Found a Paragon today with a new game or two on.
The most interesting was a game called Premier Darts Quiz. It does what it says on the tin. It uses the same graphics as the Premier League of Darts game. You select a famous darts player to do the throwing for you.
The questions come into it in a similar way to the old "Treble Top" i.e. you select a score and have to answer one, two or three questions to move on. If you successfully navigate each set of 1,2 or 3 questions your dart player throws for you and hits the target with one dart.
The problem with it would appear to be that the machine chooses the score you can get and it doesn't come down in the fashion you would hope it would. For example I was left with 100. You'd hope that the machine would then offer 50 but it didn't. It offered the highest possible throw of treble seven to only take you down to 79. Then it offered single 19 to get down to 60-still off a "finish" bearing in mind you only have one dart.
Needless to say by this point the questions are spoiler hard.
I went out of the game on a silly football question but was given a chance of continuing for 10p a la the Quizmaster game but dipped out again, and again until the inevitable "Game Over".
Whether as the machine fills up the scores will get bigger who knows. I can imagine it would generate some interest amongst the proletariat.
Paragon "Update"
There are at least three new games/tweaks to existing games in this release:
Premier Darts Quiz
The game works as tonkarentino describes. The end game for cash is however a very odd beast in this supposedly 'all skill' world - it combines two elements of play that will be very familiar to the fruit machine boys. Firstly you are offered a set of increasing amounts and asked to choose one before you eventually go Bust. If you do go Bust then you are offered one dart but rather than there being any skill involved you are given a random prize. I'd seen a few mammoth prizes of ... ooh ... around £4 in London during the week but in my local last night the first part of the game took 7 or 8 offers to reach the dizzying heights of £1.30 and then the random cash prize awarded was ... 20p. This after a decidedly non-trivial main game that no punter would realistically have stood a chance on. Answering 30 or so questions to lose 30p is some achievement.
After the cash game you are offered to start up another standard game of 501 but I'll pass on that one, thanks all the same...
Double or Nothing
This involves two rounds of a Connect 4-style quiz (stop getting excited at the back there, it's not the same Connect 4 game), which are set at a level no punter will have a chance against. The cash game involves you doubling up your points on six or seven questions to achieve a huge top prize which seems to be £4. The only trouble being the questions are of a similar level to Pub Quiz's spoilers, only with four options not three - 'Which of these four films you've never heard of beginning with 'B' was released first?' etc
Hexwords Tournament
As I mention in the other thread, this has been tweaked to require 50 games of throughput rather than 250.
As for what has disappeared, it looks like You Have Won £20, Secret Letter and a few of the other word/skill games.
It's funny that this release should come out while the old gits among us are wallowing happily on HMS Nostalgia. None of us expect anything like those sort of old games to be released but surely there is a middle ground somewhere between the two extremes? Or is it really only possible to produce games which are beyond the reach of any punter while still only offering pathetic prizes? Surely attracting punters is the only way the companies will ever succeed going forward?
Ah well, what do I know?
Premier Darts Quiz
The game works as tonkarentino describes. The end game for cash is however a very odd beast in this supposedly 'all skill' world - it combines two elements of play that will be very familiar to the fruit machine boys. Firstly you are offered a set of increasing amounts and asked to choose one before you eventually go Bust. If you do go Bust then you are offered one dart but rather than there being any skill involved you are given a random prize. I'd seen a few mammoth prizes of ... ooh ... around £4 in London during the week but in my local last night the first part of the game took 7 or 8 offers to reach the dizzying heights of £1.30 and then the random cash prize awarded was ... 20p. This after a decidedly non-trivial main game that no punter would realistically have stood a chance on. Answering 30 or so questions to lose 30p is some achievement.
After the cash game you are offered to start up another standard game of 501 but I'll pass on that one, thanks all the same...
Double or Nothing
This involves two rounds of a Connect 4-style quiz (stop getting excited at the back there, it's not the same Connect 4 game), which are set at a level no punter will have a chance against. The cash game involves you doubling up your points on six or seven questions to achieve a huge top prize which seems to be £4. The only trouble being the questions are of a similar level to Pub Quiz's spoilers, only with four options not three - 'Which of these four films you've never heard of beginning with 'B' was released first?' etc
Hexwords Tournament
As I mention in the other thread, this has been tweaked to require 50 games of throughput rather than 250.
As for what has disappeared, it looks like You Have Won £20, Secret Letter and a few of the other word/skill games.
It's funny that this release should come out while the old gits among us are wallowing happily on HMS Nostalgia. None of us expect anything like those sort of old games to be released but surely there is a middle ground somewhere between the two extremes? Or is it really only possible to produce games which are beyond the reach of any punter while still only offering pathetic prizes? Surely attracting punters is the only way the companies will ever succeed going forward?
