TommyH

The Big Cheese - 30p play machine. Seemed to have a block at a fiver on the board that if you got offered it twice and didn't take it, tough shit, dead if it wasn't in the mood to pay. I'm going to have to hammer it at some point to see if my memory is correct or middle-age has made me think of it too badly.

I used to play this a lot and was gutted at how disappointing Chuckie Egg 2 was by comparison.

Wow. I only sold this with my Spectrum last year. No cassette player, a good emulator and requirement for a new snooker cue coincided to dictate the sale Micromega's finest? Full Throttle wasn't bad either though. I think this has to get it because of its 16k limit.

The key thing to note is that especially with video slots, the machines are tested to prove RTP over millions of spins in test labs. These are audited by the gaming commission's audit team and the RTP has to be signed off before a game can go public. The typical old school pub fruitie didn't have the volume of play that a casino slot will do so was typically tested over around 10,000 spins (back when it was fixed stake, talking to an ex tech who lives in east Manchester). This was in the days of compensators and meant that wins would be forced upon you. I remember one time myself on a clubber which must have been well behind hold 1, 3 and 4 reels (cherries) and having the machine cancel the hold and spin a cashpot in for a ton then another 40 quid after play while I played out the 3 quid still in credits. Modern casino slots are random and with the number of outcomes possible from spins running into thousands, the statistical model will be verified over a longer period. I cannot recall whether this includes progressives or not (but these are typically configured at casino level on the little bit of kit provided by PlayTech / Bally depending who runs the casino management system that will link all the machines centrally to allow balance transfers, instawins, happy hours, etc.). Getting back to the emulator, it is indeed possible to change the payout percentage. What I would recommend is finding the manual for that machine or asking on here - someone will know how to change the percentage and it can vary from firm to firm how it was implemented via the dip switches or similar. The MFME machines play exactly like the arcade machines - same as MAME - it's just the arcade ROMs downloaded from hardware, uploaded to a file and into the emulator. MFME is more similar to pinMAME where the emulator developer has to build the layout. Basically, figure out what the lights do, what the reels are, etc and then build a layout from that. If they just label everything that's what is known as a classic layout. Most layouts now are DX layouts, which means someone has found artwork, cleaned it, darkened it slightly (or a lot in some cases!) and then created a lit version to emulate the lamps on the fruitie. If you get any specific errors on loading, raise them in the correct forum on here and no doubt someone will help you.

Ah yes, those rays of light were a nightmare. On a similar subject, here's something to behold, a Jet Set Willy walkthrough. Guy actually does a commentary:

The Bank? Skylab Landing Bay was a lot harder imho.

I don't consider that cheating. It's simply something that should have been in the original game that we've had in PS3 games etc but they probably didn't have the capacity for back then. Back then you had things like the level codes for Lemmings, where I'd consider using level codes achieved by someone else as cheating.

Aye, many a MERGE"" and POKE away. At least one game made it easier with 6031769, a number lodged permanently in any true Speccy lover's brain.

The only time I've hacked a video game's code was Player Manager on the ZX Spectrum to allow me to have 14 players on the pitch at once and add two zeros to my bank balance. BASIC FTW

Not sure if it's been available before but there's a standalone Cluedo SWP game. Not a software engineer so no idea what they've done to get it working. game4.zip

Remember this and its brother Total Carnage very well. Great that you can play them all the way through at the arcade club and similar places.

How's this?

There were also two flash games that I remember from way back that were fruit machine simulators by a firm called Software Illusions.

There were a few. Like this Eastenders one that looks like it was done when FME was just MPU3/4. MFME caught up on tech apparently. EastEnders.zip

How about this one? £4 jackpot.