BANK ROLLER - "A maelstrom of prostitutes and second hand cars"

Being the uncompromising control freak that I am, I like to know exactly where I stand with things. I like rules, I like to know how things will and won't be. For example: 

Sky Television minus Simpsons equals worthless shite. 
Maygay plus an apparently unquenchable and utterly inexplicable desire to keep on producing fruit machines equals empty pockets.
McDonalds minus environmental catastrophe and worker exploitation equals no food to serve. 
Me buying a second hand car plus me not having a clue about how to check anything out when buying a second hand car equals me getting robbed blind, again. Even by a respectable main dealer, like, what's that all about?
New PC game (i.e. Max Payne) plus anything less than the sum total of every single one of NASA's systems' processing power combined equals 10 FPS (thanks for that, dickheads).

All of these nice, simple rules help me to go about my day without giving in to the dark voices and snuffing out many innocent human lives in an orgy of schizophrenic mayhem. Bank Roller does not conform to my rules, and as such, I don't really trust it. Calamari Club has a rule; Calamari Club plus £40 block equals clear playing strategy. Bank Roller does not have a rule; it's a thoroughly entertaining machine to play, but only in the way that having exotic sex with a prostitute in an expensive hotel with a few grams of Columbia's finest to dip into on the side table is entertaining. It's a bit dangerous, very expensive, it'll make your head hurt, and there are no rules. Do you see?

I'd probably better get on with discussing Bank Roller's credentials as a fruit machine at some point, so off we go then. Drive through.

Bank Roller is a little unusual in that it was designed from scratch as a club machine, it wasn't conceived at 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon as one of Barcrest's engineers thought to himself: "Hmm, I've got an hour to kill before I can go to the pub, I'll just turn this £15 machine into a dodgy club machine by adding a few extra cash values onto the end of the cash trail to pass the time, that'll be good." The result of this is that Bank Roller does "feel" very different to a pub machine when you're playing it, it can dish out high wins from the reels and the feature board on a regular basis, and it doesn't have the rigid form that the lazily upgraded pub machines tend to have.

Basic play is nothing out of the ordinary; there's a ten position trail to fill to enter the feature. Some symbols on the reels have overlaid numbers that add to the trail, others have one of the following overlaid bonuses; Boost, Stoppa, SkillStop and Respin. Four numbers in a row does not award the feature, you have to fill the trail. In a fit of pleasingly straightforward common sense, the machine will generally put you on the board and/or give you a win at least once a fiver, which is a lesson certain pub machine manufacturers today (including Barcrest) could learn a thing or two from. If a £250 jackpot machine can do it, a £15 pub machine certainly can.

One successful gamble on any reel win offers a feature exchange, the higher the win, the better the starting position on the board should you exchange. The feature itself consists of a wraparound trail, there are three pots to add to, the Cash Pot, the Nudge Pot and the Feature Pot. Landing on the relevant squares on the trail adds to the pots. There are a few mystery squares with the standard assortment of good and bad, so far, so same old same old.

The clever bit is the main Bank Roller feature, on the original machine this is the main visual focus of gameplay (the three stacks run vertically down the centre of the backglass). Space restrictions on the emulated version mean that it's been sidetracked a bit visually, but it's still the major game component.

The principle behind it is simple, every time you land on a Rolls square you are awarded X number of rolls. A mystery rolls square awards between two and five rolls, and bonus rolls from the mystery awards the same. Each roll spins the piles of bank notes at the top of the stacks (represented in the emulated version with the numbers 0, 1 and 2), and the corresponding number of notes is added to the stack. Every completed line at the bottom of the stacks (think Tetris) adds £2 to the Cash Bank, should you fill any one stack to the top (think Game Over in Tetris), £50 is added to the Cash Bank. Should you fill any two stacks simultaneously (think major screw up in Tetris), a jackpot is awarded. In the case of the £2 and £50, you can carry on playing the feature, trying to add more to the Cash Bank. The jackpot auto-collects. Obviously.

The features are an entertaining and varied bunch too, and benefit greatly from having been conceived specifically for a club machine. Double Or Nothing (only the second feature up) can give up to £48 (£3 > £6 > £12 > £24 > £48) if the machine's in a jolly sort of mood. A bit further up, Knockouts and Super Repeater can both offer generous amounts.

