Shopping centres

Cardinal Sin · Post by **Cardinal Sin** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 12:04 am

Taking a short-cut through one of the decrepit "shopping malls" in Glasgow today, I was amazed to see a sparkling-new Paragon machine gleaming out like a beacon to the great unwashed of Govan. Nestling snugly beside a bingo machine - it was filled with all the favourites of the day - New Bullseye, Word Soup, C + R and 100-1 amongst others. All very profitable, but my major achievement was getting to 4 end-games of DOND / DOND NQ and not even amassing a pound in prize money ... thinking it was gagging I went all the way each time. Maybe it is fair after all....

Anyway, there was a wizened old granny playing the Bingo machine next to it. She was resolutely ignoring the folly of smoking bans and amid much snarling, swearing and smacking of machine, eventually managed to win a full house. 16 pound win was met with rapturous delight and brief namecheck to our Lord Jesus Christ. Her new found affinity with the Messiah then faded as she was offered the Jackpot Full House game and failed to get the Full House.

Her exact words were "Why in the name of Jesus Fuck did you not offer me that in the last fucking game??" I thought about directing her to this site but I didn't put her off her stride.

But all this aside, it's not been the first shopping centre I've wandered through recently that has this sort of thing. A few years ago in Ireland, practically all shopping centres boasted at least one Millionaire but the practice seems to have died out. Are they making a reappearance?

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 12:07 pm

good post YE, in my years of traipsing around London i've seen two paragons in unlicensed venues (both cinemas in finchley and reading (which is not in London anyway)) and a couple of opens in the crystal rooms in leicester square. when Grecian, GGDR et al caught wind of this they soon closed. never seen one in a mall but i kinda suspect that, if i were chavvy enough to go to a travelling funfair, they'd have some old cabs rigged to high Heaven by the toothless carneys.

ROSSKEEN · Post by **ROSSKEEN** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 1:03 pm

Where in Govan was it?

Being someone who visits the area every second Saturday / Sunday and the occasional Weds / Thurs night (take from that what you will) i'm intrigued.....

Cardinal Sin · Post by **Cardinal Sin** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 2:55 pm

Cheers Sue - what on earth is the Crystal Rooms? Sounds like an upmarket hairdressers.

Ross - As far as I know, there's only one shopping centre in Govan. It's called Govan Cross Shopping Centre and it's beside the Underground. I've never seen a higher concentration of "pound shops" in such a small area.

harry 3 · Post by **harry 3** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 3:32 pm

Crystal Rooms is near Leicester Square tube station.

dmac · Post by **dmac** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 4:52 pm

harry 3 · Post by **harry 3** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 5:09 pm

D'oh.

Cardinal Sin · Post by **Cardinal Sin** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 10:49 pm

Heh... seen all those except "Less Toupée" ... is that a real place?

In the unlikely event I ever own a hairdressing salon, I would call it a locksmith.

fotherz · Post by **fotherz** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 7:51 am

Cardinal Richelieu wrote:"Less Toupée"

I just made it up, but theres probably one out there somewhere.

Looks like we've really confused the two threads now.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 4:05 pm

Istenem wrote:good post YE, in my years of traipsing around London i've seen two paragons in unlicensed venues (both cinemas in finchley and reading (which is not in London anyway))

If Wood Green is on anyone's patch, the cinema there used to have a Gamesnet but I can't confirm whether it's still there. I still think my best spot though of a machine in an unusual place would have to be the Give Us A Break that used to be in the A&E waiting room at the Royal Preston Hospital!

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 4:20 pm

Vue cinemas are quite a good bet. The Finchley Road Vue in NW3/6 had one until quite recently, but they seem to have shut the games room for the moment. A certain Vue which I shan't name had a (broken) £1 play Weakest Link standalone as recently as a year ago! I was tempted to ring the distributor to report it broken in the hope they mended it (but couldn't be bothered). The cinema in the N1 centre had a Paragon about a year ago - I think that's a Vue too.

The Trocadero in the West End definitely had a machine a few years back, which I suspect might still be there, as it's full of amusement machines.

Istenem, are you saying that the Opens in the Crystal Rooms are no more? I doubt on my account - they were tight as a gnat's whatsit when I played. (Off-topic, but I'm coming to the opinion that Opens are by far the least promising sort of machine. Played one at the weekend for an hour in an out-of-town venue in a major UK city (which I thought would be rich pickings) and emerged absolutely level. Not the best use of my time with hindsight.)

dmac · Post by **dmac** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 4:46 pm

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 11:12 pm

Nil Satis wrote: If Wood Green is on anyone's patch, the cinema there used to have a Gamesnet but I can't confirm whether it's still there. I still think my best spot though of a machine in an unusual place would have to be the Give Us A Break that used to be in the A&E waiting room at the Royal Preston Hospital!

Once upon a time, there was a Skilltrek in the cafeteria at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:28 am

grecian wrote:Off-topic, but I'm coming to the opinion that Opens are by far the least promising sort of machine.

My view when I first saw these was that the games selection was 90% rubbish - most of the bad games from the last couple of years that I didn't want to see again - and nothing I've seen since then has changed that view! They are like a double-sized ItBox from a year or two ago - far too much dross for anyone to wade through (players or punters) and usually only Deal or No Deal is worth playing. Hopefully the new edition mentioned above will start to improve that situation.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:34 am

dmac wrote:
"The latest and second game update for
the OPEN SWP has been released by
Fatspanner. OPEN Version 3 contains
another 17 top titled games including,The
Great Pretender Trivia Quiz,Who Wants to
be a Millionaire Celebrity Edition, The Big
Reds, Frogger, Scrabble, Nuts and The X
Factor amongst others. [..] All
existing OPEN operators should be receiv-
ing their Version 3 update CD and unique
tent cards in the very near future."

There's one in the pub across the road from me and it says "new games in 4 days". So here's hoping.

The press release is certainly interesting and if Open release some of those games onto their terminals I will start re-visiting them. I wouldn't place any trust in the "new games" announcement though - I think Opens habitually say that whether it's true or not. Anyway, here's hoping.

On Nil Satis' point, have they fixed the DOND bug on Opens then? The last one I played had that bug where it repeated the same question over and over, which made it very easy to reach the endgame. Great stuff? No - all it appeared to mean was that the endgame wasn't ever to going to pay you much more than whatever the first offer was, to keep its losses down. I therefore stopped playing DOND on Opens.