Be Excellent To Each Other

(If you just want to see the pictures of my car that I smashed up with a rock, skip to 26m30s.)

Featuring 100% fewer suicidal thoughts than the previous video.

I see from this article that there's a Panorama programme about gambling addiction tonight. Might give it a watch even though I'm not sure it'll tell me anything new, although it could reinforce the need to stay the hell away from gambling.

How many days are you on now?

155. Feels like longer, but at least it's still ticking along nicely. These days, my weekends fly by so quickly that I'd resent losing any time to gambling, so with that and the various blocks I've got in place are keeping me good.

That's excellent news!

Well done for sticking at it.

Yeah good going man.

I struggled with addiction for years it's nice to break free.

A machine from 1981 (!) running on the doddery old MPU2 tech.

It runs on three ROMs that are 2KB in size each.

It's awful.

You realise that without the coin sounds and payout that it's the most basic crap ever. There's not even any way to know how many credits you have apart from looking at the meters.

I've never been so bored in my life. It needs sounds or its just like playing with a still picture.

I'll watch this one later but my local arcade had a few of these MPU2 machines - the one I remember the most was triple chance which I'm sure was just a conversion kit for highlights and the other barcrest at the time which was the forerunner to .... exchanges unlimited ?

They all had the buttons on the side which was akward for a place that stacked the machines next to each other both sides were 'start' and one side was also gamble / the other collect.

High profile affiliated online casino streamer caught playing with pretend money:

Follow-on piece.

So that Roshtein video went a bit nuts (by my humble standards), over 15,000 views (and counting), 346 comments (and climbing), 221 likes and 77 dislikes.

Here's my attempt to put the whole thing to bed so I can go back to making my uncontroversial fruit machine emulation videos.

I damn near spaffed my pants when this layout was released.

That Mr P. Is that the one that's about 100ft from my flat in Bognor? I recall reading about it a while ago and realised it was literally on my doorstep.

If it is I may be able to either get some pics of it or getting some pics for Pook or something.

Do some poking A. If it is I don't mind going with an assortment of cameras.

Ed in. Yes I think it is, so I've broken cover and offered to go and get the pics.

Were there many other machines with a triangular board? Although I've not played Sinbad, it reminds me of another machine, but I'm not sure which.


Also, yesterday I passed the six-month mark of no gambling.. steady progress

That's excellent work! Consider yourself fist-bumped, good sir.

Giphy "party streamers":
https://media0.giphy.com/media/3oxHQjV69HMZ0f9lAc/giphy-loop.mp4

Epic milestone!

Not enough joy, Giohy!

Giphy "glitter canon":
https://media2.giphy.com/media/3o6nUXL9jsq4IKomcw/giphy-loop.mp4

?

Giphy "confetti canon":
https://media2.giphy.com/media/1NKYAyONcdVL2/giphy-loop.mp4

'cannon' might have given better results but I think Giphy did well there.

Thank you both.. it's nice to be able to think straight and not be skint. Oddly, I think Brexit has been a factor - I want to make sure I'm debt-free (2 and a bit years) in case Brexit starts screwing things up for me.

Finally we've got a positive message to put on the side of the Brexit bus that isn't a total lie!

Congrats on keeping clean devilman

Congrats man. Great going.

Oops!

Giphy "glitter cannon":
https://media3.giphy.com/media/tyttpHjhKjBLyrbMYKs/giphy-loop.mp4

Giphy "confetti cannon":
https://media0.giphy.com/media/xT8qBtznadfKRkf2Ew/giphy-loop.mp4

Something a little bit different for this one, from back when you could play Space Invaders for a £20 cash jackpot in 1991!

This is fantastic news! Seriously great work.

Old fruit machine that by no accounts hardly anyone ever saw a real one of, raised from the dead thanks to emulation and a grainy old flyer.

(I loved me some fruit machines, and I never saw one of these, plus it's unique in that it's a Maygay M1a/b tech machine that uses a dot matrix display.)

Setting fire to £210.

Stupid gambling.

