avengah

As promised, the DX update. Not perfect. A rush job. But the lights in the middle are the right way round and the disco button works. (It does start from position 8, I checked.) I just tried emptying the £25 version and it played quite badly, but I still managed to take over £200 out for £100ish in. I haven't included the RAM files because what's the point? And the decals are still for £15, so on the £25 version the blue bars and up are £7, £10, £15, £25. I've also included the classic layouts I touched up last time, as I fixed a couple more things, including getting the disco button right and making it clearer against the background. Lock 'n' Load DX & Classic updated.zip

I decided to try the Psycho Cash Beast knockback method on it in the state it's in. £15 in to be offered a natural jackpot (you can't tell off the bonus on this machine so I thought a natural jackpot was a good enough sign), then another £15 worth of credits knocked back while trying to get offered jackpots if it makes any difference. Finally took a jackpot from red shots, reels woke up and started winning nudge gambles and giving bonus numbers, next board collected jackpot and it repeated! I wonder if the reason the board's as alive as it is could be because the method destroys the current pot while leaving the streak pot alone, the machine thinks it has a streak in it and gives good boards trying to pot so it can dump its roll? EDIT: I tested hold swapping some more. It seems they really went all out with it on this machine, because you can even hold pairs of crap and it will still say "You're a genius!" on the third hold and bring in a symbol if there's no pair. You can swap the second hold AND the third hold and it still works, just like a JPM or Red. I had a feeling this might work because when trying to swap the second hold earlier, I found it refusing to hold a third time more than you'd expect unless it worked. I still think it doesn't see big wins swapped to on the third hold, but it does realise it's a third hold and doesn't offer it as often as a regular hold.

Answer: It didn't. While the reels are dead and it cost £15 for a board by spinning in mixed sevens on a 2 which won, it's still off its tits on the board. I had a feeling it would be. Third red shot, Jackpot. Still spinning stars on the reel, still giving a good run round the board and easily landing on Activate for red zone. (While it may be hard to tell, Jackpot is lit in the red zone.) Same board just gave Extra Life after filling up the stars: It eventually killed me after offering the BWBCode Bonus. Two boards later, it threw a red zone jackpot at me again:

There we go, I took £525 out and made sure there was no held win when I blew the board off with £0 on Hide and Seek - it offered £6 then £7.60. I took nothing but Clowning Arounds until the end, when I finished with a £1 Big Top to clear the held win then a £0 Hide & Seek (I didn't want to risk Big Top winning the first gamble at this point). Total stats £261 in, £948 out. I wonder how dead it'll go now? Again, the internal meters match MFME's meters. Clown In Around £25 363% 261in 948out.zip

Well, considering it was playing so well after £46 in, and kept offering natural jackpots after that point, I was shocked that it cost £245 to get the invincible board. It had shown loads of signs of life from the £46 board onwards, including the extra Activate on entry, starting with multiple bonuses up to and including Skillstop, spinning several stars in in a row etc. One thing was different, though: Cash wins would not win a hilo gamble except on a 1 or 12. (I didn't get the chance to try on a 2 or 11 but it lost multiple times on a 3 or 10 on cherries.) So even though the board was flying, the cash was stone dead. I wonder if it's like a Vivid with a separate pot for the cash hilo when not on the board? So this time I decided I'm not going to take anything except Clowning Around. I'm going to take about £500 and kill the board off by taking £0 off Hide and Seek. Then I'll quit and make a copy of the ram and gam files and see what state the machine ends up in!

It's now absolutely off its tits. This board has given me two extra lives, I've been sat at Jackpot on red shots and the stars for ages, the BWBCode Bonus is active and it's still surviving ?s!

Yeah, that's what I thought. Thanks. I decided to try forcing it again from the 2820% state. Right at the start it swapped holds for melons but lost the hilo gamble on a 5. I was offered an easy jackpot first board off steps, which I'm sure it only sees if it's already there without needing nudges. After that it played slightly badly but not horrendously. Now I'm £46 in and I just got a natural jackpot board: It let me live several ?s, rolled the star on the reel multiple times then offered me Jackpot off just a couple of red shots as well as Star Prize, which was also jackpot since it guarantees at least one more repeater and I was one off the jackpot up there too. I didn't take it because I want to see if it was a fluke. Even though technically the machine knows it's over percentage, maybe the method screws with the compensators and the current pot still has value in it? Yep. Next board, £51 in:

It's gone completely dead now. On £25 it plays so much worse when dead than when it's set to £5. I'm not getting many boards and I'm not getting any chances. In the green zone, the Stop A Fruit feature sometimes lets you eliminate a reel but not always. Does anyone know if there's a way to tell before collecting it? It makes a big difference. (It's basically one blast on the winline. I remember realising it was better than it sounds based on the fact that it's a high-numbered feature in the green zone, and I'm sure I've potted one in the wild that way.)

