Fruit Machine Chat

Having one of my occasional unsuccessful stabs at various games yesterday (I was a pro in what I believe are usually referred to as The Good Old Days, but don't find myself in pubs much these days) I came across an interesting new way to stop people winning on Eliminator, i.e. have answers which are both right and wrong. This happened not once but twice in two boards...

First up, "Footballing Brothers", where I picked out The Allens - Correct - then realised it was there again. I haven't played Eliminator enough to know whether the game might regularly put in the same possible answer more than once, so I pressed the second one - only to find that this time it was wrong! I looked very hard in case I'd misread a deliberate red herring, and the second one was actually The Alens or The Allans or something along those lines, but no, definitely identical.

Then, next board, "Types of Curry", I got the most obvious 5 or 6 and used the bonus to give me another one - Juhan(?) or something, it wasn't a dish I've ever seen on a menu - and realised that the very same answer was there again, and was just as wrong as the other one was right.

Any experts on Eliminator (assuming such experts exist) care to tell me whether this is normal for the game or was I just unlucky? I've played it on a few occasions over the last few months / years and never noticed this sort of thing. And do we blame simple sloppiness in the programming or something more sinister?

I'm pretty good on this one, one of the best recent additions to the gaming nerdiverse imho.

You're not alone mate on two counts:
1. The whole 'footballing brothers' scene has narked me off and often proved to be a bugger. I've been a bit suspicious about failures on this particular topic and you're just confirming it to me.

2. Top Of The Pops...the amount of times this has come up on the list of TV music programmes and been totally random whether it's accepted or not is ludicrous. On the other hand, like refereeing decisions for moaning Fergies or Wengers...it evens itself out over a season!

Long Live Eliminator! :P

Topical2009 wrote:And do we blame simple sloppiness in the programming or something more sinister?

Almost certainly the former. A similar issue can be seen sometimes on questions that were originally written for games with three answers to choose from which are then exported to be used on games with four answers. Obviously the aim is to add a different incorrect answer to make the set up to four but occasionally a repeat of the correct answer is added, meaning you have only a 50% chance of getting the "right" right answer (if you still follow me ).

As Napoleon allegedly once said:

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."