Finally got round to making the video about these, complete with demonstration in the emulator.

BBC article about gambling and gaming. Although the article refers to gaming in a general sense initially, it expands into loot box discussion, which makes more sense, as I doubt gaming in itself leads many into gambling.

Culturally I think there are religions that warn against any form of gaming where ‘chance’ takes a role as it is related to gambling.

I guess if it depends whether the ‘gamble’ is considered to be for monetary/material game, or if the desire/drive to gamble can be developed from taking risks in chance games where there is no material prize above a sense of victory?

This one has ended up at over 70,000 views and it's still going up by the day.

750 comments too, some of them really rather nasty!

Plasma DMDs in a fruit machine? It happened, for a very short while.

Another real curiosity from 1993/1994, a video based AWP by BWB. So batshit it was originally misidentified as an SWP.

A totally new one on me, and I played LOTS of fruit machines at this time.

I don't watch much in the way of TV these days, so I don't see many ads for anything, but it's quite telling that watching some stuff on the All4 app over the weekend, with various ads for Ladbrokes Casino and Sky Bet, I've had two nights where gambling featured in my dreams. Plenty of times in the past, if I've had strong dreams about gambling, I've ended up gambling that day, so it would be nice if gambling advertising and sponsorship eventually went the same way as cigarettes and buggered off.

It's probably a good job that any time a Sega one armed bandit pops up on eBay they're usually collection-only or miles away or I'd probably be making an offer on stuff like this.

I know it's more 'Service Games' than Sega, but still..

It's nice that in the Lloyds banking app, I can now turn off the ability to use a card for gambling transactions. Could have done with that a few years back, but it's a good step forward.

A fruit machine from 1990 for this video.

In other positive 'could have done with that years ago' news, gambling via credit cards is to be banned.

Pfft! People should be free to run up loads of interest bearing debt just to piss it up the wall playing online slots.

Nanny state gone mad etc.

I do wonder though if people might just withdraw it from a cashpoint as a credit card cash advance and then set fire to it in the bookies.

Isn't there a limit on how much can be drawn out under cash advances though? I seem to remember trying it a good while back when I was particularly in need of a fix and getting nowhere.

I think it's 80% of your credit limit or something, although alarm bells might start ringing before you got that far I suppose.

So a guy over at the Casinomeister forums went a bit nuts last week and went up to £20 spins (!) on an online slot called The Final Countdown. (He's not an eccentric millionaire or anything like that, he was just on a decent run and decided to substantially up his bets.)

He hit a bonus round on £20 spins, the bonus round paid £164,000.

He's been paid in full by the casino, £164K landed in his bank account, and he's paid his mortgage off.

Obviously I won't be replicating that on my piddly 20p spins....

Here's the bonus round.

WARNING - DON'T DO £20 SPINS AT ONLINE CASINOS, THIS GUY GOT OBSCENELY LUCKY.

Oh yes and that video I did about the fake money streamer has ended up as my first 100K views video.

Controversy sells, I guess.

Should I ever find myself working in the industry, and if were not the very paragon of high moral, ethical and virtuous values that you know (and love),this would be exactly the sort of story I would periodically release into the wild to this sort of audience.

Well there's no doubt this one is real, the guy's a member over at Casinomeister and we've all followed the story.

BTG replayed the bonus round on their end made the video of it, the guy himself only had screenshots.

I'm glad the story didn't end with the casino refusing to pay out or made him jump through unnecessary hoops to get his money.

Thankfully I'm still resisting the lure of online casinos (mainly thanks to Gamstop though). I occasionally get emails from some casinos saying they're shutting down or leaving the UK which always pleases me)

I have no doubt it happened, but I wonder how many times they pay out those figures. It seems a huge coincidence it happened to an active poster on a casino forum.

On the one hand, those are the people who play more, so are more likely to hit big, on the other hand, it is a trifle convenient and if it had to happen to someone, then that is the best person it could have happened to from the perspective of the casino, in terms or marketing and getting their money back in the long run...