Ooohhh one of my favourite EPOCH machines, and indeed one I was really hoping there'd be a layout for in the MFMEV5 era
Only ever played a single real one of these, but it had a surprisingly long tenure in a local pub - (they got their machines from an independent local operator as they weren't a brewery pub, so machines that made a decent cashbox were sometimes left onsite for ages) - so I played that one Reel Good Time machine on many occasions.
This to me is a perfect example of why Global were so good at £25 AWPs, managing to inject a very healthy dose of the 'AMUSEMENT' aspect into the proceedings, at a time when you had absolutely feral machines like Reds doing the rounds. (Not that there was anything wrong with Reds, I liked them back then and I love them emulated, but you'd have a hard job suggesting they offered much in the way of 'amusement', being as they were pretty hardcore f***ers where everyone knew the true jackpot was the big tops that could be £100 even in the £25 era.)
Reel Good Time was a machine I very much looked forward to playing on a session (back then there were about fifteen AWPs in town, so a good all-dayer of beers and gambling was entirely possible), you'd never come too far unstuck on it, and there was always the possibility of it doing (an admittedly rather rare) £50. It also liked to do curious amounts off the mega series, going past £25 didn't guarantee another £25, going up past £25 in blocks of £5/£10 instead.
Basically, you'd never really win that much, but never lose that much either, it was if you will, a sort of 'friendly' AWP.
(The block at £15 can be quite amusing, especially if you can reliably hit the ROLL EVEN and suchlike off the mystery on the top board, as it begrudgingly lands on a 10px2 (with all the REEL GOOD TIME logo filled making it x2), bins you back down to the bottom board, get back to the top with a key, straight to a mystery, hit ROLL EVEN, move to another 20p, mystery, and so on. Even if you miss the ROLL EVEN to a 1, you can just gamble higher on the bottom board on they key again, to have another go. It'll do this until everything's capped out at £15 (super series, £15 cashpot, £15 cash stack and the £15 feature, and then finally kill you off, almost like it feels sorry about doing so ).)
One of the best things this has going for it is a great sound package, with some really nice tunes. The one I played was one of that rather rare breed of pub AWP where the volume was turned up a reasonable amount, so if the pub was fairly quiet it was possible to hear it somewhat clearly, and the splendid music added nicely to whole experience.
So all that said this is a fantastic machine to see emulated, particularly so with a Stoney DX. Many thanks for this release Stoney, your layout output for MFMEV5 has been superb and in all honesty I haven't given a lot of your work the time it deserves, but I'll get round to it in due course, however Reel Good Time was worth making some extra time for, and it was brilliant to play this machine again, after so many years since I've been able to play a real one
Also I really like photo DXs, they have a unique look about them that isn't necessarily 'better' than flyer based DXs, but does confer a certain realness to the experience that I'm very fond of.
Thanks for a wonderful release