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Tokens vs Cash


Konsider
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Good question - I can't speak for the early days when the jackpots were small but certainly when it got up to £6 and £8 token jackpots in the 90's some games had two separate compensators for tokens and cash.  If you played solely with tokens (usually won from another machine) only the token compensator would get more generous, so you'd see hardly any gameplay or cash wins but then suddenly a token jackpot would roll in.  This was to stop people from dumping tokens into one machine and draining the cash out of it.  If you played the game with cash, it would be split between both compensators.  Maygay and Bell Fruit did this on a lot of their £8 token games, and I remember playing a version of JPM's Snakes and Ladders with a lot of tokens and it would do nothing for ages and eventually get into a state where you'd get on the board and roll onto nothing but dead squares until you filled the numbers up for Big Money, which would go for £8 and maybe repeat once or twice.  You'd effectively be putting tokens in but not being able to get anything but tokens out because the cash % was low and the token % was through the roof.

This was known as 'token migration' back then and was a bit of a problem in arcades - lots of games were coming out that paid out massive token wins, and games like JPM Fairground and Maygay's Pink Panther, Cluedo and Monopoly were fantastic games for dumping tokens into for cash.  They used to try and combat this by having token lock-out switches; once the tube got full it would lock the token acceptance out so you couldn't put any more in.

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Interesting Stevedude, thanks for that.  I remember playing machines with tokens to convert into cash back in the day and did wonder if it made a difference.  Some machines would pay £40-£50 in tokens in their "predictable enrichment period" and you had to try and convert them back into cash to get yourself home!

Good old days when gambling was fun!!

Welcome to the forums K.

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Thanks guys, very interesting info there :D

Another aspect I wondered about… was it possible to “ruin” a payout as it was happening? Say, for example, you got holds on a jackpot (often indicating you were going to be on a winning streak and the machine would be paying out)… if you accidently only held 2 reels, could that cancel the payout? Or, another rumour was, if you didn’t have enough cash in the machine as it was starting to pay out, and you had to collect, that could ruin it?

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2 hours ago, Konsider said:

Thanks guys, very interesting info there :D

 

Another aspect I wondered about… was it possible to “ruin” a payout as it was happening? Say, for example, you got holds on a jackpot (often indicating you were going to be on a winning streak and the machine would be paying out)… if you accidently only held 2 reels, could that cancel the payout? Or, another rumour was, if you didn’t have enough cash in the machine as it was starting to pay out, and you had to collect, that could ruin it?

 

I don't recall anything like that being possible.  If the game was in an enriched period and you messed up a win or two you'd just get it back again in the next few games until the machine had paid everything out that it wanted to.  Collecting the bank in the middle of a streak didn't matter either, or at least it shouldn't have.

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1 hour ago, Big J said:

Played many BellFruits like Spectre, Shogun, FlashBack and Barcode with tokens and never had this issue. The thing is with them that taking JPs made it buzz even more so a bit even keel for me.

Yeah these were good token dumps.  Maygay Cluedo was another good one - get a feature, roll a 5 for 'Find the Candlestick', easy £3.  There may have been a slight bias towards token wins on these if you were playing with tokens, but it was quite gentle.

It was really in the latter days of £6 tokens that I really started noticing a very cynical heavy weighting towards token wins during exclusive token play.  Games like Big Breakfast were nice to play with cash, plenty of green and red bar wins on the reels to get you into the feature and so on.  But once you started playing with tokens you'd see the gameplay dry right up, going £10 for a board which didn't offer over £1.60 before the red sevens rolled in or maybe even the Big Breakfast symbols.

Indiana Jones had a low token payout option and a high one when they first came out.  The ones in my local arcades were set to low by default and were great games to play; plenty of cash wins and 3 JPM's for £3+repeat chance would repeat two or three times if you were lucky, much like Fairground, Circus and so on.  Really hard to get token wins out of them though.  After a few weeks people (like me) were getting a surplus of tokens up throughout the day on 5p £6 token BWB/Barcrest stuff like Road Hog, Andy Capp and so on, plus lo-tech games like Crazy Pays and Indiana Jones became a token dump.  They were switched to high token payout and the difference in gameplay was really noticeable, big gaps between feature boards and a greater tendency to bypass mid-range cash wins and offer yellow bars for £4 tokens.  JPM wins were unheard of all of a sudden.  I wonder if any of the ROMs we have are switchable like this?

Pretty sure if you look through Maygay £8 token stuff in test mode or the metering you'll find a token % and a cash %.  MDM Fireball on tokens had two percentages also.  Might try and have a look when I get a chance...

It's an interesting subject because on older versions of MFME there were limited numbers of coin inputs and people never used to enable the token in switch; they'd just have 20p and £1 for example.  You should notice a difference in gameplay if you find the token switch and play a game like mentioned above solely with tokens...

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I def

10 minutes ago, stevedude2 said:

Yeah these were good token dumps.  Maygay Cluedo was another good one - get a feature, roll a 5 for 'Find the Candlestick', easy £3.  There may have been a slight bias towards token wins on these if you were playing with tokens, but it was quite gentle.

