monkeyboypaul

You and everyone else of our era. £6k upwards for decent condition. £10k for mint. Nuts. I had a lovely one about 5-6yrs ago (cost me £3k back then) but sold it - fun, nostalgic, relatively simple rules, but £6k and up buys you MUCH better and more reliable games these days.

Yes, I do. If you're serious join Pinball Info forum. Friendly bunch and they can offer you advice on the road to ownership. Also has a For Sale section. Realistically you'd need about £2.5-4k for a decent condition starter game. Any less and you're into crappier and older EM-style machines. I've assumed you're after a DMD-era game, as most are. I'd agree that they can be expensive to buy - just look at new machine prices on Pinball Heaven if you want a heart attack. All fuelled by ever increasing demand & the poor GBP/dollar exchange rates. Ongoing maintenance can be a pain, but not necessarily and don't let it put you off - communities like that forum really can be a lifesaver. There are lots of new/replacement parts available still too, due to the large market of people still owning older games. I've had machines give me zero issues in 6yrs, but I don't play them very often, and I give them a once over when I buy just to avoid issues in future. Preventative maintenance. That's not to say parts aren't expensive - they can be, it's on an entirely different level in terms of cost and complexity vs. fruits I'm afraid. FAR more sociable though - plus 1 pin is never enough! Happy to advise if you need - owned pins for 10yrs.

Good topic, I've often wondered why Fruit Emu died so badly, and why DiF and MPU Mecca don't merge because I can't really see the difference (to an untrained eye). Yes, I appreciate there was some perceived admin militancy which put people off, but when you run this type of thing you really do need to keep your nose clean these days, so I get it. Some people are just short tempted and rude, especially online, and it's not necessary nor welcome. Quite a few people have taken to using Facebook as a pseudo forum too, which sort of works, but I prefer this type of thing personally.

You must be getting quite adept at making them then. Got no clue about casino slot machines, sorry. Only the AWP’s from the 90’s. I owned a Congo pinball for several years, it’s very similar to TRON in terms of layout (which I still have). Hitting a clean volcano shot up the right hand side always left a massive grin on my face! The grey gorilla mini game was annoying though. My current physical favourite is ‘92 FishTales - so simple and basic, easy to learn but hard to master - and this is why I love pinball so much now.

Welcome! What’s your current favourite pinball & fruity to play on the emulators? It’s more common to hear horror stories of fruit machine addiction on this particular site, but in my case Virtual Pinball has been the expensive rollercoaster (pun intended) - virtual led to physical, 1 machine led to many… it’s so addictive! Try Pinball Info (more geared towards U.K. pinball owners) and vpuniverse/VPin forums.

same. I sometimes tolerate the £15's, but for me anything on a descent price per play with a low jackpot has the most fun. My favourite being JPM BigBucks on 20p / £4jp - full of life and surprises.

Yeah, i wouldn't write BOTW off - there's good reason why it gets rated so highly, it just takes a while to adjust - just like it did with Mario64. There's so much to see and so much to play about with, a real sandbox game, but equally you can just go direct to the dungeons and get on with it. I'm really looking forward to BOTW2, becuase i'm a Nintendo addict and will buy it regardless of whether i have time to play it or not! Remember trading my SNES with nicely boxed games (all collectable now) in for a PS1, and regretted it ever since (except C&C Red Alert). PS1 didn't last long for me. Back to N64 and never bought a Playstation console since - i didn't want cool, i wanted just enough good games to keep me happy. Link's Awakening was brilliant at the time, but so basic now and really showing its age when you compare it to BOTW, or even Link to the Past for that matter. I agree though, it was a really emotive experience. Wind Waker is excellent too.

Love the Metroid series. Super Metroid was my introduction, and it's a hard game to fault. Back in 1994 i had WAY more spare time so could get thoroughly lost in this type of game. I've also got Metroid Prime on the Gamecube but never completed it, mainly becuase i found myself with less & less time for games and Metroid can be a chore if you miss something important. Fast forward to today and i've still got a Nintendo i.e the Switch, but end up playing stuff like The Untitled Goose Game (awesome and hilarious, if short, game) and Castle Crashers most with my kids. I got quite far on Zelda BOTW but it needed far too much time from me, and i put fatherhood first (then pinball, running and cycling, fruits are down the list a bit!). I might end up buying Metroid Dread if i see it on sale though!

