My first Tetris experience at the arcades: Tetris Payout

was back in the day when I was a kid, a time when we used to have at least one local arcade shop in the city. I was rarely one for arcade games, being a kid with little money and all, but one game that caught my eye was a game called Tetris Payout. Say what.....play Tetris and win money!?!?!? Now this was one arcade game I definitely had to try out.

http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=4285

As one that played GB Tetris almost everyday and thinking I was pretty damn good at the game, I was confident that I had a good shot to win some cash. After a couple of minutes of debating, I gave in and in went some hard earned erm, pocket money - oh how I was buzzing with excitement of the possible 10 jackpot!!! The game started.....and then ended very quickly.....and with no payout. You could say that my first game didn't go down as well as I thought it would. Not to be put off by it though, in went some more cash without hesitation. Again, the game ended very quickly and with no payout. Next game, same story. At this point, I was feeling very disappointed and my confidence to winning any payout let alone the jackpot had dropped right down. Ready for another game, I stood there with coin in hand whilst watching the rolling demo for a while - it was then that I noticed a series of thin weird coloured shapes in the top left corner. On closer inspection, I noticed that a long strip of black tape had been stuck right across all of the next peices. Needless to say, money went back into my pocket and out I went - that was probably the last time I visited that place.

So that was my first and only (I've not come across any any others) Tetris arcade experience which was not a fond one. I was probably rubbish at it anyway but not being used to arcade controls, especially for playing Tetris, and having a huge disadvantage didn't exactly help. Saying that though, I would love to be able to play it again and experience any other Tetris arcades.

 

wow, you actually played tetris payout. that's a rare one i gather since no one could find a date, much less any other information, for the wiki.


so was it hard? do you remember how it "payed out?"


i remember seeing atari tetris at the bowling alley once. was too young to have any money to spend on it. i should've stole some from somebody.

 

Thanks for sharing, I've always been really curious about this particular version of Tetris. It's actually undumped and therefore unemulated. Hopefully some day we'll all get to see what it was like.

 

Why not just peel off the black tape?

 

From what I remember, the payout was based on however many points you could rack up in a given time limit - more points, more money. I can't say I remember exactly how the scoring worked but, looking at the flyer, I think you can just about make out the number of points that you needed for each payout.

6500 POINTS = 1
7000 POINTS = 2
7500 POINTS = 3
8000 POINTS = 4
8500 POINTS = 5
9000 POINTS = 6
9500 POINTS = 7
10000 POINTS = 8
10500 POINTS = 9
11500 POINTS = 10 jackpot

If you attained any of those points at the end of the time limit or a fill screen then the machine would payout, like a fruit machine.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how many points a Tetris was worth - it was a very long time ago.....as a rough guess, I'd say it appeared in my local arcade at around 1995/1996, although that's no indication of when it was actually released.

LOL if only it was that easy.....the tape was behind the glass screen.

 

great story. we need more of this kind of thing. unfortunately i can't think of any memorable tetris experiences from when i was younger. the first time i played was on a clone that was part of a random bunch of classic games on a 3.5" floppy disk my family won in a raffle.

 

I don't get how a payout version of Tetris would work. I mean, my train of thought would be if you could get the jackpot once, you'd be able to get it (or at least a similarly high payout) every time.

 

That probably explains the tape...

 

got to be catch. there's always a catch.

 

That's what I thought at the time until I played it and got nowhere near to winning even the smallest amount - back then, I didn't really have the money to invest to try and get good at it in hope that I could possibly win my money back. The thing with all these payout type games that you have to keep in mind, they are designed to be hard to win and in most cases take more money from you than what they actually pay out.


With a Tetris payout game, many factors could be introduced to make it hard for you to win:-


Fast fall speed of bricks, restricted movement, sluggish controls, time limits, erm black tape!


Tetris Payout definitely wasn't the same kind of Tetris that I knew on the GameBoy. Then again, perhaps it was a one off and wasn't designed very well (from the owners perspective) and was in fact quite easy to win more money than what you put in, hence the black tape.....

 

My guess would be that the randomizer tries to screw you over. If the machine has paid out it's quota, start starving the player of I pieces.

 

The machines were emptyable if you knew what you were doing.


But not without the piece preview to guide you.


THat's why everyone taped them over.


The stratgey was to stack really high and make lines near the top of the screen.


when the piece preview existed, this was doable.

 

I remember this, they used to have it in an arcade in burnham on sea. I date it about 1989 - 1990. I never actually played it though, i wasnt into Tetris in those days. Anyway i was only about 10 years old at the time and what little money i had used to go on final fight and shinobi

 

I remember playing this in a holiday Caravan park somewhere in the UK, probably south coast.


The machine had two options, 50p for a "practice" go with no prize and 1.00 for a stab at the "jackpot". I played a couple of practice games and one main game, winning back my shiny English pound. Don't remember the preview trail, but then it was probably about 15 years ago. By then I was well versed in GB Tetris but I found the machine very hard.


The machine would have died out either because people got too good at it and emptied it or because it was actually tricking people and they gave up trying. There has never been to my knowledge anything in the arcades with payouts for true skill, this would be commercial suicide!


Cool to be reminded of this though, cheers!

 

There used to be people who would tour around making money from the quiz machines that pay out. I doubt it was particularly lucrative for the amount of effort it would require though.

 

your typical SWP has a percentage, and becomes impossible to win on if it's paid out above it.


for example, if monopoly swp is not yet ready to pay out, it will just keep fudging the dice rolls so you never get a complete set of properties.


even if you are perfect, most have some gimmick they can use to keep you from winning.


and if it really is a straight quiz game, they will either shorten your time to answer to the point you can't do it fast enouggh, or have a large pool of stumpers that it will never ask until it's paid over percentage.

 

How do you apply that to tetris, though... snake barrage?

 

For those watching at home, "SWP" is "skill with prizes".

It could bias the randomizer as you suggest, or it could f*** with the timings. If the machine is running low on cash, it could speed the pieces up, reaching 20G more quickly or pushing lock delay even lower. Imagine stepping up to one of those machines and having to deal with Shirase.

 

In fact, Tetris payout tried to use the timer to do this. But because of the huge bonuses from line clears high on the field, it was still emptyable, as long as that piece preview was available.

 

Pics or it didn't happen.

Oh wait, I've found pics of a Tetris Payout machine while following a chain of links that led me from Slashdot to Sir Arthur's Den to a story about MAME 0.131 to a list of undumped arcade games including three Tetris brand games.

Fun fact: If you've been playing TGM a bunch, the 1, 2, 3, etc. on the machine start to look too much like S1, S2, and S3.