What was the difference between mark I II and III? difgferent reels, coding, playstyles? or ust different buttons and an excuse to release the same machine twice?
the mark I machines used different tech to the mk II and III. i don't know the name of the tech for mark I but i did prefer them. mk I reels were lit by two flurescent tubes, assuming they were working. mk II and III reels are bulb lit. playtypes - on mk I holds and nudges seemed a little more random and frequent, especially after high wins and jackpots. it was quite possible on a mk I that after a £2 token jackpot, you could get two or three holds. on some of these machines, i remeber seeing them hold up to 5 times after a jackpot. reels - the same in all 3 i think although the designs are slightly different in the later versions.
as for the differences between mk II and III, i will leave that to someone else as i havn't played them often enough to know.
i really enjoyed the mk I machines of this era. my favourite was 'each way shuffle' which i would love to see emulated. this one was the one where you could nudge a reel up or down, there two retangular buttons at the top right hand side of the machine to the left of the coin slot, a green one on the left and a red on the right. when you were awarded nudges you would have an option of shuffling the reels it the red and green buttons were flashing. it would also offer an occasional shuffle or hold/hold after shuffle on a new game. on the mk II or above of this machine never offered a nudge and shuffle feature at the same time.
the other feature on these mk Is i remember is that if you had melons or grapes on reels 1 and 3 and you got the hold, it was quite common for it to throw in the matching symbol for the jackpot. it was very common for people to hold melons on reels 1 and 3 rather than hold for the 20p win or possible £1 win on the JPMs.
i think each way shuffle mk I came out just after the mk I each way nudger (the one with the large round buttons). each way shuffle was in nearly every shop for around a year. i seem to remember that some of these received an early exit from some establishments because of continously being emptied, mainly of tokens, and the failure of the technology which seemed to insist on forcing the coins down the back of the machine instead of in the tubes. however, some of these mk I JPMs were kept going for years, i presume due to their popularity, in particular the one where you could gamble nudges 1 to five for a chance to double them. there was still one of these machines in a laundrette in hereford until 1985, and 3 of these machines survived until the early 90s in an arcade on the edgeware road near edgeware road station. i think the arcade was called 'the winning line' at that time.
i have the simulator referred to in this thread in my emulation directory. i will attempt to upload the zip file on here, hope it works. the simulator is good grafically but i seem to remember the programmer could not generate the sounds, seems to be a problem in simulation as well as emulation for these old machines. it does have some sounds, e.g. entering coins and pressing buttons etc. it also has a setup where you can't see the whole machine at once so when you obtain nudges you have to press the right mouse button to move between the top glass and bottom. i'm not sure if larger screen resolutions solve this problem or not. its not a machine i play often.
i think i would rather play the emulated versions without sound until a version with sound comes along. this has happened with FME in the past. e.g. when the original version of the emulator came out, MPU3 machines were available without sound but when a later version came along the sound was incorporated. the same applied to mpu4 machines using the yamaha sound chip were released, emulator could not emulate the sounb until a newer versoun was released.
the other machine i'm looking forward to playing is a jpm called 'bouncer'. this came out around the time of the conversion from £2 to £3 jackpots and when 20p tokens were coming in. there was a screen shot of this machine before mfme2 was released but again i think its a sound problem which has prevented its release.
) you would press the button at the last second when the first two reels had stopped, ie when you had an idea what to nudge for).
