The Last S+

[stayouttadabunker]

What game do you think was the last S+ they made and date?

Was it the 9CM  9-Line "Triple Diamond"? 

[reho33]

Hard to tell, but I still like them. There is a certain "charm" to them that you can't get from an S2000. But time marches on and so does progress.

[jay]

There are certain models of things that the world just got right. I think the S+ was one of them.
The M Slot, The S Slot were certainly there but the S+ became the work horse of the casino.
Lord only knows how many models Bally generated through the same period that the S+ was around. All without the universatility that the S+ had.

For instance the E-type Jag and the Ferrari Testarosa, both had models before and after but these were classics of the series and are still greatly sought after.

I would think that the TD9L had to be near the end of the game. This is when multi-line video slots were certainly coming into vogue. The other one at the end would have been like Blazing 7's that had a special bonus game.

I don't know how many would have made it onto the casino floor (or lasted) as you would have thought that the speed of play would have been hampered by the number of coins one would have to drop in, and subsequently the hopper would fill. Just like the penny slots of today. If somone actually had to put in 300 coins per spin - one at a time (6 rolls) just how popular would have this been to the casino management.

The S+ is also set up for 4 & 5 reels although I don't know of any production games available for them.

[knagl]

IGT killed off the S+ -- they could have implemented TITO into them, but chose not to.

Jay- There were at least one or two four reel games made for the S+.  I heard that they have some S+ 4-reelers (for pennies, no less) at the Western casino in downtown Las Vegas, but the walk to the Western seemed a little too scary for me, even during the day, to go check it out.

[jay]

IS the Western still rumored to have these ?

[knagl]

The last I heard it discussed was a few months ago, and yes.  It's not great, but here's a picture someone posted from there where you can see that they're 4-reel S+ machines:




I'd be willing to wager that those are Pharaohs Gold machines, which would use the strips we recently discussed here.  In fact, comparing the blurry belly glass in that picture with a blurry picture I took a few years ago of the PE+ version of Pharaohs Gold, they look the same:





I've never seen one in person, but I have notes of a game in the SP/ST list of another (early, based on the SP) 4-reel S+ game (seems like it was a 3-reel plus bonus reel):

SP051 Four-reel "Jackpot Devil" game (SS3364 - SS3368) - "SP051 extends the spin time on the fourth reel."


Ooh, just found this:

[stayouttadabunker]

It would be really great to see if I could make one.
I have the strips coming...
I just gotta search for the rest of the stuff,
construct a four reel harness, make a four reel shelf,
make a huge topbox, etc.etc...
so many things to do - so little time...lol

[Op-Bell]

There was at least one 5 reel S+. It was a knock-off of a Bally EM game that played as two machines in one and paid off on both the left three reels and the right three (the middle one was shared). I have a pic somewhere, I'll post it if I can did it up.

[knagl]

There was at least one 5 reel S+. It was a knock-off of a Bally EM game that played as two machines in one and paid off on both the left three reels and the right three (the middle one was shared). I have a pic somewhere, I'll post it if I can did it up.

Aah, yes, you jogged my memory with this post -- one of our very own  members, KirkLasVegas bought an IGT Twin Thunder 5-reel S+ game with a "shared" 3rd reel.  Lots of pictures of the thing in this thread.  It used a 16mhz board and had a dual Mikohn progressive, so it likely was later in the production run versus earlier.

[rickhunter]

I remember playing the 5 reeler at the Mirage sometime in 1999!!!!  I actually hit the minor progressive on it, the one and only time I've ever been hand-paid on a nickel reel slot.  The total win........




$92.37. I remember it vividly for some reason.  it was 5 straight 3 BAR symbols.

[StatFreak]

I remember playing the 5 reeler at the Mirage sometime in 1999!!!!  I actually hit the minor progressive on it, the one and only time I've ever been hand-paid on a nickel reel slot.  The total win........




$92.37. I remember it vividly for some reason.  it was 5 straight 3 BAR symbols.

Hey Rick, Welcome Back! 

I think the reason you remember the jackpot amount so clearly is because it was such a rare event. I've only hit a hand pay progressive once, so I will always remember the amount. I was down to my last $20, with $20 in reserve for the trip home. I figured that it wouldn't last long in a dollar machine at $2 a pull, but I took a chance. After winning several smaller amounts, I hit the progressive for $4031.68 with 70 credits left on the machine. They paid me $4032 and I played one spin to clear the jackpot, leaving 68 dollars, which when combined with the 32 from the progressive gave me exactly 41 one-hundred dollar bills and one twenty.

