State Of Play Now and Forever ??

[glasagowblue]

Just returned from annual jaunt to Blackpool for the long weekend and had the poorest time of all. Limited nowadays to time "on the play" due to demands of wife and kids but time i did have was, well, wasted.

Is it just me or has the fun and skill factor gone totally from punting on the puggies ?? Anything within the "18's" area is either a lo-tech or nothing more daring than a Global or BFM with as much challenge as heads or tails !!

Sadly we are heading towards the scene i shook my head at while in Vegas some time ago, where zombies sat rapidly pressing the button not caring what came in on the reels nor what fell into their winnings tray only stopping to refill the slot when the nice tune didn't play anymore - we are heading in the same way at an alarming rate.

I am sadly old enough to remember £1 J/p's but even these machines needed some effort to win, be it a gamble or knowledge of the reel layout when nudging(without them printed on the glass). When the ability to hit the L in SKILL was done without a cancel button and the stoping on the "4" in Addders & Ladders meant hitting the 70p by timing... the list goes on but sadly not the future of "players" in the modern "AWP" arcade. The only "skill" now used is trying to remember a so called "method" that may or may not work on a machine which, due to re-chipping doesn't work(if the "method" ever really worked anyway) and fending off some grannie or burberry boy telling you that the logo flashing red is a good thing from the other side of the arcade.

I had taken the stance to reduce my playing out of financial pressures but now see me leaving the AWP's out of boredom and frustration and instead pursue the mystery of the little white ball in a wheel or try counting 208 cards or else try being a "grannie" on a £2K lo-tech safe in the knowledge that the school bell won't effect my audience.

Maybe i have just grown out of it at last after 25 years ?

Maybe i am not alone in my despair ?

Maybe over and out ?

[Carlovski]

L on the Skill? That's going back a bit!
There are still a couple of machines around where you can get some entertainment, and be reasonably succesful taking the value of the boards and waiting for the decent features.
I think you'd find if a company did release a machine with genuine skill based features now which didn't have a block on them then they would be constantly dead.