It was really in the latter days of £6 tokens that I really started noticing a very cynical heavy weighting towards token wins during exclusive token play.  Games like Big Breakfast were nice to play with cash, plenty of green and red bar wins on the reels to get you into the feature and so on.  But once you started playing with tokens you'd see the gameplay dry right up, going £10 for a board which didn't offer over £1.60 before the red sevens rolled in or maybe even the Big Breakfast symbols.

Indiana Jones had a low token payout option and a high one when they first came out.  The ones in my local arcades were set to low by default and were great games to play; plenty of cash wins and 3 JPM's for £3+repeat chance would repeat two or three times if you were lucky, much like Fairground, Circus and so on.  Really hard to get token wins out of them though.  After a few weeks people (like me) were getting a surplus of tokens up throughout the day on 5p £6 token BWB/Barcrest stuff like Road Hog, Andy Capp and so on, plus lo-tech games like Crazy Pays and Indiana Jones became a token dump.  They were switched to high token payout and the difference in gameplay was really noticeable, big gaps between feature boards and a greater tendency to bypass mid-range cash wins and offer yellow bars for £4 tokens.  JPM wins were unheard of all of a sudden.  I wonder if any of the ROMs we have are switchable like this?

Pretty sure if you look through Maygay £8 token stuff in test mode or the metering you'll find a token % and a cash %.  MDM Fireball on tokens had two percentages also.  Might try and have a look when I get a chance...

It's an interesting subject because on older versions of MFME there were limited numbers of coin inputs and people never used to enable the token in switch; they'd just have 20p and £1 for example.  You should notice a difference in gameplay if you find the token switch and play a game like mentioned above solely with tokens...

I certainly agree with the MayGays as they hated paying tokens(mainly JP) unless they were on a streak most of the time on a number of them. Think this may of been asked/answered before but does inserting in tokens only on MFME have a difference on gameplay?

Just a theory!

Edited by Big J
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2 minutes ago, MPU_FIVE said:

Ahh, remember the days of tokens... win em in the pub and then trying to "convert them into cash"... luckily the pub would accept tokens to buy drinks and snacks with, so i'd get lots of chocolate and crisps with me drinks...

They accepted tokens for drinks and snacks? I think that must have been a pretty rare thing, never heard of anywhere doing that before :D

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1 minute ago, Konsider said:

They accepted tokens for drinks and snacks? I think that must have been a pretty rare thing, never heard of anywhere doing that before :D

The quote “beer tokens “ many a happy nights beer bought with machine tokens 

£6 bought about 4-5 pints in early 90’s

so if you streaked a Andy Capp then £36 happy days or weekend 

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4 minutes ago, vectra666 said:

The quote “beer tokens “ many a happy nights beer bought with machine tokens 

£6 bought about 4-5 pints in early 90’s

so if you streaked a Andy Capp then £36 happy days or weekend 

Man, none of the pubs around here ever did anything like that - wish they had! :D

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The biggest pain with tokens, was if you were somewhere where only one or two machines would accept them. 

I'd save them up sometimes for another session on the machines a day or two later. 

A couple of times when I was at the seaside for the day and got loads near going home, I'd just give them away to someone. It was usually a token streak off an Ace what for my hidden treasures machine so you basically had to accept the streak, with someone telling you, you've got to come now in your ear hole. 

You got to know your tokens, so just knew you couldn't get rid of them in a machine back home at your usual haunts. 

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Tokens definetly for me, many times when I use to "galavant" back in the day I would start putting cash in until the tube was full then start putting in tokens not to waste so much cash as didn't mind losing them if the tubes were full. Use to take a £20 bag of tokes (little nickname) of each place I was going to hit, lots of times I use to order a coke or even a tap water before cleaning it out, now that really is taking the piss but most Landlords didn't mind back then, besides I use to change up two 20's even though I didn't need change as a reverse psychology, arcades too. Always went out with only notes and tokes.

Edited by Big J
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On 06/09/2020 at 17:55, Big J said:

I def

I certainly agree with the MayGays as they hated paying tokens(mainly JP) unless they were on a streak most of the time on a number of them. Think this may of been asked/answered before but does inserting in tokens only on MFME have a difference on gameplay?

Just a theory!

It's not just a theory it's a provable fact especially on Maygay.

Some machines it is so blatant it can only be coded that way.

I first saw this in an arcade when I started playing a nice token win through a Noels House Party. Suddenly cash wins and features were non-existent. Every so often it would just spin in three sevens directly.

Later on I saw this again in another arcade, this time on Maygay Cluedo. Sevens just spinning in which was unheard of on earlier chips. Up to this point the only Maygay I had ever seen spin in a jackpot was Screen Play. It would do a really long reel spin and stop the 7's one away and give one nudge for the win.

If you want to see how blatant it can be you want Maygay Monopoly Bingo. From a factory reset, play say £30 with cash. Normal gameplay. Reset the ram and play £30 only with tokens. Watch as the machine behaves completely different, not only will it suddenly start spinning in the three Waddingtons symbols it will even hold them afterwards!

You might think that if the machine had been played normally for a long time the percentages cash/tokens would be balanced so if you started playing on tokens it would take a while to start this behaviour. You would think wrong. The behaviour change is very quick, typically less than a JP of tokens.

It's another example of the dirty tricks manufacturers used to code in to help operators. For the player it meant the best you could achieve was the value of your tokens back in more tokens, less the house edge which in those days was typically 20-30%.

 

 

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