Gamestec vs the Crazy Chair
Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 5:23 pm
I had my AWP buddy staying at my place for a few days this week and we naturally checked out a dozen pubs and a few arcades. Most machines were either DOND or Bank Job. We chanced 3 of the BJ's, all playing pretty badly, and seems to be a poor conversion of the older (but better) Juggling Jackpots and Money Magic machines. Also, if you lost a gamble on BJ's cash ladder, it auto-collected, so you normally ended up winning just £1, if you won anything at all lol :P The free spins quirk was new to us too.
Our main blow to us was a straight clone of Crazy Chair, except that the DOND board was displayed on a computer screen. It didn't have the standard Mazooma/Bellfruit reel symbols either. Lo and behold, the machine was rebadged by Gamestec. Being a regular reader of Fruit Chat though, I thought that Gamestec was just a distributor of fruit machines? I didn't know they are now pulling a QPS / BWB on us too. I am an avid fan of Crazy Chair, having played several over the last 2 years, but this rebadge was found to be a let-down, hence writing here under bad experiences. We never got the phones, but it was red-boxing frequently, probably to bluff us out of coin! It would then white-box for the duration of the next sheet, then red-box throughout the next 2 consecutive sheets. It struck us as odd, and was certainly not Crazy Chair behaviour. Is Gamestec technology still Scorpion-based?
On the plus side, we enjoyed a few phones games on TIOLI. It was new to us, but we already knew the Murphy's Millions clone which we also liked.
We also came across 3 Bellfruits which deviated a little from the original DOND gaming model. One had a start-to-finish trail and appeared to be a clone of an old Bellfruit called Reely Crazy, in the sense that your movements on the board were dictated by the 3 reels, sometimes offering strategic holds while in-game. Another Bellfruit incorporated phones within the board game but with only with 2 boxes lit. The more you moved, the more boxes you had lit and you could commence phones at any time. Boards were fairly frequent and normally offered £3 and £5 as the opening boxes. Another Bellfruit, slightly more normal this time, with the difference of having ever-changing bonus tiles on the 1-to-8 pre-game trail.
Our main blow to us was a straight clone of Crazy Chair, except that the DOND board was displayed on a computer screen. It didn't have the standard Mazooma/Bellfruit reel symbols either. Lo and behold, the machine was rebadged by Gamestec. Being a regular reader of Fruit Chat though, I thought that Gamestec was just a distributor of fruit machines? I didn't know they are now pulling a QPS / BWB on us too. I am an avid fan of Crazy Chair, having played several over the last 2 years, but this rebadge was found to be a let-down, hence writing here under bad experiences. We never got the phones, but it was red-boxing frequently, probably to bluff us out of coin! It would then white-box for the duration of the next sheet, then red-box throughout the next 2 consecutive sheets. It struck us as odd, and was certainly not Crazy Chair behaviour. Is Gamestec technology still Scorpion-based?
On the plus side, we enjoyed a few phones games on TIOLI. It was new to us, but we already knew the Murphy's Millions clone which we also liked.
We also came across 3 Bellfruits which deviated a little from the original DOND gaming model. One had a start-to-finish trail and appeared to be a clone of an old Bellfruit called Reely Crazy, in the sense that your movements on the board were dictated by the 3 reels, sometimes offering strategic holds while in-game. Another Bellfruit incorporated phones within the board game but with only with 2 boxes lit. The more you moved, the more boxes you had lit and you could commence phones at any time. Boards were fairly frequent and normally offered £3 and £5 as the opening boxes. Another Bellfruit, slightly more normal this time, with the difference of having ever-changing bonus tiles on the 1-to-8 pre-game trail.
