MikeP

I am as certain as I can be after all this time, that Pay Rise spot the ball worked on the £4.80 version that had the lines fixed, before the £6 ‘upgrade’. I’m sure I remember doing it, I can remember the feature occasionally offering 480P - an amount which the £6 version just did not offer.

I started playing in the £4.80 era, very much an enthusiastic amateur, would win when I knew stuff, lose when I didn’t. But I see from my time on DIF I only knew a tiny fraction of the methods that were out there, it is always interesting to learn what methods there were on the old machines! The Ace lines emptier was the first I knew about, probably a little late in the day. It has always been my favourite, partly because it needed some skill to do it well, and also because of the scale of the thing - it worked on 7 machines, and they were literally all over the place in 1992. The next one was Pay Rise spot the ball the next year, and I was fairly early to that party after I spotted someone doing one in a motorway services. There were some very addictive games in the £6/£8 era, but I didn’t really have anything good after Pay Rise, until the £15 era when I used to do the Barcrest forces, some of the great JPM skill games (Arcadia was a favourite), Lotta Luck/Jackpoteers, then the Vivid method, and I always liked doing TIJ2, someone told me about the Super Cross Fire trick, but I worked out for myself how to manipulate the reels to get the super feature entry, it played very well on the £25 jackpot. And, like many, I suspect, I lost interest in the AWP after the £25 era.

Well, that explains why I was struggling a bit, I was taking whatever lines were offered so if you had only hacked the jackpot ones, that would explain it! Incidentally, doing this in the emulator you can just prioritise the jackpot lines I suppose, but it wasn’t like that in the wild, as the strategy needed to be tailored to what was in the tubes. (In these games you could see what was in the cash and token tubes by looking through the reel window - max was about £80 in £1 coins, £50 in tokens (I’m sure Welcome Break services held more cause their tokens were really thin!), and some 20ps.) Thanks, that helps, playing with it, it seems various percentages are possible based on DIP switch 1 settings, what does the DIP switch 2 that you have set on do? I ask because none of these were set with the version I was playing with, just wanted to be sure we’re comparing like with like, if I have another go at this. Absolutely, that is the thing of real interest. But I’m not sure the artwork is available for these either, maybe the best bet is to get access to that Pound for Pound that was recently unearthed in the abandoned arcade in Grimsby!

Thanks, have had a go at this, my observations: I first did a RAM reset, its percentage is 78%, I don’t know how to change this (can anyone let me know please?), so that’s what I was running with. I put £400 through on autoplay, mopping up easy wins myself at the end. End percentage was 84.3% so something not quite right here. Maybe accounted for by the lines it occasionally rolled in, but these should be accounted for (in the long term) in a different pot, not free, I think (if we are trying to make it like the 02 program). I noticed several times on autoplay, when it got over generous it several times rolled 3 straight jackpots in - the 02 version didn’t do this. It reminded me of the only Ace game I played after the rechips which was Pay Rise (for Spot the Ball) this rolled in straight jackpots if it got too happy, usually 3 on the £4.80 and 2 on the £6 I think, so maybe the 04 Open the Box chip is similar to that anyway. Then I played for the lines only, and I put £164 in for £180 out but that included a streak. Of course, that’s way over percentage, but only a modest return for an emptier. Now I did nudge in some things I shouldn’t have, I know that, and I am no way as fast nudging on the emulator now as I was back then on the actual machine, but I got the impression I was taking something that wasn’t (effectively) free because it never got mega happy, and certainly didn’t start rolling jackpots in like it did when on autoplay earlier. It also rolled some lines straight in, it shouldn’t have, if the wins were being allocated to the lines pot, as that should have been clobbered, if that makes sense. Hope this helps!

I didn’t know Play It Again could be done, I had wondered if it could (and Twilight Zone) but thought that without the 2.20 nudge time exchange it just wouldn’t be possible even if the lines could be effectively taken for free, so I never even tried. It is one I would love to have a go at should the ROMs be found, or reverse engineered, as you are proposing.

Really interested to see how you get on with this, I have the most nostalgia for these games, as this was the first emptier I knew. It’s a shame only the Open the Box emptiable ROMs exist, also many of the games have no DX layouts. My recollection was that this emptier was a case of paying the lines wins (when nudged in) out of a different pot to that which awarded the wins in the first place, so if that were the case I would have thought the same fix would apply to all the lines?

The reason you state is certainly part of the problem with AWPs. But I don’t think it is the totality of it. Interesting as you say as to where the random digital games go. You mention Wetherspoons, and this is interesting, they have a very clever business model to keep prices low for beer and food, and I’m sure fruit machines are part of it. The beer maybe 60% of the price of their competitors but the value to the player from the percentage on their gaming machines certainly isn’t. Easy money from those who want to play them, to help them keep beer and food prices low.

Yes, on some machines you could see the actual rom chip through the reels, and it did have a sticker on it saying what version it was. Jackpoteers was one such machine, I remember. There were so many different versions of that one!

