Fruit Machine Chat

i got down there for a couple of hours yesterday. there was a most impressive display of eye candy and equally many spotty chavs. there was also an old biddy who sat at the 2p waterfalls for the whole time and some guy daytripping from the funny farm doing the kosovo jive whilst reeking of poo. he was standing next to me in the wessex coin stand doing some trick on a club AWP which kept rolling in JP. anyway, in overview of the machines (AWPs) it was like a noel edmonds fan club: dond was ubiquitous. but about the SWP offer...

it appears that gwhl had nothing new to promote except a zone of non-pay games, i wasted some time whacking a monkey across the screen caveman capersesque but there was no new £££ content.

there were only two twitboxes in the whole of earl's court and these were being constantly played (dond/wwtbam/nuts) by bored exhibitors from the other stands it looked like there wasn't anything to get excited about. they did have a new cabinet called a barry but not sure if this is for the domestic market as all the currency was in euros (content was the same as itbox).

i didn't see any evidence of gamesnet unless a new cabinet slipped under my radar.

ind:e/fatbox was by far the most interesting thing there. two new cabinets (one is on pic 13 below) and quite a few new games:
treasure island exactly as you'd expect, dig up a treasure map, answer Qs and win no more than £1.
trivia whiz bar quiz clone of pub quiz.
new blockbusters misses the point of answers beginning with the chosen letter; every hexagon says Q on it.
golden boot 2 seems the same game but the matrix is only 4x5 (i think). i only played it once and didn't clear it so not sure what happens after that.
hangman paparazzi the bastard child of shoot the stars & ant&dec. very stylish graphics and gameplay, better than anything else on the market except...
pub series cricket brilliant. see picture 14. now i'm a big fan of cricket and this game was by far and away the one which was being played most in the hall. you select to play for England against australia and then fend off some dolly-drops using true skill . it is very playable and the dynamic graphics are a cut above. the fieldsmen have mr tickle arms though, which is irritating. another irritation is that i didn't manage to hit any sixes.
every player has a moustache which is just how it should be.
big money word up i'll post about this elsewhere.

there was also a sacred relic (see picture 15) tempting me, the minxes. this machine was a one-off on one of the distributor's stands. it was like a fatbox/ind:e with archived content unlocked. peculiar. in retrospect i should probably have investigated a bit more on this.

in other news, i got a free keyring from fat spanner.

apologies for my shoddy camerawork but here are three pictures.

Big Money Word up?! Don't they know about the obsessives on here

Does this mean another 30 page topic on its way?!

Like the look of the Merv Hughes clones cricket game. Presume you did better than the real England managed last night.

Cricket sounds interesting if it's true skill.

What's the Great Escape then? You've taken a snap of it but make no mention in your report.

great escape is a forgettable Q&A game in the mould of so many which have gone before (iirc it was the old pick squares from a matrix job; only played it once). i don't remember much about it except the obvious background music getting annoying during my token 50p.

re. the cricket, it was set on true skill at ATEI but as you'll know the games are all set on easiest possible mode at the fair. however, that said, there is enough variation in the deliveries of the bowlers and your directional aiming to make it tricky without diluting the S of SWP. the spoiler appears to be the go-go-gadget fieldsmen. but ZAX, i'm afraid i was nearly as poor as the real deal. it is one of those where a little spadework could be worth your while.
if/when they set it into the wild it will get played by normal pub folk.

Pub Series Cricket at the ATEI is the same version as on-site

It is true skill, just takes some practice.

Just out of interest, in picture 13 it appears that there is a square with the spot the difference deluze logo inside it. However, it looks slightly different to the version that im used to. Does anyone know if there is actually a new version of spot the difference by Sabec/MIB???


Would be interested to hear if so. Cheers

i was extending the empire in westminster yesterday (moderately successful). came across the first of these cabinets i've seen in the wild. some of you gentlemen may have seen them but there is now an ind:ego cabinet in the litten tree on artillery row off horseferry road.

only played the cricket game twice but from the look of the scoreboardit had been well-played by the locals already.

anyway if any of you* fancy getting good at the new games you might want to have a look in there.

overall the area was pretty generous in the two hours i was around.

* does not apply to cool as he is barred

Im only barred from one Litten Tree , Bournemouth!

There is one in the Lamb (I think that's it's name) in Leadenhall market. I waited twenty minutes for some chaps to stop playing t'other night; unfortunately they didn't and I had to head off. Looking forward to playing this at some stage though.