Ah well, what do I know?
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QuizMaster
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Enough time has passed to offer a considered opinion on the two new Q&A games (Premier Darts Quiz and Double or Nothing) and sadly I was right first time - they are both solid 24 carat gold stinkers.
The darts game works fine technically but the fact that the endgame is apparently always set at that pathetic level makes this one no better than the worst of Fat Spanner's dross. When did Skill With Prizes equate to 'winning' 20p for answering 30 or so questions correctly? How is that ever going to appeal to punters who might actually be attracted to this one otherwise?
Double or Nothing is a gimmicky game with another odd bonus game in the 'all skill' world - the boxes flip around so quickly and discontinuously that all you can do is try to have your eyes fixed on the right colour of box when they stop flipping. The 'pick 1 from 4' spoilers in the endgame then ensure that a win will be a very rare occurrence.
All very sad.
The darts game works fine technically but the fact that the endgame is apparently always set at that pathetic level makes this one no better than the worst of Fat Spanner's dross. When did Skill With Prizes equate to 'winning' 20p for answering 30 or so questions correctly? How is that ever going to appeal to punters who might actually be attracted to this one otherwise?
Double or Nothing is a gimmicky game with another odd bonus game in the 'all skill' world - the boxes flip around so quickly and discontinuously that all you can do is try to have your eyes fixed on the right colour of box when they stop flipping. The 'pick 1 from 4' spoilers in the endgame then ensure that a win will be a very rare occurrence.
All very sad.
A lovely game, I agree, although I'm afraid it stopped being a consistent earner for me at the previous update (or maybe the one before that) when the questions were made very significantly tougher. Good to see manufacturers daring to use the "answer X questions to win the JP and no gimmicks" format in this day and age, though, and a pity it's gone.wires74 wrote:Found several new editions and can confirm that you have won 20 pounds was on none of them . Ah well good while it lasted
From what little I've seen so far I'd have to agree with Nil on the two titles he mentions above. I think we're still yet to turn the corner, quality wise, basically.
Double Or Nothing seemed quite an engaging game to me. So I played a few times until I got to the endgame...the top prize was £2. Not worth it. Waste of a decent idea. These new guidelines should surely involve telling you how much you can win before you put your money in. Imagine if you went to the bookies and they refused to tell you the odds before you put a bet on! It's f**king ridiculous!
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Istenem
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this red menu does seem to offer very little in terms of gameplay, setting aside Word (so)Up (which is obviously the best game known to man). it also makes the terminal look like one of those dreadful, inferior open cabs.
BAM and MOTD are still there and still playable until you are asked about which episode of friends did some bozo appear in. nobody can know, nobody cares and it smells a little bit like fish. if you are going to put impossible questions in, at least give them a degree of joy.
Gul Mohammed used to be the shortest living human, which of the following did not make him shit his dwarfpants:
a. pigeons
b. fireworks
c. children
d. his aunt
who of the following does not have a boy's name as their middle name?
a. billie piper
b. anastasia dobromyslova
c. bill pertwee
d. brian clough
but the amount of good (playable) titles which have vanished is quite remarkable. there can be no arguments about secret letter or you have won x quid. because they were a piece of piss.
but to kill PMP, PLoD and hexagrams (£1 JP (yes, yes, i know)) seems, at best, bizarre and, at worst, foolish. even those card games have been taken off; surely they are bankers for the operators?
BAM and MOTD are still there and still playable until you are asked about which episode of friends did some bozo appear in. nobody can know, nobody cares and it smells a little bit like fish. if you are going to put impossible questions in, at least give them a degree of joy.
Gul Mohammed used to be the shortest living human, which of the following did not make him shit his dwarfpants:
a. pigeons
b. fireworks
c. children
d. his aunt
who of the following does not have a boy's name as their middle name?
a. billie piper
b. anastasia dobromyslova
c. bill pertwee
d. brian clough
but the amount of good (playable) titles which have vanished is quite remarkable. there can be no arguments about secret letter or you have won x quid. because they were a piece of piss.
but to kill PMP, PLoD and hexagrams (£1 JP (yes, yes, i know)) seems, at best, bizarre and, at worst, foolish. even those card games have been taken off; surely they are bankers for the operators?
nobody ever wins on those things.
Unlike secret letter which was a 'piece of piss' for many I suspect. And quite a good game to boot, I thought.grecian wrote:As regards YHW£20, that would be a "piece of piss" for only the very best players.Istenem wrote:but the amount of good (playable) titles which have vanished is quite remarkable. there can be no arguments about secret letter or you have won x quid. because they were a piece of piss.