Very good questions, and maybe as an amateur rather than a pro player, I can offer an answer. The absolute first thing you needed to know is that these methods existed in the first place. Seems silly to say that, but until I found out about the Ace lines method, it would never have even occurred to me that any such method was possible. So this would have been 1992, I even remember where it was. Knutsford services on the M6. There were a few Ace games and I was playing an Open The Box 4.80 as you would normally play it, get double bars, exchange and nudge fast for the jackpot. While celebrating my win (on a machine which didn’t have many tokens in it, wonder why?) a couple of guys playing the machines next to mine, told me (bragging) I was playing it wrong there was a ‘system’, no more than that, but I noticed one of them had taken line 6 off nudge time - the mystery win in 20p’s. Weird. So I watched players on future occasions doing this and figured it out that the lines were free. So once you know that such methods existed, I would look out for them. I played a lot in motorway services at the time and knew the games, so anyone doing anything unusual attracted my attention. That might mean taking one feature win only, playing to lose, refusing to take obvious wins, and losing body language like shaking the head, or swearing, while actually winning. I watched those people very carefully and subtly. And then figured it out on my own at a later date - Pay Rise spot the ball came my way that way… Later on, 2000’s, I knew a local pro player, who would give me some good info, in exchange for locations in pubs in the local area that had certain machines. Not necessarily emptiers, but good stuff nonetheless, you couldn’t get off the internet at the time. Vivids. Numbering. Something on Golden Dragon. The Italian Job 2 - the tip off was Super Cross Fire, but I developed the method myself, with manipulation of the reels using holds for when the next win was ‘due’’, and was actually quite profitable. I never knew even a third of the methods when I played, it is clear from videos on YouTube, there were many more than I knew about, I didn’t know about the Maygay Super Pots one, for example, so it is interesting to learn now about the ones that I didn’t know about at the time. Cheers Mike

Yes, agreed, Ace did release machines in the £15/£25 era - and some very playable machines too. But there weren’t that many about, compared to their machines in the £4.80 era which were absolutely everywhere, so there was definitely a realignment in the later 1990s away from Ace, and towards Barcrest, Maygay and JPM. Agree about the gameplay and jackpot value issue. It turned the games from AWP to pure gambling, and the random digital ones do that better, I guess. But this is the thing, I now want to play old games on MFME with the gameplay more than I want to play £100 random games in pubs for the gambling hit (and don’t even mention FOBTs!).

When I was an amateur player back in the day, while I was a member at the CMA and Arcadia sites (remember them?), the good stuff never came from them but from players I met on my travels. But I tended to get it late. But I ask the question now as someone who certainly won when I had knowledge, and lost when I didn’t. Who profited from emptiers? Some players, obviously, and occasionally I was one. But the bigger picture, starting way back 1992, ACE certainly seemed to lose massive market share after the ACE lines debacle. So they lost. And are now extinct. Barcrest - what were they on, that they couldn’t properly fix Lotta Luck, Jackpoteers and the rest, was there a need for some players to be seen to win by the industry around this time, it would explain a lot… I’ve learnt from watching @Chopaholic excellent videos about the horror show of the emptiers in the £70 era - horrific, I had stopped playing these games by then, thankfully. But in the end, did the compensated AWP die out because of emptiers? And if so when? I’d be interested in your thoughts.

My most memorable day from touring the services to play fruit machines was from - it must have been 1993 I think. Ace lines was over by then, but Pay Rise spot the ball was in play, and I seemed to have got wind of this one early. So off down the M5, and to Taunton Deane, no less, had a Pay Rise and I took about £70 cash and £20 tokens out of it. I wandered over the bridge to see what was on offer Northbound, nothing, came back, and the arcade area was closed, engineers doing something to it, so I headed off down to Exeter to see if there was anything playable there. There wasn’t. So I headed back north and stopped again at Taunton Deane, I crossed the bridge and only found the engineers had totally filled Pay Rise up again - you could see through the reels the coin and token tubes in them days - so I emptied it again! Nice!

A couple of questions about MFME, first how do you reset the counts on money in and out? Second, I’ve read that the later versions of the emulator (I have v 20.1) can autoplay games, how do you get it to do this? (It would be good to have each game in a random state rather than how you left it last time, is all). Thanks in advance Mike

Clackett Lane - south M25, probably. Forgiven! Pinballs tended to have fixed replay scores back then, I have one from the era (High Speed - sadly no longer works) and that had fixed replay scores. Re the fruits back then, the general advice was to avoid the M6 - I travelled on it often to visit my folks, and I often didn’t heed that advice! M4 and M5 had far fewer pro players, I think.

Hey folks! It is a long time ago now, but when I did play fruit machines in anger, motorway services were part of the thing, big time. Who else has experiences in these places, there must be some of you? When I found out about the Ace lines emptier, admittedly shortly before they were all re-chipped!, there were no less than 11 such games in Keele services on the M6 (including north and southbound). They were all nearly empty, by the way - no easy money for me there. But over the years I played fruit machines a lot in the motorway services, and did quite well in the Barcrest force era, and the JPM sklll area in the early 2000s. Regular at Chievely and Membury on the M4 in those days. Any good stories about playing fruit machines in the services?? I have a good one but I’ll hold it back for now! Which service stations were good or bad for you?