edwardb

It was a clone of blue rinse - think it was done for arcade/bingo mainly.

He is I joined Mazooma in 1998 when games like Take the Piste, Grab A Granny and Blue Rinse were just launched. They were all dump-a-lump machines, and though sales were OK for some of those early machines, there were (in my opinion) two major milestones in Mazooma going from a BWB-alike company (who also made very lumpy games, go figure) to being a mainstream AWP brand. Firstly was the recruitment of an ex-Ace, ex-JPM and ex-Maygay developer named Alistair Harris. In my opinion he's one of the best ever AWP developers and had a really good feel for how an AWP should play. He did a fair few machines, all of which were pretty successful, e.g. Cash Connection, Money to Money, Cashanova. I worked with him later on at Global where he did the Beaver series and a bunch of other very successful games. Nice bloke - now at Novomatic, I think. Secondly was Pacman Plus; this was a massive seller (2000+ machines) and really set the tone for the next few years. As you may remember, it gave regular features and though it often killed you off, you were soon back in and could take some OK wins from it. A softer game along the lines of Barcrest machines at the time. Very much a pub machine and the sales reflected it. The stake/prize ratio worked well back then. I think - and I may be wrong - but Pacman Plus was the basis for many games far beyond my time. My only claim to fame is writing the game spec for it - I did no programming on it at all.

Hi Everyone Sorry for my long absence. I've got a lot going on at work, and I've also got some health issues which means I'll be in hospital in January. So not much time for anything at the moment. Please bear with me! Hope everyone is OK :) Ed

We never cared about, and never coded for, collecting in red boards. You don't need to. The compensator will just have a high value and the logic will do its job next time around. Read my thread about how compensators worked for more info. Some games, mainly lo-techs, would shovel money around to create streaks or maybe carve a bit of money out of the main compensator to fund smaller mini streaks (see Golden Oldie for that) but hi-tech AWPs, certainly from Mazooma and BFG, would never bother. At some point, someone will collect the money and all will be well. If they don't, the compensator can hold a maximum 2147483647 pence so you'd need to play a long long time for it to overflow....

Hi Guys Sorry for the slow reply - things have been very crazy here the last few months. I'll do some work and give an update soon Thanks Ed

Thanks all - we're better now though I've still got a few lingering issues. Hopefully back to normal soon

Hi Everyone Bit of an update - after avoiding covid for 2 years, both myself and my wife finally got it and haven't been very well. So life in general hasn't been great recently. I'll make some progress on this stuff and share with you when I can. Cheers Ed

In a new game, yes this is easy - for existing games, I'm afraid it is what it is!

Sadly not - they were all written in assembler, Scorp 4 games are in C. Sorry!

Hi everyone - I am sorry for the lack of communication. I've been crazy busy at work the last few weeks but things are slowly getting better. You can expect some progress on this soon Best Wishes Ed

Yeah, I just wish I had more free time! A full time job (and then some!) plus a wife keeps me very busy. But yes we have some opportunities!

Correct I managed to get my old Scorp4 dev system working - was quite a job!

Hi - still working on this - give me some time, my work is very busy at the moment !! Regards

Hi! Yes some progress, I am in Spain at the moment - back next week. I have all the lamps done, and the rest will come soon

Great! So we will use the Monopoly cabinet switches & button configuration for this game. I will send a test ROM soon which you can use to set all the lamps with Ed

Hi I will write this in English, maybe @Spidy21982can translate for me Now that I can make new programs for Scorpion 4, we have the possibility to make a completely new fungame machine - or I can "move" one of my Pluto 5 games (Hi Spirits, A Knights Trail...) to Scorpion 4. It will take a little time, and I will need your help with the MFME layout, but it could be an interesting project ? I can send a new ROM file every few days, so you can see the progress............ What do you think? MfG, Ed

Work in Progress

Yes please

Do you have a Pluto 5 layout example ?

Yes exactly, I can remove the FPGA protection. Also, the FPGA is quite easy to crack. Do you know which FPGAs are in MFME now ?

Hier haben wir ein Spiel, das nicht hergestellt wurde. Die neuen Vorschriften verursachten viele Probleme. Ich denke, es wäre ein schönes Spiel geworden. Vielleicht werde ich es eines Tages programmieren! Der Zeichner war ein sehr guter Comiczeichner.

Als nächstes haben wir "A Knights Trail". Dieses Spiel entstand, als sich die Fungame-Regeln änderten. Es war ein gutes Spiel, hat viel Spaß gemacht. In Großbritannien gab es ein beliebtes Spiel mit demselben Namen. Ich habe das in meinem Gartenhaus programmiert Es könnte auch möglich sein, dieses Spiel zu emulieren. Wir haben rund 150 Maschinen verkauft.

Wie Sie wissen, war ich der Programmierer vieler Fungames. Ich habe in meinem Archiv einige Beispiele von Grafiken aus Spielen. Einige gingen in die Produktion, andere nicht. Hier werde ich einige meiner Dateien mit Ihnen teilen. „Hi Spirits“ war ein kleiner Erfolg – etwa 250 Maschinen wurden verkauft. Ich habe dieses Spiel von meinem Schlafzimmer aus programmiert! Ich habe heute eine voll funktionsfähige Maschine hier in meinem Büro. Teknik: Pluto 5. Es könnte möglich sein, dieses Spiel zu emulieren.

Hi ! OK good news. I have my Scorpion 4 system working, so now I can make the ROM files for some games (Broker Street, plus others). Do you have BRIX sound ROMs?

Aus meinem Archiv - mehr in Kuerze !