Great Original Games Abandoned By Developers

Stubble · Post by **Stubble** » Fri May 01, 2015 12:19 am

Title says it all really. Some candidates to get us started:

Top Trumps
Side Splitter / Some Like It Hot (Bell Fruit, 2001ish)
Overload (Barcrest, 2000ish)
Powerplay / Grandslam (2014)
Empire / Winner Takes All (think that was the name), (Project Games, various)

thecannonball89 · Post by **thecannonball89** » Fri May 01, 2015 12:32 am

Side splitter was there anything on them ?

Stubble · Post by **Stubble** » Fri May 01, 2015 1:02 am

Yeah. You couldn't empty them, but they were good. Barcode was JP from what I recall.

JG · Post by JG » Fri May 01, 2015 3:04 am

I'm surprised they didn't make more use of the Hammer Horror licence or even use the game with the Lucasfilm licence. Star Wars Top Trumps, what's not to like? The only fault was it was too slow to play. Perhaps that's why they never cloned it.
I remember Side Splitter (ooohooooh crikey!). I never got on with it. Clone of Big Blaster iirc. Looks like I missed out there then. Lapper trail with accumulative cash shots super feature. Rather controlled.
Overload, now that was a game about barcodes as were a lot of 'crests of that era. Wasn't a bad game was it?
Grandslam in the £100 incarnation was super unpopular. I didn't have one sited for more than four weeks. Obviously Magic 6 scared all the punters away from this genre. Pity as JPM's earlier offerings of slam variants were pretty good. Reel Crazy on £10/£15 was a good game and Demon Reels on £15 in the Electra cab was playable but not quite as good. Magic 6 was plop. Nice Wizard of Odds music, shit overly harsh gameplay.
Powerplay....bah...national reserve for phones/button bit too scary for most peeps?
The old projects Shooting Stars, Cliff Richard and Climbing monkey. Standard tic tac toe lo tech fayre. Monkey just a novelty not yet revisited. Essentially it's ding dong bells with a baboon, babbling on here sorry.

Errr let's add to the list.

Screen Play (Maygay 1995)
Viper Jive (Extreme 2002)
Spin on it/wombat (Impulse 2001/2003)

AMK · Post by **AMK** » Fri May 01, 2015 8:06 am

Spin and tonic was that a machine? Sorry I'm not quite an old fart.

Stubble · Post by **Stubble** » Fri May 01, 2015 10:32 pm

Star Wars Top Trumps, now we're talking.

"Damn it I've got Jah-Jah Binks! ...lets play it on DIALOGUE: ..."

"Oh, ...all characters score 0 on Dialogue."

doingthem · Post by **doingthem** » Sat May 02, 2015 3:00 am

Yea spin n tonic was an impulse

GaryChandler · Post by **GaryChandler** » Sat May 02, 2015 8:50 am

I see one of them Grandslams a while ago in South Mimms, button lit straight away but didnt seem anything like a powerplay, luckily not seen another one since!

Lilly Satou · Post by **Lilly Satou** » Sat May 02, 2015 9:24 am

Frantic
Critical Mass

I Had a soft spot for some Empires too. Hula Moolah and Reservoir Frogs had a good few ways to obtain a half decent win or the JP.

Most video screen things were nice IF the gameplay was incorporated well. Bellfruit's Trickshot... was that good with angles or did it screw the black or cue in with an absurd angle when it felt like not paying?

ridye · Post by **ridye** » Sat May 02, 2015 5:25 pm

Time To Play Deal Or No Deal was something a bit different but from what I saw confused the absolute hell out of the general punter, also very harsh at blocking boards so they can't do their usual collect stack and recycle. Also the fact it sounds like a bomb is going to explode during the 10 second countdown if sound is on probably didn't make it that appealing to pubs.

Bell Fruit developers seemed to have a last 'hurrah' with Time To Play and Power Play / Grandslam before they probably got fired and replaced with some Reflex ones.

bubbles · Post by **bubbles** » Sat May 02, 2015 11:14 pm

how do you know 100% power play/time to play abandoned ideas? grandslam didn't pass test unfortunately...

Stubble · Post by **Stubble** » Mon May 04, 2015 10:16 am

Iat remains a mystery to me the criteria that needs to be satisfied for games to pass test. One would assume, that the game needs to perform well and at least equal the Cashbox performance of established fruits, within a suitably busy location.

However, such a short term view leads to some very transient and unappealing games. Reflex Games may perform well during their initial installation, but I would suggest that after a few weeks they will be returning very small cashboxes. People just don't play them. Clearly a lot of development time went into Grandslam, the video on the bottom reels was something new and from a software point of view, thats probably a lot of labour. Why then not push it through? Surely they could've strongarmed Gamestech to take some on board? Personally I believe the only reason it failed was because of the Powerplay button, with Pub Chains saying they just won't have a machine with that button on it.

Stubble · Post by **Stubble** » Wed May 20, 2015 9:05 am

Fruit Chat version of Top Trumps.

JG would be your Dracula Card, strong in every category. I'd probably play him on Vocabulary or Sarcasm.

Glendale would be the equivalent of the Scarecrow. Punt him on Cockiness for a 50/50 shot.

Roll_With_It_Russ · Post by **Roll_With_It_Russ** » Wed May 20, 2015 1:31 pm

Stubble wrote:Iat remains a mystery to me the criteria that needs to be satisfied for games to pass test. One would assume, that the game needs to perform well and at least equal the Cashbox performance of established fruits, within a suitably busy location.

However, such a short term view leads to some very transient and unappealing games. Reflex Games may perform well during their initial installation, but I would suggest that after a few weeks they will be returning very small cashboxes. People just don't play them. Clearly a lot of development time went into Grandslam, the video on the bottom reels was something new and from a software point of view, thats probably a lot of labour. Why then not push it through? Surely they could've strongarmed Gamestech to take some on board? Personally I believe the only reason it failed was because of the Powerplay button, with Pub Chains saying they just won't have a machine with that button on it.

going back 15 years ago, test locations used to be in a couple of busy spots, players would happily play through for a jackpot or the streak, could get sessioned a few times a day, never going to fail on cashbox takings.

bubbles · Post by **bubbles** » Wed May 20, 2015 5:15 pm

Stubble wrote:Fruit Chat version of Top Trumps.

JG would be your Dracula Card, strong in every category. I'd probably play him on Vocabulary or Sarcasm.

Glendale would be the equivalent of the Scarecrow. Punt him on Cockiness for a 50/50 shot.

pray you don't get dealt Ruler of the World - instant game over!

ob - a sure fire winner on unfounded pessimism and a good shot in cluelessness if put up against any real player!

lolol let's start a fruitchat argument!