Download The Black Hole by BJ 2p play with £1.50 jackp

  but couldn't get it to post in its proper place of MPU3/4 Classics.

In December last year a Barcrest MPU3 Black Hole came up on Fleabay and I just happened to remark that we didn't have the ROMs for the machine. Player, who had originally provided a set of ROMs from his own machine reposted them. For some reason the original set he had provided didn't run in the emulator, but Ploggy and HTS tried the new set and confirmed it was a runner. I had always wanted to do an emulation fo a machine I had actually played, which is quite a tricky ask on the basis I stopped playing them in the late 80's. I did however remember this little beauty. Alex over at the Mecca actually then released a classic within 24 hours of the ROMs being posted. I cannot compete with that sort of timescale, but having started the layout my OCD took over and I had to finish it, and here it is, in all its glory.

2p per play with a £1.50 jackpot. Wins do come frequently and not too hard to jackpot if forced. Shame you cannot gamble all the way to the jackpot - these were fixed to gambling to a 30p maximum (grapes) from a lower win. Anyway, download it and revel in the sound of that machine gun fire as you hit the exchange button, and time-warp yourself back to that dodgy backstreet arcade in 1984......

There were 4 lamps that lit in the lamp test, but as far as I can tell they were not used in play or in attract mode. Additionally lamp 16 for the WARP panel only seems to light up in attract mode; though I think it would be better during play if it lit up when one of the WARP combos qualified for 2 nudges as unlike Exchanges Unlimited they went for some weird looking grid rather than a 3 x 3. It took so long to work that one out I nearly went down the Options Unlimited route of separating out the nudge lines, but I got there in the end.

I believe the original font used on the machine was Data'70, but that costs about £30 a pop and you wouldn't thank me for it, but there is a similar looking font that is a freebie called Para AminoBenzoic and I have included the font file with the release. Just save it to your C:\Windows\Fonts directory.

Huge thanks to Player at the Mecca for posting the ROMs, Ploggy and HTS for confirming it was a runner and the meter settings, TommyC for sourcing the similar font, Larabie Fonts for supplying said font, Pandy for some reel images and the emulator sourcerer for MFME.

Plays quite happily in most versions of MFME; I use 3.2 but plays equally well on 10.1.

I know Pook was after some photos from the seller on Fleabay, so maybe a DX is in the pipeline at some stage.

Shortcuts are
¬ Cancel
1 Left Hold/Nudge Down
2 Middle Hold/Nudge Down
3 Right Hold/Nudge Down
4 Left Nudge Up
5 Middle Nudge Up
6 Right Nudge Up
7 Insert 2p
8 Insert 10p
9 Insert 20p
0 Insert 50p
A Autonudge
E Exchange
C Start/Collect
Space start/Gamble

May the (jackpot) force be with you.

bj