Cost £6 for a board, survived a Roll Even with 11 green shots but not active, rolled Activate and ended up hitting Activate again with a green shot then getting Reel Magic from just 5 or 6 red shots. It was already in the window so no excuse that it didn't see it. So that's another £25 out with it this far over percentage... Is this machine for real? Haha, actually, it's done some work towards getting back to percentage. With the £6 in and £25 out, it's now only at 2133.33%, down from 2820%! EDIT: It went through a slow patch. If you don't get a board for a few quid, it starts getting desperate to give you a board by offering nudges when it's there. I decided to knock it back to try for a super start (3 on winline) or a better win, but it just threw cherries in. I was offered a fiver on a board shortly after but didn't take it (should have done really). Just now got a swapped third hold for yellow bars, Add Again on the bonus, straight to +3 red shots, left it in a lot of trouble and it ended up just hitting Jackpot on the shots. This one cost quite a bit more though, so now I'm £39 in, £50 out for this session.

Cool! So I got it invincible within £15 and used Crazy Sevens to build up held wins, £10 at a time. When the held win got too high, it deleted itself. That happened at around £125-128 (it probably uses a signed single byte integer or something, because if it was checking the amount was too high, surely it would check if it was higher than the jackpot, as it's a held win, not banked yet). I was worried it might have counted the held win towards percentage even though it was wiped. But I carried on, and built up another held win of over £100 then took Clowning Around. I repeated the process, then finished it by taking a held win up to £92 and collecting the jackpot repeater. It was fun watching it spit out over £100 from the held win, with the bank at its limit of £75. After that, MFME's meters matched the machine's internal meters exactly: 150 in, 4230 out, 2820%. Since it's set to £25, none of the Clowning Around features or other hiddens I took dropped a credit at any time - I had 0.60 credit left when I got that board, and 0.60 credit left when I finished the board having won £423 in a single credit. But it's clearly not a free win and the machine knows it's paid it out. I'll see how dead it's gone, just for fun, though I'll take a copy of the ram and gam files as they are now, for posterity. There are a few weird warnings in the alarm log: TCRASH 55FA6 appears a few times and there's RANGE CHECK - SAVEW > 125.00 [BOX] 134.00, which I assume was me overflowing the held win. Clown In Around £25 2820%.zip

From reset, £15 in, I got it to go invincible a rather novel way that I haven't seen before: Jackpot was there for 3 steps if I used one nudge. The board was looking OK but showing no signs of wanting to go invincible. But I hit 3 steps eventually in the red zone, took my one nudge and pressed cancel, it paused for a moment then did the flashy flash. "Hmm, the jackpot is there, I might as well give in" or something! Unfortunately, the Clowning Around feature doesn't have to do a minimum of £25. So far I've had a £15 and an £18 (at least it didn't drop a credit to go over £15). None of the other hiddens are any good either - Big Top was the other one with potential but that only gave me £8. So there's no way to pot it while doing the emptier. EDIT: There's another glitch to watch out for. If you take Big Top while doing the emptier, any winnings held but not banked yet from previous hiddens will be lost. I don't know if the machine thinks it's paid it out or not, but I'll check in a bit from a fresh reset.

OK, thanks. I've just set it to 30p / £25 / 70% (I was surprised this game went up to £25, never seen one in the wild, only £5 and £15) and I'm going to see how much fun I can have with it.

Over 105% now. This is by collecting any and all jackpots offered, as well as features worth £4ish if I know I'm not potting it that board. Clown_In_Around_(BWB)_[Dx02_5jp].zip

I got it to over 102% now and it's still playing well. Where are you seeing the actual percentage? I found the money in and out meters, did you calculate it from that?Clown_In_Around_(BWB)_[Dx02_5jp].zip I might set it to £15 jackpot and see what I can do with it.

