not too boring. Let's say it's a £100 jackpot streak and it wants to offer up the 'free' £200 from the streak pot every so often. Basic maths that will be seeded every £2000 cycled then. However why not randomly and genuinely randomly seed it from £0 cycled to £4000 cycled? It's the same thing yet means the hybrid compensated/random game can never be killed with certainty as a streak/freebie jp rep can always be just around the corner.
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No worries, it was a fairly recent release iirc, easy to miss when they get swamped with other stuff.
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Drac Pack should also be the same as a p1 wiyb
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Anyone know the absolute top whack streak combo? You'd think in theory as it can hold several times it could go for over £300 but they always felt once you got over the £170ish point that any hold from that point was not going to be a big one.
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Good to see in action. One of those things I heard about all too late when the only remaining location was a fiery pub in Loughborough where the landlord threw a snooker ball through the car window of the umpteenth player who had called by to try the empty!
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Super rare is Pure Madness on the £100 'Novomatic' flat front cab. I think you can even get it on i-bet/i-serve etc, maybe only on the hacked menu though. I quite like Pure Madness as a game and it can streak big, the rest of the Empire Wow from that era are a bit weak in my opinion, pig money etc
Analogue Madness in a near by Mecca is on ticket in/ticket out but that is a very rare set up, as rare as seeing one on a digital Astra/Novo cab. The big streak can even empty a £350 hopper at times!
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Clockwork Orange Free spins with the clock middle symbol and usual clockwork orange symbols 3*3 way for feature entry? There are two programs afaik, one that saves up the numbers from the middle clock symbol like an earlier machine, Pure Madness and the other one doesn't, it just dapples the numbers on a feature entry with symbol clock symbol on win line. I would think 10p stake is just a setting on the stakes/prizes key.
£1,000 sounds seriously steep. That game bombed in terms of cash box performance compared to any other incarnation of clockwork oranges. You're right the WOW cabinets are built cheaply comparted to some techs. The marketing was always geared toward a budget value purchase for an AGC rather than something that would go head to head with the latest games.
Afaik there's no empty for the software itself but the red note recycler if of a certain type was vulnerable to an illegal exploit which possibly explains the £1 stake comment or merely the fact that the hopper was only £250 not £350 and on arcade settings they do streak well eventually. If that's the case then typical arcade owner blind to the fact that Flo might be putting in £500+ for the streak and seething when she wins over £250 on the eventual streak. Could you trust that sort of character to give you a fair price for second hand goods?
It depends how much you like the game but I'd say £150 tops for that tech/genre. They are prone to reel alignment errors, plus door and note acceptor security issues.
Digital cabs versus mechanical? Pros and cons. Digital looks more modern, more player appeal but when it does go wrong it generally requires a different skill set to correct as a pose to mechanical. Digital generally more reliable as less moving parts but of course build quality be it a PC or set of analogue reels counts for a lot. I can't see Novomatic etc ever revisiting the Empire back catalogue much as it's an appealing idea to most on this forum. There's no way that the euro friendly high cash box earning powerhouses of Admiral and Cashino Gaming venues on the high street would every go for that. Even a lo tech Cash in the Box would mean nothing versus a Lucky Jewels or Chip Runner Hot Deluxe Magic.
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Fair enough, I wasn't thinking straight, plenty of games that could be mullered and even the pluggers as Alex says would be mullered by someone who knew what they were doing to leave it relatively dead.
That said roll on to 2007 and you had people doing the 4 reel purple cab deals leaving silly value in the main feature pot after ripping the end box pot mercilessly. Party Time over a decade earlier, no Internet, less players but still sounds like you had the usual idiots ruining things. Before my time as a more serious player, I can remember similar machines of the era, Spectre, Barcode, Streets Ahead etc one for the download list.
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Logopolis - I once asked a publican that very question and his reply was that a pub was for people to socialise and hopefully enjoy one another's company. Things such as darts or a pool table for example where just diversions to hopefully bring people together in a non violent manner!
