Slot Machine
By Ernie Sams
ARCADIAN 1, no. 8 (Jul. 20, 1979): 59.
ARCADIAN 1, no. 9 (Aug. 18, 1979): 69. (Correction)


This is a Bally BASIC game for use on the Bally Arcade/Astrocade.  There may be more of these slot machine games than any other game genre on the Bally Arcade.  Make sure to play the game that has no comments in the program listing (see the archiving notes, below).

The Arcadian has no gameplay instructions for this program printed in the newsletter.  However, there is extensive documentation on how the program works that is broken down by line numbers.  In this documentation there is such information as payment amounts for winning spins, which varies between these fixed amounts: 5, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 18.

Here are the in-game instructions:

Arcade Slot Machine

Knob #1 lets you bet from $1 to $10.  Pull the trigger to place your bet.  There are lots of winning combinations. A cherry in the left window always is a winner; but a lemon in the left window never wins.

Press GO to start play.


Archive Notes:

1) Paul Thacker archived three versions of "Slot Machine" on May 24, 2013:

   1 - "Slot Machine (1979)(Ernie Sams)(300 baud)(PD)" - Adam Trionfo played this game on November 17, 2021.  The game starts okay, but after entering the amount of the bet, after the spinning of the reels is done, then the game crashes with a SORRY error and then prints out the following line:

1100 IF C=4@(B)?=D

This line matches what is printed in the Arcadian.  The issue is due to the comments in the program.  Play the game using the program with the comments removed.

   2 - "Slot Machine (mod) (1979)(Ernie Sams and Phil Shafer)(300 baud)(PD)"

   3 - "Slot Machine (no comments) (1979)(Ernie Sams)(300 baud)(PD)" - This program has the comments removed because the program ran out of memory as it was printed. I'm not sure why they included comment lines in this case.

See his message posted to the Astrocade discussion group called "The complete Arcadian volumes 1-2 (and a bit of 3)."  You can read it here:

https://groups.io/g/ballyalley/message/12302


2) Paul Thacker archived two versions of "Slot Machine" in November 2012:

   4 - "Slot Machine (mod) (19xx)(Ernie Sams, maybe others)(300 baud)" - Found on hand-labeled tape in Ken Lill's tape collection.  There are instructions at the end, but they're formatted in such a way that they trigger error messages as they load.  An alternate version was on the other side of the tape.

   5- "Slot Machine (mod) (19xx)(Ernie Sams, maybe others)(300 baud)[a]" - Found on hand-labeled tape in Ken Lill's tape collection.  An alternate version was on the other side of the tape.

OK, I figured out that these two programs, called "Arcade Slot Machine," are based on Slot Machine by Ernie Sams (Arcadian volume 1, page 59).  Neither of them is identical to the printed code, though.  It's hard to say what the story is with programs like this.  My best guess would be mods by Ken Lill or maybe John Perkins, though I guess it could have been a prototype or alternate that Ernie Sams shared.

You can read his post about these two versions on January 13, 2013 called "Re: Uploads for Nov. 15, 2012--166 programs."

https://groups.io/g/ballyalley/message/12124


3) Another version was archived from the Paul Zibits collection in August/October 2021 by Paul Thacker.

   6 - "Slot Machine (mod) (1979)(Ernie Sams and probably Paul Zibits)(300 baud)" - While this was found on the reverse side of Star Wars by Scott Waldinger, it isn't particularly similar to Slot Machine by Scott Waldinger. Instead, it's a slightly different version of Slot Machine by Ernie Sams, which was printed in The Arcadian."  Adam Trionfo played this game on November 17, 2021 and it worked okay without crashing.