I had never won anything like that before and the truth was that I was so naive that I didn't tip the guys who paid me because I had no idea that I was supposed to. I was also way too excited to think clearly about anything anyway.

[rickhunter]

Your handpays definitely beats my handpay.  I've never been "blessed" to get W2G'd. 

[CaptainHappy]

Your handpays definitely beats my handpay.  I've never been "blessed" to get W2G'd. 

Rick,

All that means is that you have not lost enough trying yet! 

I guess that makes you smart, but not lucky? 

CH

[rickhunter]

Yes, I will admit, I'm not a heavy bettor.  I mostly play to see what the machine does.  It just seems whenever I "bet heavy" I loose my funds really fast and thus my fun ends.  So I stretch it as the cost of high payouts.

[StatFreak]

Your handpays definitely beats my handpay.  I've never been "blessed" to get W2G'd. 

Rick,

All that means is that you have not lost enough trying yet! 

I guess that makes you smart, but not lucky? 

CH

I do realize that in the long run your statement holds, but in my case, I've hit six hand pays that I can recall right now (all in Reno back in the olden days ), which included three top prizes, and virtually all but one of them happened almost immediately.

The first was $60 (1200 coins) for three red sevens on a three-coin nickel machine at Circus Circus. Big whoop.   I had bought two rolls of nickels for $4 and hadn't put them all in. After looking at those three twenties and comparing them to what I could win playing $5 blackjack, I decided to started playing dollar machines.     

The second was $500 for three red sevens on a two-coin old dollar machine at the Fitz, which was the top prize on that machine. I had put $16 into the machine (yup, 8 pulls!). The machine paid out $200 and the place was so crowded that it took me between thirty minutes and an hour to get the three hundred hand pay, and I even had to leave the machine and go up to the main change desk in the area to request that someone come over and pay me.

The story there was that the person who handed the machine off to me had just hit the jackpot as well, and had said that it was his second of the night on that machine. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to inherit the machine. Despite knowing that the machine had hit three times that evening, I decided not to press my luck, since I had only invested $16. So I picked another "lucky" soul from the crowd, told him the story, and told him that the machine was his if he wanted to wait, which he did. I never did return to the machine to see if he won or not. I'm not sure, but it might have been a Bally EM, and I've always wondered if something were on the fritz at the Fritz that night.

The third was the progressive mentioned before at Harrah's, with only a $20 buy in. The fourth was also at Harrah's. I hit three white sevens on a dollar RWB for $600 on the FIRST PULL. Of course, Murphy's Law dictated that it had to be at 2am or 3am when the place was deserted, so I had to wait over half an hour before someone came by to pay me, and that included flagging down the occasional change lady to tell them to go get a supervisor.

The fifth was a $480 hand pay on that same bank of Double Dollars progressives, but that time I had been playing for a while.

The sixth was at a two-coin $5 machine for $500, and I had put in less than $50. It was not technically a hand pay, but a hopper refill. I still had to wait for it. It was not long after that that I stopped playing slot machines in casinos.

[stayouttadabunker]

...I still had to wait for it. It was not long after that that I stopped playing slot machines in casinos.

uh...Just don't go on a busy night...

[StatFreak]

...I still had to wait for it. It was not long after that that I stopped playing slot machines in casinos.

uh...Just don't go on a busy night...

That's not why I quit playing. I hate losing.

[rickhunter]

I hate loosing too, but the entertainment factor for me outweighs the loss.  I now consider it a passtime.  The other day I took my kid to Dave and Busters and sank about $40 on a video machine trying to get to the end.  It was one of those gun shooters with a pirate theme.  These things have like $1.50 per credit kind of a thing and, well my kid does not really protect his shields as much as he should.  All in all great fun for about 20 minutes.  So if I sink $100 playing "conservative" on a casino, it's about a wash.  When I feel "frisky" I put $100 on a $5 machine and either loose it all or get some money out of it (so far I'm like 0 for 10 or something), I haven't even been able to hit the single bar combo which would at least make me break even.  Just the anybar combos and maybe a cherry.  So I've never been "up."  The problem with gaming is that when emotions take over and you get frustrated, you tend to sink more money trying to recover the losses, and then you just do stupid things, like Max bet on a nickel machine with 10 credits per line with 20 lines bet.  Do I really need to go on.... 

[stayouttadabunker]

Play with a budget....
C'Mon!...you can afford it!!!

[rickhunter]

I think I can, but my better half