He was always disappointed when people ordered a coke (unless designated driver) instead of a 'proper drink' and equated it into going to the best curry house in town and ordering a portion of chips. However he did concede the mark up was better and no messing about with barrels in a cellar!
Note that this was back in the early 2000s when gentrification was of a lesser magnitude than today and pub's were slightly more traditional. Nowadays we all now it's compulsory to wear a mask, not touch any dirty fruit machines (if indeed there are any) and order a super green smoothie with five bean salad accompanied perhaps by a designer guest ale from a micro brewery.
Alex - a lot of Big J's emptiers involve plugging. I may be speaking out of turn here but what he does/did shouldn't take value out the machine to leave it dead, in fact quite the opposite. It buzzes up the machine as the win is free on plugging. You may well have played a lot of dead £6 jackpot machines in your formative years but I'd put that down to bad %s, f***ed hardware/dodgy operators and other methods that did leave machines super dead.
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Great game, had it on an old Atari. Trick is get Leonoric stuck in that walled bit on the map top middle and cast zombie to get in his way. Wasn't there a bug in this that you couldn't make all the spells as one of the herbs you couldn't pick?
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Reg's Grifter pic looks like it has been attacked by Colin Furze, crazy decade for sure, still a few kicking in the 80s before things went BMX crazy.
Ages of the two girls when pictures taken? Chopper girl (I'm resisting the urge to say it) 23 and the Grifter girl, well, pretty hard to guess I think the hairstyle makes her look a bit older than she is, I'm guessing just about legal
(in the UK).
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Devastating and very surprising news.
I have read through both this thread and the virtual wake thread and it is heart warming to see so many positive sentiments expressed by so many members in our community at such a sad time.
RIP Wizard.
I didn't know Chris personally and alas never got to meet him. Bar a few PMs over the years (where Chris always came across as very personable with incredible knowledge) I have no idea of his personal life, what he looked like, if he had sugar in his tea etc
However if we had met, I'm sure we'd have had a great deal in common like no doubt, everyone else on this forum. We all share this very niche interest and have been united by our journey through life with this lunatic obsession that normal people (whoever they are!) find hard to process.
Emulation is the salve to this obsession that creates a unique perspective that has brought us all excitement over the years. I can only really say a few(!) words about my own experiences with emulation to pay tribute to Chris and thank him again for his wonderfully clever creation, fruit machine emulation.
So in the younger years of my life, I experienced the addiction many on this site and similar will have experienced and of course the negative consequences which that entails. Without going into too much detail about 'gambling low ebbs', I alienated close friends, squandered my super market minimum wages, got into debt and let my education and personal life suffer. Nothing controversial about that within the confines of AWP addict land, although of course, back in those days if you had asked me about fruit machine emulation, I'd have said it didn't exist (well it didn't back then) and that you could get simulators, but they definitely weren't the real deal, they were a poor man's stop gap.
By this point I had signed up to a few AWP forums on line, as Internet access via PC was becoming more common as a household item. I can't remember exactly where, but this link to an emulator was touted on one of these forums. Being of a cynical nature, I was convinced this would be a disappointing load of nonsense. I did made it my business to check it out however as there were some excited noises being made about the emulator on various forums, but I was still sceptical.
One name was coming through loud and clear as the mastermind behind this emulator. Chris J. Wren. Well I didn't believe it. I had made up my mind that I'd download this thing and being the expert player that I obviously was, I'd seek out the discrepancies between the real machine and the so called emulated version and put this nonsense to bed once and for all. Surely this was only another variant of some of the Mike Wood's games (simulators) that were available to buy at the time? This Chris Wren bloke had a mighty cheek claiming this was 'emulation'! Or so I thought.
So the night came where I downloaded whatever it was you could download back then and I guess I wasn't the very first in the queue as I don't recall a 'demo' version of anything with limited credits but I do recall playing Pot Black by Barcrest as my very first layout on Wizard's MPU3 emu. There may have been other layouts available. I think Super Blackjack and Alphabet, maybe some other Barcrest clubber with beach balls were floating around at the time. However Pot Black was a game I knew well and something my addict self would have sessioned back in the day so given the choices, this was first play for sure.
