Dream/Nightmare SWP lineups

[Nil Satis]

Trivia for Dummies (to my mind this is one of the best of all time, I cannot understand why it's never mentioned on here unless you're all winning enormous amounts and don't want to talk about it)

I'd be amazed if the latter was the case. As you say yourself you are completely reliant on the 'mood' of the game - it seems hard to believe anyone has been able to build up a real level of skill on the spot the difference game. These things are always based on personal experience but I've never seen this one offer winnable end games at anything above £3.

NS is too harsh too on C&R (discussed ad nauseam before) and Mike Read - sure, Mike Read rarely pays out more than about £3 but it was quite fun and relatively easy to get a small prize. I suspect NS is comparing it unfairly with Dr Fox!

Again it's all down to personal experience but I have given Cops and Robbers a really good go yet have never found one offering the three keys or indeed anything above about £1. This has included games of around 15 minutes in length, so I'm not just ducking out without a fight.

As for Mike Read, it does offer the occasional quid or two]What's the big problem with Hangman 3? Does it not pay out much?[/quote]

It's a virtually identical game to Hangman 2 with the only material difference any of us have been able to spot being the crucial one that you no longer get offered any chance of a decent prize (or usually any prize at all!).

I think quiz machine companies will be the big losers if they continue to pump out sludge like Roulette Quiz. Punters of all sorts, not just keen players, will realise that the games just won't pay. - and so won't play them.

Welcome to the Church of Nil Satis - you should sign up to be one of my disciples! This is almost word-for-word what I have been posting on here since I joined, and sadly for me it's more true today than ever before.

[grecian]

I'd be amazed if the latter was the case. As you say yourself you are completely reliant on the 'mood' of the game - it seems hard to believe anyone has been able to build up a real level of skill on the spot the difference game. These things are always based on personal experience but I've never seen this one offer winnable end games at anything above £3.

I certainly have no particular skill on the STD game. I'd advocate trying a few 50p's at each venue with it. I'd say that it can and does offer winnable end games at above £3 (only one of my c. 7 or 8 £10 JPs has involved a flukey 1/12 guess on the final STD game, from memory), but moreover it's (in my experience) prone to a sort of fruit machine style "streak" where it'll give between £1 and £4 every go for about 10-15 games in a row (said streak normally ends when the JP is eventually taken but can end before this). It's quite possible to make, say, £10-£15 off half an hour's playing when it's in that sort of mood. Good signs are that there are four prize levels or that 3 questions is the most common requirement to pass the round (I think either on its own can indicate payage, at least in my experience). I suspect I'm beginning to sound like UP rhapsodising about Pints Make Prizes, so I'll stop there. All I'll say is it's a matter of great regret to me that TFD has never managed to migrate from the Games Warehouse stable. :-(

[Istenem]

i'd agree that TFD is a fair bet. it must get played by the dummies too as it is normally willing to cough up (at least it is in London).
as for the endgame, when it first came out i thought it was a swiz but i reassessed it six months later and it was very generous. Q&A games aren't really my forte but i seldom have any trouble with the questions on this one (notwithstanding films & music; subjects at which i'm a simpleton).

i am certainly up on this game overall but i do get disheartened when round four is £1 and it is six questions all the way through.
but this is for another thread.

[Northern Monkey]

DREAM
(in no particular order)
Word Up
Caveman Capers
Countdown
Trivia for Dummies
Pub Series Cricket

Tried to combine playability with winnability (wonder if the new WU would accept this as a word) in my selections above. I would fancy leaving a fair few quid up on visiting your 'average' high street pub to play those.

Have left DOND off because despite a fair few £10s I am starting to find this quite tedious.

MARES

As with previous posters, too many to mention but lets go for:

Pints make prizes- actually very playable but many a modest prize pot accumulated by attrition has been burnt by my indiscipline on this.

Whichever Hangman one where you keep getting a continue and think the prize must be round the corner but never is.

That Chase the Suit ??? or something another where there is a solitaire type thing followed by an end game. See comments for PMP only minus the playability.

The previous CLuedo version where it dropped the prizes with every wrong nomination.

Take it or leave it- so utterly pointless.

[Northern Monkey]

nightmare (i can win from some of these but they are chosen for being unutterably dreary)
wwtbam (any version)
dond
STD
triple towers
hangman
pub quiz

For someone who seems to prefer the non-Q&A I am surprised that Triple Towers is on the avoid list. I got my own PB SWP prize on this of £32 earlier this year.

I see that the new fatbox uploads have a revamped version of this- got the £5 cashpot with first 50p but didnt make the points total to complete the round for a second £5. Wasnt sure if it would honour the cashpot in these circumstances but it does.

Pretty sure I was about the first to play the particular unit in question.

[grecian]

as for the endgame, when it first came out i thought it was a swiz but i reassessed it six months later and it was very generous.

I think there were two incarnations of TFD - the first one which was really pretty unreasonably difficult and the later one which was much more reasonable. I can't remember what the difference was though, as like you I hardly played the first version.

[dm]

* Bullseye (yeah, you get £1 most games, but it's so boring - be more ambitious than this, manufacturers!)

yeah i'm bored of it now too, but at the time it was a great game and is probably still (along with WWTBAM) the one which does most to attract your average punter to SWPs

[mashman]

Cant believe no-one has mentioned Football Crazy on their dream lists!!

[dm]

Cant believe no-one has mentioned Football Crazy on their dream lists!!

one of the Itbox's last genuinely honest games. Get 500 points, win a prize. Can't get much fairer than that

[grecian]

Cant believe no-one has mentioned Football Crazy on their dream lists!!

one of the Itbox's last genuinely honest games. Get 500 points, win a prize. Can't get much fairer than that

Which equalled 20 separate puzzles solved if the machine was in a bad mood. FC is a pleasure when it's paying but those occasions are increasingly rare nowadays.

[dm]

Cant believe no-one has mentioned Football Crazy on their dream lists!!

one of the Itbox's last genuinely honest games. Get 500 points, win a prize. Can't get much fairer than that

Which equalled 20 separate puzzles solved if the machine was in a bad mood. FC is a pleasure when it's paying but those occasions are increasingly rare nowadays.

well that's true. But at least you knew where you stood.

I've only recently re-discovered FC thanks to Fatbox. Apart from occasions when Itbox went wrong, I had hardly played it for 18 months+

[Nil Satis]

Call off the hounds - the search is over! The nightmare SWP line-up actually exists on a single machine - step forward, the Paragon Pro in the Temple Walkabout in London. I popped in there last night for the first time in ages to be confronted with ALL of Games Warehouse's worst offerings on the same machine:

- Give Us A Clue (the Hangman clone with the horrible 'medieval' graphics)
- Spend It Like Beckham
- Treasure Island
- Quids for Grids
- Pot the Lot
- Snakes and Ladders *Gold* (has the name of a game ever been less suitable?)
- three dodgy card games

and no second screen of different games! Can there have ever been a worst set of games in one place?

Every game was impossible to win more than £1 on (of course) although I did see something bizarre - Quids for Grids offered £10 as a bonus prize just for completing one of the words on the grid but I lost it on the following question (with no Try Agains left):

"Which of these Second Division Water Polo teams did not lose a home game in the 2000 season?"



I think that sums the whole thing up!

[QuizMaster]

Plenty of nightmare SWP lineups around. As a wise man once said, it's not what you play, it's what you don't play that adds up at the end of the year.

Quizmaster returns.

[dangerous]

whoops

[dangerous]

Yes that does seem very nightmarish.

But I like quids for grids. I think its a very fair payer if nothing spectacular