The originator of the Fairplay campaign was Isle of Man resident Alex Maroney. The Fairplay campaign started on 'Maroney's Web Hovel' a pretty good site actually, where Alex would rant about any topic, but with the focus on fruit machine emulation.
Basically it all started over the emulation of Club Monopoly. We all know the score on that era of Maygay clubber. Stingy £30ish block or cyclic £200 jackpot. Very boring. A clunkily modified AWP essentially. Anyway, it was a catalyst for something that was always going to happen anyway. I think some random member posted that it rolled in pretty much the same win from a fresh ROM/RAM extract at a certain point. You'd get to the £30 gamble on a 2 and hey guess what, it'd stitch you either way you gambled. Well what a fookin' surprise!
Well everyone had known that if a Pie Factory is only £2 boarding, you ain't winning that gamble on a 2/11 whichever way you go. Hi/Lo/Left/Right/NNW/287º/3rd exit/brake sharply/Cash or bust it was always curtains. We know the principles in play.
However, here there seemed to be clear proof it definitely WAS rigged and the Fairplay campaign, spearheaded by Maroney and swollen by some emulation scene recruits now had some meat to chew.
So the arguments started. Maroney trumpeting that he was going to crush the industry and take this to The Prime minister. The professional players laughing and saying he was bitter about losing money on machines.
I think he caused a few waves. He got an article in The Independent, turned a few industry faces red and got as far as a new sticker that we all know and love.
"This machine may at times offer a player a gamble with no chance of success." (or thereabouts) as a pose to "Sometimes the odds displayed may not be the odds given".
Maroney and his men weren't happy. They hadn't done all this for a poxy sticker, they were fighting for the common man, or so they said, and it started to get a bit far fetched. Asking for donations of money/time and effort from Fairplay followers to CRUSH the Industry. His henchman at this point was Stuart Campbell, a journalist on a PC Gaming magazine.
However the Industry was barricading its doors and the player population was laughing their heads off. They had lived and accepted the bizarre laws of bandits for many years and this was getting too troublesome. The danger word that sounds like tandem and could involve Brownian motion was being bandied about. No one wanted tandem machines. Let's be fair, even the Industry found it hard to let go of 'tandem' during section 16. You know what I mean
, let's not start that up again. Cms you cheeky bastards (amongst others).
The final factor was the rate limiting step. To actually deliver the killer punch Maroney wanted, the legal costs would be huge. Getting something like that through the courts would be extortionate. It'd take more than a few half hearted blueys through Paypal to sort this. You'd have to prove beyond doubt the source code was at fault. You'd need a lawsmith to actually demonstrate the illegality of such a piece of code. That in itself seemed to be a gery area. So this grey area - Are fruit machines illegal? was discussed on and on and on and on in the emulation forums with the players still laughing their heads off.
During this time Fairplay seemed to fade into obscurity. He never claimed to have accepted the fate of Fairplay, but surely Maroney realised the mountain was unclimbable? Surely this had been taken as far as it could go? Well whatever happenned it faded into nothing.
Maroney still posts on Fruit Forums and is an integral part of the 'arguing' that goes on over there. He sometimes graces Fruit emu, Gary's favourite site, under the alias 'Chopley Turnip'. Other bizarre variant aliases include references to amphetamine type drugs with Tourettic type swearing. For example 'F**cked up Chopley Bunny c**t mephamphetamine head'. An entertaining guy in some respects, but just a bit of a f**ker in other respects.
Further answers lie in the crazy world of fruit forums.