It quickly became apparent that this was the genuine thing. I'm not 100% sure when the penny dropped but it was a combination of the sounds, 'light patterns', timing and obviously genuine game play and profile. Pot Black in real life and of course the emulator, bizarrely never honoured three time holds, but would give let 'em spins. So when the penny did drop with me, that this was not a wind up and was a totally genuine product my scepticism quickly turned into joy. The name Chris J. Wren was synonymous with this magic software and was clearly a name worthy of very great respect. A respect that has lasted for twenty years and hasn't faded with subsequent revisions and sessions on the emulator.
If anything the respect can only grow, even posthumously for Chris. Once again kudos to a true legend, the founder of FME.
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72% yikes! I didn't know they could be set that low. I myself have done a grand in the things playing three in community on a quid when they were first released, in a local bingo.
Live and learn eh? And yes, so much speculation about those gambles. Only thing for sure, I wouldn't trust any of them further than I could throw them. You takes yer chances, however low they may be.
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It sounds (at a guess) like you were playing the £500 king Kong Cash. There is a community version of this game but the £500 version is supposedly random. I'd imagine it's the standard Blueprint £500 when you get a feature you can gamble it for a better feature at risk of 'losing' and getting a mystery win.
This game help menu states random. This is unfortunately not a complete assurance in the UK cat B market that it is indeed completely random, but I do not have enough experience of this £500 game to say with any sort of certainty if it is random or compensated.
The trouble with £500s is that the %s seem good to the likes of ourselves. I'm guessing most playing (past and present) members on this site and similar have their roots in pub fruits. The amounts cycled on such games in any one session is very small compared to a £500 and the house edge in that case is generous. 90% is great for pub fruits but decidedly mediocre for £500 jackpots. However a 10% house edge on a £500 game that can cycle through nearly £2000 in an hour (at £2 stake) is a lot more painful to the wallet.
Despite all that your result is right out there in the truly horrible category. King Kong Cash £500 is medium variance and you've certainly had a horrible result there if it is all fair and above board. Average loss about £200. However you can see that lose £800 one time then next time a session of equal length make £400 and the machine is at % given that each session had a £2000 play through.
If there is one thing I have learned from this Industry it is don't take things on machines at face value. It wouldn't surprise me if it was compensated and dead from reset whilst stating it was random. I play very few £500 games though so can't really offer any more insight.
Good idea not to play the damn thing again though, make sure you stick to that!
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Back in the day I was critical of the Fairplay Campaign, however years later and a few grey hairs (mostly through playing AWP) I am totally empathetic with the ideals and aims of Fairplay. Excellent video by Fishta, a great watch and filled in a lot of colour on my sketchy black and white knowledge of the subject.
Now let me tell thee a tale (puts on flat cap).....
There are parallels within the gaming industry today that could do with a similar campaign to take on justice for the player.
For me the biggest current day 'crime' a manufacturer can commit is releasing a compensated game with a seemingly fair %, yet installing it so dead at reset that it purposefully pays at a much lesser % for the first few hundreds to grands cycled only starting to offer the actual % stated after the first few £100-£1000s have been lost at a much lower %
The biggest offenders for such behaviour, currently active in the market are Blueprint. A couple of years back there was an emptier on these digital cabs that was caused by a fault in the firmware and not individual software in each game. Not all games were affected, but some were. It enabled players to get free credits on games. There was a particular £100 jackpot game called Sky's the Limit on these cabs, that from reset would take about £500-£800 for a £100 feature and once it had bedded in you were then paying the stated % to get your feature back with some expected variation. Well if you were emptying it you weren't paying anything of course, but the software didn't know the machine was being scammed, it just paid as if it had taken the money. You could tell a reset cab by pot levels and reel set ups on some games. It was obvious to see, scandulously dead from reset, eases up with a fair bit of play. A pattern repeated on other titles.