I'm curious to know: Who discovered the exploits? Was it a particular type of person, interest group (computer code nerd) or age demographic? I was 'only' 15 in 1995, and far more interested in girls and beer than deconstructing fruit machine programming! I noticed a lot of older 30+ players who must've been able to spot patterns and had the deeper pockets to follow through. I'd take no more than £20 out for a gamble back then, often much less. Spoke to Mr P last year, he said he'd take £100-150 out each time back then! Was it arcade employees who'd see this stuff day in, day out, and then pass it on? Did these people purposefully set out to find the exploits? Did they have access to a machine, or hit a specific arcade who got machines early - which must've cost them hundreds initially! Or was it a lucky stumble? Example, referring to @Chopaholic video below - how does someone know that the £6 win is free on SuperPot, or that it comes from the streak pot? There's no visual indicator, no live view of the drift? how?! How information was documented & passed on? We're talking very early internet days. Mobile phones aren't common. Was any particular location a hotspot for this - the South East maybe? I lived in Skeggy and we knew fuck all. It was all word of mouth. How did players check for new chip versions in machines like SuperPots? Discretely switch it off and on again? I'd love to know what I was missing! As for the death of AWP - my interest waned at £15jp, I started to lose too often, and too much, plus I moved to the city & nightclubs happened. You'd still find the odd older machine in them, so i'd still dabble and often do ok (compared to the crowds who didn't grow up in arcades!).

I've love to see a DX of Stampede! @itspartytime Perhaps focus your time, if you can spare some, on the games that haven't been done rather than re-releasing existing. It's entirely your call on what you want to do though. I'd love to see the older late 90's to early 00's standalone games playable as DX's vs an updated PartyTime, but that's just me. PS - my Ready to Roll arrives very soon...

Never seen one of those before.

Didn't Only Fools and Horses have a 'license to trade' or something? It came after Cops & Robber's Informer, but wasn't that far behind. The 1st 'red board' i saw (i.e you know JP is guaranteed as soon as you start the feature) was it's a knockout, followed closely by all those similar era Maygays - Trivial Pursuit, Great Escape... Totally agree - seemed very weird. Maybe the code/concept was licensed out, or resold.

How did you make those connections?? That's pretty obscure, so A+ for effort.

I'm not familiar with many of the RED or QPS games - mostly stopped playing after £15jps... mostly...

Oh yes, we had piles of them at work! Editing for the Telly really opened my eyes to music rights... And by 'opened my eyes' i'm referring to the Clockwork Orange method of having ones eyes held open by force.

I'd love to hear any anecdotes from those dealing with licensing on this topic. Feels like a young programmer working at JPM back then just said "I like this track, let's use that." Mr JPM to Mark & Neil (who're probably their mates): "How about £100 for the rights to use 20seconds of your 'music' on this fruit machine?" (that's about 20 ecstasy pills in 90's rave culture money, or 10 each) Mark & Neil: "go on then, cheers Geeza" Until someone can prove me wrong - this is exactly what happened.

Must be just me then! i was only 2 when this came out, so i could be forgiven for not making the connection sooner, but just realised it was used on BFM's Surprise Surprize for nudges:

I reckon that was a bored developer who valued their employment higher than releasing this audio into the wild... ...the chicken.

I can't take credit for this, but someone posted a link on Facebook to this music track which unbeknownst to me was the source track for JPM's BigBucks gamble ladder - my favourite machine. I had no idea it was a 'real track'. It triggered all sorts of nostalgic memories and made me think if there are any other hidden nuggets locked in Fruit Machine code that wasn't so obviously ripped legally licensed from commercial music. Big Bucks 'gamble ladder' (about 25seconds onwards): Loads of 90's Maygays used sampled music to great effect, and they were often pretty obvious - Main feature on Coronation Street: ...Plus M-People for nudges, Simply Red for Hi-Lo gamble (i think), Pump up the Volume for Paper Round, Happy Hour for Rovers Return... Does this interest anyone else?? I'd be interested in the samples that you found either catchy or just really hard to track down. I'm also curious what the sample licensing deals were like, if they existed. Anyone know? For a big licence like Coronation street i doubt ITV would've let it through without copious legal agreements in place (i know ITV were a pain for licensing the recent Thunderbirds Pinball to HomePin), same for EastEnders with the BBC, but for original themes like Big Bucks it may not have been so obvious...