This forum I see as one for newer style machines rather than the old stuff, for which I usually post at the Mecca. Here is a copy of a post I made there earlier tonight about my favourite fruit machine of all time, which just so happens to be 30 years old this month.
Why a birthday thread for a fruit machine. Well, because Line Up is a cool 30 years old this year and it was 30 years ago this month that Barcrest foist onto the world what I consider to be the best AWP ever made. This is a rather slanted view as I only played them in the wild from something like '82 through to '87, so there are literally hundreds I have never played.
Can I describe why I like Line Up so much. Well for me there are 3 versions of Line UP made by Barcrest for MPU3; the originally released one with the ROM set that would allow you to do the £2 feature hold trick, the re-chipped equivalent of this that did not do the trick and Super Line Up, which was the £3 jackpot equivalent that some were converted to on the change of the maximum allowable jackpot size later on in 1983?? I like them all equally as they all play very similarly. The original perhaps has the edge for me as you felt like you getting one over on the arcade owner when the £2 feature hold paid off, even though all you were actually doing was eating into the win percentage and causing some very flat play subsequently at times; it was definitely no emptier.
Line Up had numbers, lots of them and some big ones too. Lite-a-Nudge with its 2's and 1's was poxy by comparison - Line Up had 3's and 4' as well as 9's and 10's. You could move up the feature board so damned
fast. Of course, it is all in the maths with that feature board. If you had 9 or 18 in numbers drop in it was pointless counting up whether you would hit a win square by holding them all as multiples of 3 would get you nowhere, unless you were starting from a winning square. What you needed was a 1, 4 or 10 to go with your 9 and that would get you to a win square from the start. What about a 2 with your 3 or 9? Well that was no good on its own, but from the start it is easy to see that 5 in total would take you to the 20p win square if everything held, 8 would
take you to 4 nudges, 11 would take you to 50p, 14 would go to 8 nudges (incredibly rare if that one held) and 17 would take you £1 if they all held (strangely far more common that 14 holding). For the record, if 20 came in and held then that would take you to 12 nudges, but I don't recall ever getting that in actual play.
What was the £2 feature hold you ask. Well there are some videos on YouTube that show this. It was a trick on the original Line Up that made use of some sloppy coding design on Barcrest's part. If after playing your last credit you left the machine and let it go through its attract mode sequence, during that attract mode it spells the word
"play" through the credit alpha. After it has spelt the word "play", the machine would reset the position on the feature board depending on a number of factors. If a win was on the win-line then the feature board
would remain on the win value, else if the numbers on the win-line + the value on the feature board at the end of the last credit = a winning £ value amount then reset to that winning square, else reset back to square 3. Not quite sure why the coders put in there to reset to the next higher win value if the numbers would take you there, maybe the encourage the punter by taking them up the board. Well it didn't take us long to realise that if the next highest win square was £2 and the machine took you there after the attract mode sequence and it feature held then you would win a jackpot. And that is what we did, time and time again. As I said before, it wasn't an emptier, but did allow you longer playing time.
Here is a video of the £2 feature hold in action - here the player didn't wait for Play on the credit alpha, but it was just about to appear and we always used to wait for it as it was a wasted opportunity if you put your coin in too early.
We also used to make use of the reset to square 3. Say you had 10 in numbers and you weren't on a win square and 10 didn't take you to a win square. You would let the machine go through the attract mode, wait for
play in alpha, then put your coin in. If the machine held then you would hold all 3 reels and it would go to square 13 on the feature board = £0.30 win. Exchange for 4 nudges and who knows where it would end
up.
So, did taking the original chip away change the game. Well, yes it did, but there were still tricks. The middle cherry hold is a classic - this is a genuine 1 in 4.8 chance of a 20p win dropping in. One of my favourites is 2 bells dropping in for £0.20. If the fruit on the third reel had no numbers, or was the cherry with a 9 on it I would collect
the £0.20 and hope for a hold. If it held, you hold all three and the 9 on the bell would take you to 6 nudges, or the 9 on the cherry as well would take you to 8 nudges. The latter needed 1 nudge gamble for 3 bells, and a guaranteed £1 for 6 nudges anyway, the former may well be a bells jackpot with 6 nudges. You could do the same with 2 bars and the cherry with a 9 on it, which again was a guaranteed £2 jackpot, but far rarer than the bells.
So, I raise my glass to Line Up, my absolute favourite fruitie of all time. I do hope one day to be reunited with a set of original ROMs, I also hope that some day a top notch DX is released of the Barcrest version. The DX'ing techniques these days are far superior to those back in the day when Pandy released all his versions. Pete_W, I thank you for your version, which is the one I play most often on the emulator, which is most days and thanks to the MPU3 SAS under which banner it was released.
I dare say if and when we next go to Paul's or Vinny's you will see me plugging away at my old favourite, piling out the jackpots with regular monotony. I just never get bored. An amazing machine. Thanks Barcrest for making it and to have such vision 30 years ago.
Cheers
Gazza