Well, I was taking it on normal boards but fobbing it off if it didn't offer £6 (take the highest and gamble it down to £0). But I don't think it was as generous on non-invincible boards - it's probably best to just force for the invincible.

Sure. I touched the layout up a bit and the lamps in the logo now look better when the machine pans past them and swirls the lights. Since it's set to 30p play, the smaller fruit wins and maybe the repeaters have the wrong amounts shown. Clown_In_Around_(BWB)_[Dx02_5jp].zip

Something's not right here. I just took jackpot off 2 steps and directly off red shots, and it's still displaying 92.00 when opening the door. Does this machine know it's paying anything at all out? It's ROM version 1.2.

£65 in, £81 out in total just collecting nothing but Clowning Around off non-invincible boards. Still actual percentage 00, still off its tits. How this was not worked out as being free back in the day I don't know. Now I'm at £98 in, £94 out (it was playing a bit badly these last few boards, as even happy machines go through bad patches) and it's just gone invincible after 1 shot. I think it's at maximum happiness so it's random whether it decides to go invincible straight away or take the piss. I'll try the other hiddens and see if they're free. It'll take too long to test every possible way of collecting money but I'll try a couple of other ways of potting it at least.

I don't believe this. Clowning Around feature is completely free! Even on a non-invincible board! Maybe all the hiddens are free? It's still showing actual percentage 00 after taking a normal Clowning Around!

Yes, the £6 off Hide and Seek is a free win. £24 in, invincible after £18ish, two £6 Hide and Seeks (and several that were less that I took £0 on) and I finally sacked the board off with a £0 Hide and Seek. Actual percentage 00. EDIT: It's all free wins. Just did it the normal way and got Clowning Around. Expected it to mostly not be free because it was dropping credits and paying £5 on some credits (though the last credit of the first Clowning Around paid more than £5 since it was the same credit as the start of the second Clowning Around). The feature did a total of £24 or so over two Clowning Arounds. Actual percentage 00.

I played a dodgy £10 Andy Capp in a snooker club in Wales. I think it was 20/25p a go. It 3-held for red sevens then secretly held on the line without the holds lighting up, like JPMs and Reds do sometimes. I wonder if the original Barcrest version can do that?

Correction: It is not always invincible from the start of the board, only sometimes. I decided to do some more testing to make sure, and this time I got the BWBCode Bonus, then took a shot and went invincible. From that point on, it did the dapple instead of the code. It can also go invincible from just going round the board, though this is very rare and only happened to me once so far. Shots is by far the most common way to trigger it. If you get the dapple on the hiddens, you're invincible with or without the flash. To speed things up, it might be worth knowing that if you get a Taxi off the ?, just hold Start and you don't move, so you hit the ? again. And from the Skillstop square, if you hold Start, you move forwards one square, also hitting a ?. Even though the BWB button lights up for Stopper, there's no point using it because it jumps anyway.

It's taking it back, but I'm still getting jackpots out of it and hiddens (on which I've been taking Hide and Seek for the £6 chance, since the others aren't going to go past £5 in the state it's in). I remembered you could swap the third hold like you can on Spiker the Biker and Smokey Bikin' (it doesn't see this, so it can do it for big wins no matter how dead it is). And if the board is an invincible board, it is invincible from the start of the board. The big flashy sequence is just a visual thing. I was testing from another reset and got the hiddens doing the dapple on a normal board, so decided to try and kill myself. The ? kept giving good things, and eventually let me kill myself with Hilo To Go and it came up INVINCIBLE, this being before taking any shots so no flash.

It finally went dead for a couple of boards, then potted again off Reel Magic. I got the feeling it didn't really want to pot at that point but it let me survive a ? with Skill Continue then hit Bonus for extra shots, and I had 6 red shots by that point and a green shot hit Activate. I imagine if it had been set to a higher jackpot it would have been unlikely to give Reel Magic at that point. It's also starting to cost for boards, just like the £15 version did, so I can see how it might be able to claw it back, but by still giving plenty of jackpot opportunities it's playing far better than I would expect it to after just being hammered. EDIT: Just conned two more pots out of it on consecutive boards with 2 Steps in the green zone. I wasn't playing for particular setups on board entry, I just got lucky and had setups that only needed about 4 nudges. It really makes it too easy sometimes. I wonder if the £15 version could be taken for a ride this way? There are of course dead boards, and if boards are clearly going nowhere there's always the option to collect something, but if jackpot chances are frequent enough I wonder how far over percentage it could be taken without using the Reelstop Skill emptier, with it set to 30p / £15...

