Fruit Machine Chat

Went for an "SWP walk" across bits of London yesterday and noted three interesting things:

1. A Paragon where the standard games menu was only a sub-menu. The main front screen was a choice-of-three menu offering either cash games (which went straight to the "standard" menu), non-cash games (which went to Megatouch) or tournament play (which again seemed to go to Megatouch). Anyone seen this anywhere else or is this some sort of test site? I should add that the games line-up was the standard "pays and plays" line-up introduced a few months ago i.e. not the new line-up that Nil Satis and I saw at GW a while back.

2. An itBox (which coincidentally had C4 on it!) where I put in one quid to play and the itBox started emitting a loud siren noise. Literally everyone in a large and crowded pub turned their heads as one to look at me - extremely embarrassing. After about 90 seconds it stopped and the machine wouldn't take coin any more, whereupon I made my excuses and left. This was similar to an error I've experienced before on the Paragons, although obviously a different cabinet. Anyone seen this before?

3. An old Maygay standalone Super Clue cabinet - an amazing find as this must be a good 11-12 years old now. Sadly my initial excitement dissipated when I saw it was being used to host one of those very basic poker games which one finds in ropey north London Irish pubs - but was still good to see it again for nostalgia's sake. Anyone still have any standalone cabinets from that era on their rounds?

I've seen a dozen or so of the 3 option paragons, first one I saw was at least a couple of months back. I guess it is a test site of sorts as the vast majority of machines have not moved over to this system.

Re. Point two. This happened to me in the Paxton's Head in Knightsbridge. I put £2 in the ItBox, a massive siren went off, and when it had stopped there was £1 in there. Accusing me of foul play while it was stealing a quid off me – classy.

grecian wrote:1. A Paragon where the standard games menu was only a sub-menu. The main front screen was a choice-of-three menu offering either cash games (which went straight to the "standard" menu), non-cash games (which went to Megatouch) or tournament play (which again seemed to go to Megatouch).

These are actually relatively common out in the sticks. They are usually very similar in the range of games available to 'normal' builds, with the only difference being the extra menu stage.

Talking of menus, I saw one of those Opens with the second screen yesterday, where the second screen has no purpose other than advertising what you are playing. The menu was the new Open menu and it's even more maddening that the previous one. Trying to 'force' a game you like to appear by trying every similar game you can think of yields no joy and the new 'Recent Games' menu is even more hopeless - if you've had six goes at one game, that is all that is displayed, rather than the last six unique games. It even has the annoying habit of displaying games in 'zero credit' mode (after you've just collected some winnings) that then disappear when you put another £1 in. The whole thing is an object lesson in how NOT to put a menu system together.

civ77 wrote:I've seen a dozen or so of the 3 option paragons

There's one in SE London too.

There's loads of Games Warehouse / Paragon Quiz machines with the 3 menu front screen around Norfolk. DP Leisure have them and also Tunmore. I'm sure I seen an Essex Leisure unit aswell.

grecian wrote:Went for an "SWP walk" across bits of London yesterday and noted three interesting things:

1. A Paragon where the standard games menu was only a sub-menu. The main front screen was a choice-of-three menu offering either cash games (which went straight to the "standard" menu), non-cash games (which went to Megatouch) or tournament play (which again seemed to go to Megatouch). Anyone seen this anywhere else or is this some sort of test site? I should add that the games line-up was the standard "pays and plays" line-up introduced a few months ago i.e. not the new line-up that Nil Satis and I saw at GW a while back.

I think they look like that when they are running a Megatouch tournament, and when it is finished the menu returns to normal. The latest menu has the tournament as a tab at the bottom of the menu, but if you press it says something like tournaments not available.

Another two interesting finds yesterday:

1. Something calling itself an "itBox black". This was shaped exactly like a normal itBox but coloured black and with a texture akin to woodchip wallpaper (I kid you not). It had one of the unnumbered games line-ups from a while back, which very pleasingly included Jiggy Bank. Anyone seen any of these itBox blacks?

2. I don't usually play it, but happened to stick 50p in Frogger 2 on a Paragon which has recently appeared near my office. I noted that the full scoreboard was taken up by scores of 4500+ by one player called "S". Can someone who plays this regularly confirm to me that 4500+ is a pretty special score? I thought you got about c. 250 points for a set of questions so that looks like eighteen or nineteen sets to me. I wonder if "S" stands for the obvious - will have to check other Frogger 2 scoreboards in London. Am I wrong in having written this game off as not worth playing a long while back?

grecian wrote:Another two interesting finds yesterday:

1. Something calling itself an "itBox black". This was shaped exactly like a normal itBox but coloured black and with a texture akin to woodchip wallpaper (I kid you not). It had one of the unnumbered games line-ups from a while back, which very pleasingly included Jiggy Bank. Anyone seen any of these itBox blacks?

Yes, I think I've seen one of these.

4,500 on Frogger is 'a bit tasty'. I once won £7 on this game but with a sub-3000 score, and a month's worth of luck.

xyz

Yep, one appeared here a while back with connect 4! I took a bit out, before being totally banned from said pub after i spanked 'em for a load in C4 round 1. Oh well!

Here's that Frogger scoreboard. Absolutely superb - I've not seen anything like this anywhere. This is either a Suri-level player (maybe Suri himself) or someone with a method on this game, I'm certain.