Barcrest good old times

[Original Jase]

For those interested, this was what Barcrest made before online slots. They were 1 of the best back in the day and their fruit machines were so easy to manipulate a jackpot. As Kim would say, "EZ money". This one in particular was 1 of the best made in 1999. 

 

[NudgeShuffle]

These slots are what you would call compensated slots.  If you put enough money in they will eventually pay out a jackpot which meant they could be 'forced' to pay if you had deep enough pockets.

There were lots of legendary emptiers which is a method of adopting certain gameplay which meant the machine would pay out more than it intended which you repeated until empty (they paid out in pound coins).

There were also other methods which while not emptiers allowed maximum value to be extracted at minimum risk of loss.  Anyone familiar with Fireball / Dosh n Pecks probably knows what I'm talking about.

Because upgrades to the machines with any of the above bugs was a manual ROM based upgrade required to be done in person by an engineer sometimes these bugs would be 'live' for ages.

If you were one of the lucky ones in the know these were good times for playing fruities.

The barcrest machines were cracked sometime around early 2000 I think which meant they are all still playable via emulators if you miss that kind of slot

 

 

[Original Jase]

I was 1 of these lucky guys. I knew most of them. Some I learnt after playing a while and then I used to know someone from Glasgow who knew someone who designed programmes for fruit machines and i was lucky enough to find out.

People who designed the programmes would deliberately sometimes put these emptiers in the programmes so as they could go and play the machines themself and make a lot of money. Then they would sell the 'emptier' to family or friends and so on. You wouldn't believe the amount of fruit machines that had these, quite a lot was Barcrest and Vivid who merged Barcrest.. Dosh n Pecks/Battle axe/Fireball etc was all the same way of play for the emptier. You set up the super hold feature by manipulating it for a jackpot with having the blue 7s placed in a certain way. Once this happened you didn't even need to high low it up to the super hold feature you just collected the feature and gambled up to it. Ready to Rock you simply manipulated the bonus to get numerous jackpots without ever playing the main board. Supercharged was 1 of the easiest to empty. You simply played for a board and took away up nudge down nudge and hit 2 buttons at the same time for the top feature. Then you had the Vivid emptiers that were all basically the same. Pie factory for example you could get a free jackpot or 2 by playing for a win spin (not the feature) and gambling up to  £5 then exchange for the feature board. Straight away collect features and gamble up to the feature that was hit a light. You simply miss every light to win 0. Do this pattern until the feature board went to the red invincible mode (guaranteed jackpot) and the next time you gamble up to the £5, just gamble all the way to the jackpot. After this, the next time you get a feature board the board would remain red. You could do this with a few Vivid machines as the were all basically the same. Then you had bar x. This was a crazy 1 and so easy. You simply held the Jackpot, Bar X and O symbol at the same time, the next spin you would get the jackpot 2 times usually and a X win. Then you had golden games that you manipulated the board into the big payout (usually about £100). I liked the skill based empytiers that i usually found out myself and some of them was common sense. For example, the Simpsons beer guide had a feature that was cslled roll out the barrel. It was 1 of the bottom features so hardly anyone would collect it. What it did was spin the reel and land on a symbol randomly. Now if you held the reel before it spun there is a certain symbol (red bar) that if you timed it well would land on the jackpot(common sense really that 1 of the symbols would do this). Big brother was 1 on my favs and in the video you can see a jackpot that was easily manipulated by simply playing for fruit wins and gambling high and low until you could exchange for a board that gave you a jackpot. Sometimes this would trigger a free guaranteed jackpot like you can see in the video. I knew i was getting a jackpot because it does the same pattern if the machine wants to give you 1. Another way of knowing was to play for a feature that had the bonus at least before the exchange and if the feature started above the 'add again' bonus, it was guaranted jackpot. Spider the Biker/Dracs cash had a few clues that was a guaranteed jackpot. For example if Spiker the biker feature board went to the '?' symbol first spin it was guaranteedecided jackpot, Dracs was second shot. This is just a small fraction of what we knew. We used to visit certain areas each day every week to play these machines and made an absolute fortune. The arcades used to chip the programmes to counter this but we was always 1 step ahead. Before I knew all this i used to lose all the time so when I knew all this I saw it as payback. Believe it or not all these machines are predetermined and kind of cheat you in the first place so it's nice to get the upper hand. You got other people who used to empty the machines illegally, so at least what we knew was perfectly legal. Anyway that was the good old days when you had the edge at gambling. 

Sorry for the long book I just typed there. Longest thing I've ever wrote online ever. 

[slotsofun]

I like the even older ones but you just don't see them anymore.

Colossus (gotta loved getting cash attack)

Rollercoaster (original) - for the Nemesis feature

Big Ghoulies

Miami Dice (video slot)