Forgive me if this is a bit vague, but the whole style of play the machine allows is much "looser" than that found in nearly all pub machines and, sadly, most club machines. The feature and wins come up regularly, and you almost always get a decent run around the board, with something reasonable being offered before death strikes. The hi/lo gamble is very generous, and will often let you get away with a few seriously dodgy gambles. The machine regularly and cheerfully offers quite high wins, it's not difficult or unusual to have £15+ available to collect in the Cash Bank, and the Rolls are a fine idea. Obviously you'll often finding yourself nearly filling one stack, only to have a note added to a different stack to complete a line and knock everything back a space, but it's still kind of fun.

But all of this eulogising brings us neatly to what it is that I find so disconcerting about this machine, and that's (a) working out where the block is and (b) how long it can save for a jackpot. A minor couple of points you may think, but no! Of course, it doesn't really matter in our cosy little "no hard cash on the line" emulation context, but in the big bad world where pound coins are real and losses can be large, the serious club machine player needs to know where "block" is. For those of you who haven't been paying attention and/or don't give a fuck, the "block" is the value that, once passed, means that the machine is ready to pay a jackpot. Should you manage to break through the block, then a jackpot is not far away, and everything can be gambled, safe in the knowledge that a big fat juicy payout isn't far away. (To recap, the block on Calamari Club is £40, if you're offered more than £40 in any way, then a jackpot is close). How long a machine can save for a jackpot is also an important point, some club machines will pay a £250 jackpot, take maybe £350-£450 back and then pay another. If the machine can hold onto a jackpot when it's past due, this could have expensive implications for the dedicated slot-stuffer (fnarr). 

Bank Roller does not conform to any simple rule that I can fathom, and I think Barcrest have done it deliberately, the rats. My first thought was that the block was £40, this is the point on the cash ladder beyond which feature exchanges are not available and is the sort of big jump that typifies blocks (it's a £40 to £100 gamble). Good, that'll do, I thought. However, I was then offered £48 from the Double Or Nothing feature when the machine was clearly not jackpot happy. OK then, I decided, the bar must be £50 (Double Or Nothing will never (as far as I can tell), go beyond £50). Then a hefty spanner got thrown in those works, as it's possible to fill a Bank Roller stack (awards £50) to take the Cash Bank to £50 plus, sometimes beyond £60 or £70, when the machine is not jackpot happy. 

Add into this the fact that the machine can hold onto the jackpot when it's L.O.N.G. past due and you have a serious problem on your hands. Or at any rate, I had a serious problem on my hands, I am easily bothered by things like this.... From a factory reset, an all out jackpot force (with the occasional slip-up collecting something on the way) cost £750. Straight after the first jackpot I started forcing it again, the machine has now taken £2200, has only paid out £375, and is running at less than 17%, when it's set to a target payout percentage of 86%. 

Conclusions? The block is somewhere between £40 and £100, but I don't know where, the machine is able to pay the odd £60 or £70 from the feature when it's nowhere near jackpot happy, and I suspect that it may even have a separate theoretical "pot" from which it can pay these amounts, keeping the jackpot safe. The most direct way to go about getting the £250 would be to simply gamble all out on the hi/lo, once you've got past the £40 gamble it should all be over. I think that the feature board is simply a diversion, and it's always got that option of giving you a high win on a collect prize, knocking the jackpot back.

The reason I am so agitated about this is that it all came to the fore in an exciting real-life incident a few weeks ago (think "When Good Fruit Machines Turn Bad" on Sky One). I was on a ferry back from the UK to the Isle Of Man and, lo and behold, they had a Bank Roller on board. It was full, playing well and I reckoned I might be on for a jackpot. After exchanging a high win to the feature, I managed to get £65 in the Cash Bank. I'd put in a good few hours on the emulated Bank Roller back at home by this point, but unsure of what chip revision I was playing, and not having reached any conclusions about where the block actually was, I faced a dilemma. Should I wimp out and collect the £65, or should I deliberately kill myself off with a SkillStop and set about gambling out the jackpot on the hi/lo climb?

Being the consummate coward that I am, I collected the £65, mumbling and grumbling to no one who was listening about how sure I was that the £250 was on. But not so sure that I actually tried to get it. I still have nightmares about it now. And then the voices start chattering again. Insidiously filling my mind with their malevolent evil. It's so scary when they come, why won't they stop?

6th September 2001.