Blueprint have a number of community games on the UK AWP market. They state 88-92% payout dependent on stake and game you are playing but again from reset they pay much less. Hit one on full reset and for the first £500-£1000 you'll barely get more than 70% return. Once they bed in a bit you'll start getting 80%ish for your money and about 2.5k deep (stakes are linked) you'll start to see the advertised % payout.
Now couple that with the regular updates these cabinets receive. These updates are live and via the Internet and can for example add a game, change the graphics, update the note acceptor remotely to accept a new polymer note etc etc. However what is inexcusable is that whilst they have learned that pots should be archived, the value in game conveniently gets reset and once again the game is dead. Cashino are by far and away the worst offenders for this. Rows upon rows of these cabinets with constantly dead games on them. Too dilute to take enough money. More design than accident? I'd say so, given that Cashino are all part of the same group as Blueprint. See a new game? See new graphics? See extra cabinets added? Well expect awful awful play on nearly all compensated titles.
So beware, just because a flat profile compensated game states 92%, does not mean you will see that any time soon.
SG are a mixed bag, but not all their releases are exempt from this criticism. In fact some of their £100 stuff is positively crooked and ill conceived, but unlike Blueprint they also have a history of releasing games that pay OVER the stated % for the first few £100s cycled, so you could say at least with them, take the rough with the smooth. They also have a few games which are pitched about right for player and operator. Plus their system of install from reset is complicated and way more sophisticated than Blueprint's 'just initially rob the punter' some venues are seeded generously, others less so.
It's a shame the Gambling Commission seem unable to stop this behaviour. The current testing procedures for new releases just do not adequately protect the player from this bad practice.
Rant over and I hope some of you found it interesting and it saves some people from wondering why they feel so unlucky.
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This comes back around to issues such as game play/blocks on smaller jackpot machines vs larger ones.
Even around the £4.80/£6 token jackpot era, games could be set to be biased to pay more token payouts or more cash payouts dependent on operator preference.
Main variables in play are namely how the player plays the machine, profile settings and how it's programmed.
On lesser jackpots it's more the streak that is saved for separately not just one jackpot.
Most of the current crop of £100s have a very small save for 'free' wins or random jackpots.
The Daddy £100jp for example has a 4% save for a £25/£35/£50 or ultra rare ton hit off the slow roll in (usually) boxes.
Betcoms (some titles) save about 10% for white flashes, invincible gambles etc
£10jp Maygays such as The Italian Job were very much focused on the streak of jackpots and on a good % would be saving about 20% for the streak pot.
Some early Union Games titles such as Fruit Drop saved about 40% for the streak.
A lot of lo techs such as Crazy Fruits had layered streak pots say 30% for the £30-50 streak and 10% for the £60-100 one for example.
Many games on £8jp or less wouldn't have blocks or saves as such, the game would just react from one single pot. Many argue this made the games a lot more fun back then and less controlled.
Club machines (very generically) you're looking at a 10% save for those major prizes.
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Unfortunately I don't. I think your only hope would be a Bell Fruit ex employee who still has files on a personal computer that they could share. It's a real needle in a haystack jobbie though. Bell Fruit don't exist as a company any more and the name has recently been dropped by whoever acquired the rights, Novomatic I think it was.
I can remember it was almost as green as the hulk and second feature up was stop the clock if memory serves.
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In answer to the OP
I can help with the name of the wiyb clone, it was called 'The Drac Pack' and failed test, I think in 2007.
Like the first program of wiyb, it was fully emptiable via the skill feature second feature up. I only ever saw one in existence in the big Leicester Thomas's as it used to be back then.
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Examples of anti-stat / anti-force gameplay?
in Emulator Chat
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Terrible programming.
Some Mazooma flyers boasted of 'anti player' technology in their software. Pacman Plus for example.
These were games you didn't force like that, unless you didn't like money. I had no idea they could go that far behind. Pacman Plus was more inclined to offer endless 'collect prizes' as an anti force measure if it detected X amount of forces over a certain time frame.