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THE TIME MACHINE
Emulation is fun, isn’t it? Playing a load of
old games on your PC, enjoying titles that we were never supposed to
see here in the UK, or just saving a load of space and clutter under
the telly by having all your “consoles” in one nice neat PC-shaped
box. But this month, emulation is going to be more than a bit of
harmless fun. This month, we’re going to see if emulation can change
the world.
Most of us like a little gamble now and again,
and Emulation Zone is prepared to bet (appropriately enough) that
most PCZ readers put the odd pound coin into a fruit machine,
whether it be dropping the change from a round into a pub machine or
playing the four-reel £1000-jackpot monsters found in more
sophisticated locations. And Emu Zone is equally sure that everyone
who’s ever played a fruit machine and lost on a High-Low gamble has
wondered whether, as the machine waited for you to go higher on a
“2” and then spun in a “1”, it was playing fair or not. The only
problem was, without a time machine it was impossible to know either
way. But now, thanks to emulation, we have one.
Emu Zone wants you to try something. At the
links at the bottom of this piece, you’ll find the MFME fruit
machine emulator program, a layout and ROM files for the popular
real-life £250-jackpot machine Club Monopoly, and a “save state”
file, containing the fruity’s internal RAM saved at the point where,
from a factory reset, the machine has taken in £1000 and paid out
not a single penny (the legal minimum payout for a fruit machine is
70% - though this one is set at 86% - but amazingly there’s no
stipulation about how long it has to take to achieve that
percentage). Unzip all the files into the same directory, load the
emulator up and start Club Monopoly. Insert a pound using the zero
key, and play.
On your second spin, you’ll be awarded nudges.
Nudge in Reel 1 for a three-oranges £1.60 win. You now have a chance
to gamble using the High-Low reel. And here’s where Emu Zone is
going to give you a hand, chums, because Emu Zone - thanks to its
emulation time machine - knows what the numbers are going to be. You
start off with a 10. Normally you’d go “Low”, but the next number is
a 12, so go “High” instead. The next numbers are going to be 4, 6,
2, 12, 7, 4 and 5, so choose accordingly.
By this stage you’ll have a £25 win. But the
machine’s clearly in a paying mood, so you may as well continue,
right? Wrong. If you gamble “High” on the 5, the machine will spin
in a 3 and you’ll lose. If, on the other hand, you gamble “Low”,
it’ll spin in a 9. And you’ll lose. Every time. (Quit the emulator,
copy the original RAM file in and try again.) This isn’t gambling,
readers. This is fraud. It’s the equivalent of a three-card monty
game in the street, where there is no ace for the mug punters to
find because the con artist has slipped it up his sleeve. The
machine is presenting the situation as a “gamble”, but in fact
whatever you do, you will lose. You are, to put it simply, being
robbed. It’s against the law, and it’s happening in every pub in
Britain every day.
Club Monopoly is merely our example - it’s in
no way even remotely unique in this behaviour. It’s just that, until
the advent of fruit machine emulation, there was no way for the
cheating, robbing fruit machine manufacturers to be found out. But
now they have, and Emulation Zone is going to do something about it.
The information in this column has been forwarded to Emu Zone’s MP,
the UK Gaming Board, and the Department of Culture, which is
responsible for the regulation of gambling in Britain, and the
Department of Trade and Industry is investigating too. (The fruit
machine companies have so far refused to answer the allegations.) As
far as Emu Zone can see, the way is clear for a class-action lawsuit
to be brought against the manufacturers on behalf of every
fruit-machine player in the country, and subject to legal advice
that’s exactly what Emu Zone is going to do. But don’t worry, YOU
don’t have to do anything. (Though if you DO want to help, go to the
address below.) Just watch this space, and see if the world changes.
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