Fruit Machine Chat

One of my regular games is on a machine located in the entrance hall of a gym/swimming pool. No drink needed , no prying eyes - are there many machines sited in public places as opposed to pubs etc?

Still a few cinemas around. My favourite one ever was in a newsagents. There was no logic or explanation for it, it was just there. And then it was empty, but I did spend quite a lot on sweets to make up for it. Toffos mainly.

My favourite was a time machine in a hairdressers.Took a tenner then told the haidresser to 'keep the change'

Bowling alleys always used to be good, of course, but in the late 80s there was a very lucrative Every Second Counts in the Bowls Club in Scarborough (lawn bowls rather than ten-pin). Whenever I visited it felt as though I was the youngest person in the building by about 40 years.

Same era, I also played a Fruit Machine in a Gala Bingo, which oddly wasn't in the bar, but in the main hall, about ten feet from the caller. While I was innocently playing, all of a sudden it was Eyes Down and the whole room went deathly quiet, except for my machine, which was cranked up to maximum volume. I can still feel the Death Stares boring into me from a hundred really angry old women.

My own, relatively recent, favourite was the Ind:e located in the shopping centre that is connected to Victoria Station in London. It was right in the middle of the shops, rather than in a separate arcade or even in the Irish pub in the food court upstairs. I only got to play it a couple of times but it was surreal to have streams of shoppers and commuters passing by while you were playing Caveman Capers or whatever. It was only removed in the last 18 months or so.

However a friend of mine assures me that there used to be a quiz machine in the Accident and Emergency waiting room of the Royal Preston Hospital. I'd like someone to beat THAT for an obscure location!

Aladdin's Cave in an Indian takeaway for over two years - Yum yum!

I've had taxi office, kebab shop, ferry, cinema, bowling alley.

To be honest the 'strangest' one I've played was in Coral Island Blackpool about 5 years ago. Random standalone WWTBAM in the middle of all the fruit machines.

ROSSKEEN wrote:I've had taxi office, kebab shop, ferry, cinema, bowling alley.

To be honest the 'strangest' one I've played was in Coral Island Blackpool about 5 years ago. Random standalone WWTBAM in the middle of all the fruit machines.

At one time EVERY arcade in Blackpool seemed to have a WWTBAM of the £40.00 jackpot variety. You could J.P. them on Saturday morning and go back Sunday evening and do it again. I wonder if anyone at these Quiz Machine companies ever wonders why they aren't that popular now..

To return to the thread Hull used to have a machine of some description in just about every take away shop in the city. We used to buy pizzas (Margaritas the cheapest) and either bin them or give them to passing strangers.
Once got chased down a street in the outskirts of Mansfield by a chinese fella waving a cleaver for daring to win a tenner on his fruit machine quiz machine.
At one point Burger King started getting machines (I only saw them in Brum) which you sat down to play-a bit like the old space invader type games of the early 80's. They obviously were being trialled there and didn't last long.
Strangest site for a machine has to be in the doorway of A + E at one of the Newcastle hospitals.
College corridors were sometimes good for the odd quizzer and there was a big covered shopping centre in Swansea which had at least three just in the walkways.

Doncaster cinema were crafty. They put it behind the gateway so you had to buy a ticket to a film to play it....

there used to be an gamesnet in a libary entrance that was a weird one

Leeds Libraries use modified Paragon 2 cabs for their automatic book check-in/out machines. First time I saw one I thought they had got a quizzer lol.

Pretty good idea to have them elsewhere now, i think places with waiting rooms could be good spots for them.

kingzilla wrote:Pretty good idea to have them elsewhere now, i think places with waiting rooms could be good spots for them.

Ilook forward to the latest Tory wheeze to make some money for the NHS. Quizzers in Doctors waiting rooms....Better than reading 30 year old copies of Readers Digest.

tonkarentino wrote:

kingzilla wrote:Pretty good idea to have them elsewhere now, i think places with waiting rooms could be good spots for them.

Ilook forward to the latest Tory wheeze to make some money for the NHS. Quizzers in Doctors waiting rooms....Better than reading 30 year old copies of Readers Digest.

I look forward to incurring a wide range of iatrogenic problems and Munchausen syndrome.

cp999 wrote:Munchausen syndrome.

Also called "hospital hopper syndrome" !