14th April - Are you sitting comfortably?
(This entry will be archived out on the "Articles & Info" page).

Forget sex, forget drugs, forget rock 'n roll, in a short while they'll all be obsolete. Why? Because someone's only gone and written a JPM Impact emulator! (Think Roller Coaster, think Indiana Jones, think Monopoly, think.... oohhhh, just about all the best fruit machines ever made!).

This momentous development started off as a typical "I have written an alpha version of a JPM emulator" thread on MPU Forums, and was immediately met with countless calls of "Yeah OK, now go and get me the moon on a stick" (not by yours truly though, I'm a trusting sort of chap). However, it very quickly started to become apparent to all that this was no hoax, Dial Tone got involved and he and Glasnost (the emulator's author) had a bit of a techie natter about it and the end result was the WIP shot shown below. (The picture of the real Monopoly 60 machine below that is just to get you all frothing nicely at the gash).

Elements of JPM's "Impact" hardware system (which they have used for years and years and indeed, still do, albeit in a newer and unemulated form) have been implemented in the MAME source code for years, so the hope must be that this emulator will achieve a high level of functionality "out of the box", (sound support? Let's hope so....).

Talk is of a release happening in the near future (so all of you get ready to throw a sicky from work on the day it happens), and you can rest assured that this forward looking "Fruit Machine Emulation" site will keep you up to date with developments as they happen, what the other "MPU" sites are going to do I don't know.... (he said smugly, and in the spirit of jest before anyone goes and gets uppity about it). Apparently something's already underway at MPU World to accommodate this change in the scene, and I'm sure the other main sites will follow suit shortly.

As and when a release happens I'll create a new "JPM DOWNLOADS" page and rename the existing downloads page to "MPU DOWNLOADS", although there is no news yet on how the layouts will be distributed, and of course, we've yet to see what JPM's reaction is going to be, particularly with regard to the ROMs, without which any emulator is just so many 1s and 0s.

The history of the fruit machine emulation scene to date has shown that emulation is NOT a destructive force that will bring about the end of the world with a hefty dose of pestilence and famine thrown in for good measure. Indeed, Empire have embraced the phenomenon and made ROMs, flyers and other artwork for their older machines available from their web site. Barcrest and the other companies whose machines are emulated by MPU3/4 have done more than we could have ever asked for, they have left us alone. MPU3/4 emulates old machines that are now of little or no commercial value, but it helps to bring about a current awareness of and interest in fruit machines, along with an affinity with the Barcrest/Empire/Whatever brand.

My feelings about fruit machine emulation have been sounded out many times before (here and here for example), and you can read a few thoughts about emulation in general here (penned by top games journo Stuart Campbell); in a nutshell, emulation is good for everyone. For games companies (or fruit machine manufacturers) it's a true free lunch, free publicity, free brand awareness, free product placement, free "customer feel good" points ("Hey Barcrest and Empire are really cool, they allow emulation of their old machines to continue unimpeded").

An emulator is a wonderful showcase for a company's products, hardware, games and history - and it doesn't cost them a penny. Beyond that of course, the argument has to be that having experienced some of the finest fruit machines ever made via a JPM Emulator, the emulator player will go on to become a "real" fruit machine player, be it the old classics that can still be found in some arcades or the very latest JPMs in their local pub. More money in JPM machines' cashboxes equals more operators looking to purchase JPM machines next time they go shopping.

JPM are responsible for some of the very best fruit machines ever built, my personal all time "greatest" is a JPM, the mighty Indiana Jones fruit machine. A new generation of gamers having the opportunity to play some of these classic JPMs should not only excite us, it should excite JPM as well - because you absolutely cannot buy this sort of positive publicity and customer interest.

Obviously some kind of self-imposed restriction on which machines are implemented and released for the JPM Emulator will have to take place (no games less than three years old, or five years old, or whatever) - but these matters aside, there's really no reason why a JPM Emulator can't have the same sort of beneficial impact (wahay, shite pun!) on everyone that MPU3/4 did.

Now, will someone PLEASE release Roller Coaster like, IMMEDIATELY!