Nostalgic ramblings - the first game you ever played?

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 11:48 pm

tonkarentino wrote:
tonkarentino wrote:What about some of the games on the early versions of multi-game machines? The jigsaw puzzle game who's name escapes me and the original word search which didn't last long but if you caught one right it was a dead easy JP.
Sadly quoting my own posts but the jigsaw game was called "Masterpiece" and was a right little earner for a while.

Indeed! Was it not £40jp? Yum.

harry2 · Post by **harry2** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 7:01 am

This dates to 1968 !!!!

ggdr · Post by **ggdr** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 11:13 am

The original Wordsearch was also a £40 jackpot. Very happy memories for me, it was the first time I realised I could consistently win on a game. As memory serves, when it was on the super easy mode it would also throw in a £1 spot prize after two or three completed grids, so you invariably made £41 from your 50p stake. Makes the current Lovatt's Wordsearch seem all the more risible in comparison.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 12:09 pm

To harry2 - those are amazing! Are you a collector of some kind?

roberto la vigna · Post by **roberto la vigna** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 12:10 pm

First game played was Hangman 2

First jackpot from Weakest Link

First quizzie word game was Word Up, introduced to it by Ernest in 2003

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 12:19 pm

Interesting that you began with quiz games Bob. Weakest Link was a really cracking game, I thought - how it paid out all those JPs I'll never know, but I guess it had a lot of throughput.

My first game was JPM's standalone Monopoly in about 1996, in our college bar. I moved on via JPM standalone Cluedo to a lot of the old Maygay standalones in the town centre at that time (Guinness Book of Records, Super Clue, Aladdin's Cave, London Underground, Risk etc.).

I never played anything before that, although have a vague memory of a time when I was maybe an 11 or 12 year old who liked quizzes, playing a machine at a caravan park in Ilfracombe with my mum - we were both astounded at the difficulty! I can't remember what game it was, sadly.

harry2 · Post by **harry2** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 12:57 pm

Not a collector. Found them here. Not a lot of UK stuff, though.

http://www.arcade-museum.com/

tonkarentino · Post by **tonkarentino** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 8:40 pm

cp999 wrote:
tonkarentino wrote:
tonkarentino wrote:What about some of the games on the early versions of multi-game machines? The jigsaw puzzle game who's name escapes me and the original word search which didn't last long but if you caught one right it was a dead easy JP.
Sadly quoting my own posts but the jigsaw game was called "Masterpiece" and was a right little earner for a while.
Indeed! Was it not £40jp? Yum.

It certainly was. You had to be careful not to win those odd cash prizes of £6 ish if it was ready because it messed it up for ages.

The original Wordsearch was also a £40 er.

The Golden Age for Quiz Machines

fotherz · Post by **fotherz** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 11:50 pm

roberto la vigna wrote:First jackpot from Weakest Link

Likewise.

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 12:08 am

tonkarentino wrote:
cp999 wrote:
tonkarentino wrote: Sadly quoting my own posts but the jigsaw game was called "Masterpiece" and was a right little earner for a while.
Indeed! Was it not £40jp? Yum.
It certainly was. You had to be careful not to win those odd cash prizes of £6 ish if it was ready because it messed it up for ages.

.. or if you got the cash prize, make sure you got the jackpot that game - I'm fairly certain I won £47 in one game once. That issue GamesNet was very good: there was also a large bug in the conversion of the London Underground game whereby you could sometimes win £20 on it, even though it was on its worst mode (the mode was a pre-requisite, actually).

I think the first game I played was Treasure Trail.

cool · Post by **cool** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 1:21 am

'there was also a large bug in the conversion of the London Underground game whereby you could sometimes win £20 on it, even though it was on its worst mode (the mode was a pre-requisite, actually)'

funny you should mention that as wolfy told me at the time that suri was mopping up the undergrounds in london(and i dont mean he was a cleaner for london transport).

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 1:42 am

It's so long ago that I can't remember the exact details.. but as long as the mode was sufficiently poor that continual spoilers would kick in.. if you survived them (bearing in mind that towards the end you had to answer almost instantly) the last question would in theory be for a small prize, but instead the game would corrupt, give a spurious 2-ply, and a question on the chronology of Japanese emperors which was worth £20 if you got it right.

JG · Post by JG » Wed Jun 24, 2009 2:12 am

The first machine I played was 20p a go, at a wedding reception. I was about seven at the time and got asked the question 'what is a rarebit?', I can't even remember the name of the machine, but do remember not knowing what a rarebit was.

kingzilla · Post by **kingzilla** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 10:16 am

JG wrote:The first machine I played was 20p a go, at a wedding reception. I was about seven at the time and got asked the question 'what is a rarebit?', I can't even remember the name of the machine, but do remember not knowing what a rarebit was.

Isn't it something thats hard to find

Matt Vinyl · Post by **Matt Vinyl** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 10:47 am

An uncommonly-found drill-piece!

Anyway, my first experience was on the standalone £5 Jackpot Crystal Maze - with the rollerball. You could tell if it was worth a punt by observing someone else playing and noting the rough ratio of gold to silver in the dome.

Used to get a fiver or two a night out of the one they had over my local (it was played to death by Joe Public). I think I learnt most of the puzzles off by heart as there was a seemingly limited amount of variation possible.

A bit later, I got into standalone Hangman (I think it was Hangman 2?) which was often good for a few quid. A personal favourite moment was winning £13 from 50p - I swear it was from a spot prize on the 'shuffle' bonus - it may have been made up from a few quid for completing a phrase or two as well. I just remember being chuffed!

I also became particularly addicted to a machine whilst on Holiday in Jersey for two weeks (about 13/14 years ago) - there were a few games you could play on it, but the one I liked the best (and could win a lot out of) was a game where you were a 'destroyer' ship at the top of the screen and you had to drop depth-charges on submarines that travelled past below the water line. You had to get the angle and timing right to hit them. You then progressed along a score trail towards a cash prize. I'm sure the top prize available was £4.80. I acheived it on my second or third go and it then went down to 50p or something. However, a brief powercut reset the machine and I played again to find the JP back at £4.80. Needless to say - the plug socket next to that machine took a lot of off/on action over the course of the holiday...