Fruit Machine Chat

As I'm interested in AWPs, I also like the odd fairground for a ride and punt. My local one is in town at the moment. Although I spunked £12 over all, it was across 9 machines and it was good to see the £25 jackpot era again. This is why I've posted under good experiences.

Doctors & Nurses £25 - This is the first time I've seen it as a cat C as it's normally £5 jp. The £5 version is bad enough so I didn't want to get too involved here. Once it finally got boarding, it threw in an early superboard with 7 rolls on the 1-6 die. The cash meter reached £5.20, then the 7th roll on the 1-6 die sent me outwards by 1 layer onto a redundant icon, so I just collected the meter.

Next up, I saw 3 of the darts clones side-by-side, all £25 - Two of them featured a normal dart board while the third one was called Lucky Strike with a mining theme, but is essentially the same as darts. I got somewhat stung by Yabba Dabba then clawed some of it back from Lucky Strike. The shuffle button was broken on this so I imagine it has shafted a few people already.

King Ker Ching £25 - I liked Gimme Gimme Gimme, but Barcrest overdid these in my opinion, and the Maygay versions (like this one) tended to play particularly bad. I normally punt a couple of quid to test the waters otherwise I then I stand well clear. This time round, £2 in, it gave me an early £4 shot so I chickened out with that.

Next was the Vampire version of Bellfruit Monopoly, £5 - This is by Mazooma though, but the same in every respect. Can't remember what it was called though. Get tic-tac-toe in view to start boarding and tic-tac-toe on the winline to enter the upper Monopoly board. Collect 4 phases of the moon to double the value of the properties, and get 3 like-coloured properties for a barcode feature. This particular machine had the volume turned up so high that the speakers were distorting and sounded like they were on their way out. I got a few boards out of this, didn't play particularly well though. The best I got was a £2.70 cash meter while playing the Monopoly board.

LOTR £25 - This is part 2 I think, one of the diamond-shaped grid games like Alien. This was turned off though.

Big Brother £15 - This played pretty decent, recycled a few £4 boards just for fun. I always got on with BB but I never got on with PCB or Frenzy for some bizarre reason. Perhaps PCB/Frenzy are getting 'done' where BB isn't? Or maybe it's down to how many times the 3 machines got chipped.

Finally, King Kebab on £25 - I know this better as Austin Powers. Didn't do brilliantly on this. One board gave me 3 feature offers but no supers or megas. I collected a feature where it span the middle reel really fast and you press start to stop it. Of course I wound up with a cherry lol.

After these 9 machines, I went on a couple of rides, then chanced Doctors & Nurses again where it promptly ate all of my spare change :-P

I went to the fair today and only £5 jackas

Yeah they're normally cat D at fairs. I've never see so many cat Cs in this setting before.

have to be careful on fair's,pikey fire is the worst kind

Anyone who started their career off on the barcrest darts clones era in my opinion were lucky to have it so easy, you could force one of these from a not too good state and still walk away with a profit! It sounds like you had a good day there anyway Mr Move It, and your few quid loss sounds like you got some value for money aswell so nice one.

There's a travelling fair that still has a Barcrest Cash Run on £10. Ready to rock you again..... That machine was the dogs bolix.

pickareel wrote:have to be careful on fair's,pikey fire is the worst kind

They are utterly ruthless mate without a shadow of a doubt, scared to walk away with a nicker raise nevermind a fat pot!

Stevie S wrote:Anyone who started their career off on the barcrest darts clones era in my opinion were lucky to have it so easy, you could force one of these from a not too good state and still walk away with a profit! It sounds like you had a good day there anyway Mr Move It, and your few quid loss sounds like you got some value for money aswell so nice one.

Every showboat round here had a Darts and Space Raiders. At one point Birkenhead had...

Space Raiders
Pink Panther
Yabba Dabba Darts
Round The Bend
Vamp it Up
Dragon Drop

Now it's got a Double Deal, Grail and Chipped PAC

Getting a load of boards in a row on an extreme would probably resulted in you getting a hiding, but saying that, £25 extremes are rare as rocking horse shit now so i'd have probably risked it for nostalgia's sake.

Further to that, god knows what dodgy chips those barcrests are on, so you did very well not getting involved.

The one that comes round here has a load of £5 machines that just don't behave like £5 machines usually do, probably on about 40% payout.

Drpepper wrote:Getting a load of boards in a row on an extreme would probably resulted in you getting a hiding, but saying that, £25 extremes are rare as rocking horse shit now so i'd have probably risked it for nostalgia's sake.

Further to that, god knows what dodgy chips those barcrests are on, so you did very well not getting involved.

There's 3 in one place round here lol.

AMK wrote:

Stevie S wrote:Anyone who started their career off on the barcrest darts clones era in my opinion were lucky to have it so easy, you could force one of these from a not too good state and still walk away with a profit! It sounds like you had a good day there anyway Mr Move It, and your few quid loss sounds like you got some value for money aswell so nice one.

Every showboat round here had a Darts and Space Raiders. At one point Birkenhead had...

Space Raiders
Pink Panther
Yabba Dabba Darts
Round The Bend
Vamp it Up
Dragon Drop

Now it's got a Double Deal, Grail and Chipped PAC

The Wirral now has to be one of the worst places in the whole country for decent machines now mate, tons of double donds and shitty tioli machines. :x

AMK wrote:

Drpepper wrote:Getting a load of boards in a row on an extreme would probably resulted in you getting a hiding, but saying that, £25 extremes are rare as rocking horse shit now so i'd have probably risked it for nostalgia's sake.

Further to that, god knows what dodgy chips those barcrests are on, so you did very well not getting involved.

There's 3 in one place round here lol.

Jesus, that's me told lol, havn't seen a £25 machine, never mind a £25 extreme for ages! just assumed that all the £25 extremes were now £5 conversions.

AMK wrote:

Drpepper wrote:Getting a load of boards in a row on an extreme would probably resulted in you getting a hiding, but saying that, £25 extremes are rare as rocking horse shit now so i'd have probably risked it for nostalgia's sake.

Further to that, god knows what dodgy chips those barcrests are on, so you did very well not getting involved.

There's 3 in one place round here lol.

You puzzle the fuck out of me to be honest mate, one minute you know what Birkenhead has, and the next your talking about some spoons miles away! What is the score with you, did some army doctor clone you about 20 times so you could cover everywhere in the country in one foul swoop?

£25 Hell Raiser
£25 Yabba Dabba
£25 Hyper Viper
£25 Horn of Plenty
£25 Around the Board in 40 days
£25 Monopoly wonders of the world
£35 CYBTB
£35 Manic Muncher
£35 Walk of Wealth
£70 Army thing, always forget the name


That's the lineup of slots where I am now. Load of 10p things like PCB, IJ3 and reds hehe

Thanks guys.

Yeah I've had a small amount of pikey fire myself a few years back. I changed a fiver at an arcade booth so that I could play their old Barcrest Buccaneer £5 jp. The guy then stepped out of his booth and was watching every press I was making, laser eyes. I found it distracting so I left after a couple of quid in. I didn't know of the concept of 'fire' at the time, but looking back, I can't think of anything I did wrong. All I could think of now is that somebody had raped the machine earlier. Or perhaps the attendant has barred somebody earlier that day and then they sent me in to "do" his machines lol.

In the same fairground, different arcade though, I had an invincible on Vivid's Hypnotic for £25 jp repeater, which repeated up to £75 and the guy in that booth didn't bat an eyelid.