I was messing about with this machine on MFME today. I set it to 30p/£5 because it plays really well and gives decent boards all the time and I wanted to see how dead it would go after being done. I discovered the trick is simpler than I thought, because once you've got the Skill from the Reel Stop it doesn't matter where you land it - the point is that because it gives the hidden selection before processing the square, it still wants to process the square so does it after the feature. So I experimented and took all six of the hiddens while doing the method. On this prize and stake combination, most of them are worth £4 or so apart from Clowning Around (which has always been better than the jackpot and what I used to play for in the wild before knowing the emptier) and, surprisingly, Hide and Seek which can give £6. Whether you get £6 or less, as long as you picked the highest value, it offers a gamble which you should NOT take if you got more than £5, because the gamble will cap at £5. I don't know whether the fact it's paying out more than £5 on a single credit confuses the machine into making the wins free, but for most of the hiddens, the win obtained (or the last win with Clowning Around) is not banked straight away but at the start of the next hidden you take. This also leads to it paying out more than £5 on a single credit, and on any feature other than Big Top (Hilo cash, additive), Clowning Around and Crazy Sevens if they repeat past the credit break, it won't drop a credit. This means if you keep taking Hide and Seek, it will never drop a credit and you can watch it add the wins together as you get them up to crazy high numbers, far higher than the highest AWP jackpots of the day (I had it up to £29 or so at one point before getting bored and picking Clowning Around which dumped the £29 as it was at the bank limit of £25). So I don't know whether all this confuses the machine so much that the wins are free - but after taking just over £125 with the method, I finished by taking the jackpot repeater which didn't, but the next board appeared to be rolling because the first spin was Skill, then it spun a star every spin until the repeater was at Jackpot again. I went round the board a few times just to see if it would go invincible but it didn't, so I took the jackpot again. Board after was still looking very good, giving Activate and Trail Run off the number reel, so I nudged in hiddens and took Clowning Around for a flat £5. (If the hiddens give you the BWBCode Bonus, it means it won't go invincible. If they give you the dapple with BWB button slowdown and you're not yet invincible, the board will go invincible if you take a few more shots.) Board after that didn't look like it was still rolling, but it was clearly still off its tits and made it very easy to get a quick jackpot off 3 Steps. I'll keep playing it but I can't believe doing the method for well over £125 plus afters from a RAM reset has left it this happy. My first attempt gave the invincible on the second board, but this was my second go at doing it after a reset. This time it cost about £25 to get the invincible so I can understand there being enough in the roll pot for a roll, but after that it really shouldn't still be happy! Does anyone who understands these better know what's going on? Was it a failed test Barcrest that got rebranded as a BWB? There were loads of them around, mostly in arcades but I did see a couple in pubs, so it wasn't a rare machine by any means. I'm surprised at that Hide and Seek glitch. I wonder if other Barcrests have that same glitch if set to 30p/£5? I might try it on Revolution. EDIT: Actually it appears it was still rolling. Got another board that gave a Skill and a number of stars off the reel. Maybe it will tighten up after this. EDIT 2: No, it's still flying. Got a board with JP 4 away and it gave 1 step and 2 nudges, giving it the benefit of the doubt that it might not see it that way, like Cash Beast and Revolution etc. don't see it off Nearest Win. Then a relatively dead board where I missed a Level 2 Skill Continue due to my old computer struggling to keep up with the emulation, then a JP off Nearest Win - that one really shouldn't have been so easy because I was short of nudges but it gave Trail Run off the number reel and threw more nudges at me when Nearest Win was already lit. It's like it doesn't care about people winning jackpots on it even when it's so far over percentage because it's "only" a fiver? EDIT 3: Potted it yet again on the very next board, this time by getting stars from shots and the number reel, surviving a ? and getting the final star off the reel. It repeated twice! So unless this was a ridiculously long roll considering it was from a ram reset and shouldn't have had a chance to save up for one, this is really weird!