Fruit Machine Chat

1. ItBox version 48 now out - I've seen it in London so I expect it's been about elsewhere for a bit. New games include Catchphrase and Battleships (the version with the turret-firing endgame) - didn't immediately note what had been booted off, but DOND, Nuts and 1 v 100 were all on there.

2. Bad news is that I played a GamesNet last night with the up-to-date blue menu screens and NO BIG MATCH WORLD CUP! Could our favourite game be being withdrawn by GamesNet? Let's hope not. Does anyone know what the point of the pound game Bullseye on GamesNet is? It seems identical to the 50p version. Does it give twice as much money out on average? I presume it does.

Catchphrase is Hangman except you get a picture clue rather than a phrase to help you. It could be good but needs to be played more before I can decide if it can take the hard-earned away from DOND.

echoes wrote:Catchphrase is Hangman except you get a picture clue rather than a phrase to help you. It could be good but needs to be played more before I can decide if it can take the hard-earned away from DOND.

Yes; I thought it was a bit of a payer on occasional plays on FatBoxes (IIRC) but didn't take anything in three goes on the ItBox yesterday evening. In particular I thought the speed was sluggish but that could have been the machine I was playing on.

grecian wrote: 2. Bad news is that I played a GamesNet last night with the up-to-date blue menu screens and NO BIG MATCH WORLD CUP! Could our favourite game be being withdrawn by GamesNet? Let's hope not. Does anyone know what the point of the pound game Bullseye on GamesNet is? It seems identical to the 50p version. Does it give twice as much money out on average? I presume it does.

WHY have I never even attempted this before? Probably because I don't know much about football, except about Scottish 2nd division teams... played it for the 1st time tonight, won 6 quid without breaking a sweat. It could have been more but I was in a rush.

I've wasted my life.

Catchphrase seems identical to Hangman in payout chances etc. not sure if the points per phrase bit is rigged either. The bonus round is a bit of a nightmare as well cos you have to whack well before the box you want comes up. Best bits are being able to shout RIGGGHHT and ITS GOOD BUT ITS NOT RIGHT and await the catchphrase where Mr Chips cracks one off in a hilarious cockup featured in all those 'It shouldnt happen on TV' progs

theres also Shoot for the Stars as well, or Shoot the Stars as I thought it was called. Maybe there should be such a game. Its another Hangman type game only this time you can reveal as much of the picture of the star you want as long as you accept time debits for doing so. Or you can just try and guess the star. Of course, their definition of star and your definition of star are a zillion miles apart ie even when you hack your way to the answer and they show you the picture you are noe the wiser. And none the richer for knowing...

ZAX wrote: Best bits are being able to shout RIGGGHHT and ITS GOOD BUT ITS NOT RIGHT and await the catchphrase where Mr Chips cracks one off in a hilarious cockup featured in all those 'It shouldnt happen on TV' progs

i enjoyed that.

keep 'em coming ZAX.

grecian wrote:Does anyone know what the point of the pound game Bullseye on GamesNet is? It seems identical to the 50p version. Does it give twice as much money out on average? I presume it does.

Ditto the £1 Hangman which crops up on a few Gamesnets. That one seems truly pointless - you don't even get the impression that the payout rate is higher.

ZAX wrote:The bonus round is a bit of a nightmare as well cos you have to whack well before the box you want comes up.

I played this one (Catchphrase) for the first time yesterday and it decided to pretend to play nicely and give me £4 for the first phrase only to kill me on the "bonus", exactly as Zax describes. How can it be a bonus when up to a quarter of the options are losers (based on my games yesterday) and you have absolutely no control on where it stops? I know fruit machines have non-skill bonuses that kill you 80-90% of the time but quiz games rarely if ever do this - off the top of my head I can only think of that crappy Football Quiz game on the Gamesnets. The bonus option is therefore to be avoided at all costs as (I'd have a wild guess at this one ) will be the game itself after the early easy win it gives out here or there to tempt you in.

i'd have to disagree on this; once i'd worked out how the bonus board worked i never missed what i wanted (admittedly this is on ind:e so i don't know if the the coding has been interfered with subsequently). if the twitbox plays the same i'd be confident of hitting the spot prizes with no trouble, it is certainly slow enough to pick the best offer, if it really is pot luck where you land i'd advise:
a. eschew ? squares
b. avoid the game
c. boycott itboxes

i will have a go on v1.48 this evening and with any luck v1.49 at ATEI tomorrow. anyone else from here been/planning to go?

[quote="unknownpseudonym"]i'd have to disagree on this]

For those that haven't seen the game, the way the bonus works is that there are 25 squares which you get a brief look at first, but this is by no means long enough to see what each one contains, only to get an impression of where the green (good) and red (bad) squares are. The highlighted square then starts to 'snake' around the squares on the board. You then press the Select button and the 'snake's head' contains moving for a few squares before stopping on a square.

The only way I could see that you could predict this is if it always moves on for an exact number of squares after your press of the Select button is registered and hence you were able to count back from the square(s) you wanted to hit and made sure that you pressed the button at the correct point to handle the overshoot. I didn't get the impression that the extra movement was the same number of squares each time but I may be wrong on that.

In any case the good options offered by the bonus all seemed pretty trivial - Extra Letter being the most common - so I'd be surprised if all this rigmarole proved to be worth it. I'd also be surprised if this game has any longterm playability in it - the games companies are too cowardly to allow that. I won't be at ATEI but that's what I'd be telling them if I were!

In any case the good options offered by the bonus all seemed pretty trivial - Extra Letter being the most common - so I'd be surprised if all this rigmarole proved to be worth it. I'd also be surprised if this game has any longterm playability in it - the games companies are too cowardly to allow that. I won't be at ATEI but that's what I'd be telling them if I were![/quote]

Nil

Might have been a bit harsh on this as just been down the boozer for lunchtime jaunt and hit £5 instant win on the bonuses plus had three easy £2 wins amongst the losses so came out up. I will say though that the 'snake' goes in different directions and on my instant win seemed slow enough to predict it would hit the fourth one ahead of when I pressed the button. On other games it semmed to 'add one' to put me in trouble. I quite like the game, but then thats probably nostalgia and too many wasted sat/sun evenings watching this rubbish.

I am still awaiting the catchphrases 'Many a mickle makes a muckle' and 'ask not what you can do for your country but etc etc' for a mighty 50 points

ZAX wrote:Might have been a bit harsh on this as just been down the boozer for lunchtime jaunt and hit £5 instant win on the bonuses plus had three easy £2 wins amongst the losses so came out up. I will say though that the 'snake' goes in different directions and on my instant win seemed slow enough to predict it would hit the fourth one ahead of when I pressed the button. On other games it semmed to 'add one' to put me in trouble.

This was actually the point I was making - you will get offered the odd spot prize by a game like this to make you keep playing but if you can't reliably predict the way the Bonus works, you can't use it if you want to ensure that you don't get hit with a Game Over. We may both be wrong on this and the Bonus may in fact be a true skill feature that can be mastered with practice but the fact that the selection overshoots the place where you actually press the button makes me suspect it won't prove to be skill-based. It would then be the equivalent of choosing one of the four bonus 'posters' in Hangman after carefully following their movements only to then be given a different poster to the one you selected.

As for the catchphrases, based on the Caveman Capers experience I'd expect to see The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog to put in an appearance if anyone wins more than a fiver...