£5 25p play

[kidgloves]

£5 25p play are quite common in bowling alleys. The thing that gets me is the profile. You take your chances, like everyone but depending on the manufacturer you can get a very different game.
Barcrests tend to be lesh harsh, rapidly progressive, the same can be said of older Bfms.
I played a Stack Attack (red) today whilst killing some time waiting for a film to start at the cinema.
It was, in a nutshell, shit. It's profile was exactly that of it's £25 counterpart. I was interested to see if the gameplay would alter much and was very dissapointed.
Only showing one or two reds on the boards, gamble still losing on the 2nd/3rd gamble up the nudge side. Hell, it even played worse at some points than it's big brother. There was no progression infact, it just didn't have the capability to adapt the profile to suit the smaller Jackpot, large stake.
We all know how easy it is to put an easy tenner into a red for one feature, and get shafted. Well, this was just the same and as all the win decals were smaller then gambling up against the tight hi/lo reels that we all know Red's have was nigh on an impossibility.
Any family down there that *may* want to play a fruit machine for amusement first and the possibility of financial gain second would get a very unsatisfying game.
The same bowling alley, 2 years ago still operated the £5/25p policy but the machines were much more forgiving as they were older programs and profiles. Crazy fruits down under could give a fiver most features if you knew what you were doing, the Battle Axe did unheard of things like skill gambles and super modes galore. The current crop of machines offer nothing more than the harsh reality of pub machines set on £25, albeit for even less an enticing prize.
The shame is, they could get it so right if they just put the effort into the programming, even at this stake/Jp. But no, soldier on with the current profile and put people right off.
On a lighter note, the film "The Departed" I highly recommend. Just short of 2 and a half hours long I wondered about getting bored but the missus and I didn't get distracted. Nice to see Jack Nicholson about again. Tried to pre-book Saw III but 'computer says no' at the box office until next Tuesday. Nice one, the friggin things been advertised nationally for a couple of weeks now and they can't start booking until 3 days before the release date. Someone needs to go figure. Might need to take my custom to a place where the computers work more than 3 days in advance.

[cyberface]

id never play a machine on stakes like that.

when they changed the licencing we changed loads of our machines (mainly bar x5/10's and electrocoin) to £5/20p some sites they do really well, but most people stopped playing them all together.