Bandit Raiders

30/08/2026

WHAT A MASSIVE TURNAROUND AT RETROPOLIS SOUTHEND… LOOK AT ALL THESE ARRIVALS!

If you haven’t stepped inside Retropolis Classic Amusements in Southend-on-Sea recently, you are in for a proper shock. The floor has seen a massive revamp, with classic cabinets and iconic feature boards landing all over the venue.

Here is a breakdown of the legendary machines and community setups that have just arrived on the floor:

THE CLASSIC FEATURE BOARDS & RETRO FAVOURITES

PROJECT – FUN ON THE RUN
Running on 20p play with a classic £6 top prize. Pure Project Coin nostalgia featuring the prison-break theme, red alert features, and that unmistakable retro police chase board.

MAYGAY – MARIO KART 64
Running on 10p play with a £5 top prize. One of the coolest video game crossovers of the late 90s, packing Maygay technology with full Nintendo Mario Kart artwork, banana peels, and the track feature loop.

JPM – POPEYE’S TREASURE HUNT
Running on 20p play with a £6 top prize. Classic JPM gameplay packed with Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl artwork, spinach trails, and traditional nudge action.

BARCREST – ANDY’S GREAT ESCAPE
Classic Barcrest MPU4 running on 10p play with a £6 top prize. Andy dodging Flo down the street across a proper illuminated board—an absolute 90s seaside staple.

BELL-FRUIT – MONEY SPINNER
Running on 25p play with a £15 top prize. Packed with Bell-Fruit character artwork and that massive illuminated spinner wheel dominating the top glass.

BELL-FRUIT – CRAZY CLIMBER
Running on 30p play with a £15 top prize. Classic Bell-Fruit ladder action featuring keys, nudges, and 27 ways to push the feature board all the way to the top.

BARCREST MPU5 HEAVYWEIGHTS

BARCREST – SHARK RAVING MAD
Running on 25p play with a £25 top prize. Classic late-90s Barcrest MPU5 action featuring the iconic illuminated shark mouth and fast-paced feature trail.

BARCREST – HI JINX
Running on 30p play with a £15 top prize. The classic cat-and-mouse themed board with cheese trails, streak features, and the high-energy Hi Jinx matrix.

BARCREST – DOSH N PECKS
Running on £15 top prize. Another rare Barcrest cartoon classic packed with boxing birds, trail shots, and pure MPU5 sound effects.

BARCREST – JACKPOTEERS
Big top glass wheel action, multi-level feature trails, and classic Barcrest board gameplay.

MAYGAY – GLADIATORS
Classic Maygay M1A running on 25p play with a £10 top prize. The iconic 90s Saturday night TV theme complete with The Eliminator, Skytrak, and proper physical reels.

THE 3-PLAYER COMMUNITY LINEUPS

ASTRA – TEDDY’S BULLION BARS
A magnificent 3-player Astra community lineup on 10p play / £5 top prize. Physical reels, Bullion Bar sequences, and the linked top display showing off Win Spins and streaks.

ASTRA – VEGAS NIGHTS
A stunning 3-player Astra community cabinet running on £25 top prize. Shared overhead neon signage, triple-screen feature chases, and classic Astra reel action.

ELECTROCOIN – BAR-X SILVER STREAK
Brand new on the floor! The legendary Electrocoin Bar-X formula brought into an incredible 3-player linked community setup with modern lighting and classic X, O, and BAR gameplay.

All of these machines are switched on, fully illuminated, and ready to play on the arcade floor right now.

Huge credit to the team at Retropolis Southend for tracking down, restoring, and preserving this incredible slice of British amusement history.

Which one of these new arrivals are you heading straight for on your next visit? Let us know in the comments! 🕹️

Retropolis Classic Amusements
21 Eastern Esplanade, Southend-on-Sea

Retro Bandit Raiders

30/08/2026

We went into OneTec Amusements with a sensible plan: 100 spins on the dual Jackpot Party T8 cabinets. But when the screens won't behave, the plan goes straight out the window. We ended up in a split-screen battle—keeping Jackpot Party running on one terminal while turning the other into a full-on sausage hunt on Heidi's Bier Haus. Did chasing those extra spins actually save the cabinet session? Watch the new Spin Raiders upload to find out: https://youtu.be/I8fNwVgE6p4 🎬

We’re back at OneTec Amusements in Eston for another full Spin Raid...

21/08/2026

🔥BOOM HITS IS BACK! 🔥
Want the top feature action without sitting through all the quiet drops? This is exactly what Boom Hits is for.

We take the best action from the full-length Spin Raiders sessions and put it all in one place. Big features, classic board pushes, ridiculous moments, and all the stuff you actually want to see again.

Think of it as Match of the Day for the arcades. The full sessions are still there if you want the complete story, but Boom Hits gives you the action instantly.

So if you fancy a quick arcade fix, or just want to look back at some of the best moments without searching through hundreds of videos, this one’s for you.

BOOM HITS – ALL THE ACTION. NONE OF THE SLOW MOMENTS. 🎬 https://youtu.be/hxYosZtWm44

We’re back at Reel Vegas in Blackpool for BOOM HITS 12, pulling tog...

21/08/2026

WHO REMEMBERS BEAR STREAK FROM REEL FRUITS MAIDSTONE?

Here’s another machine we’d absolutely love to see back out on a public arcade floor at some point…

COINWORLD – BEAR STREAK

20p PLAY
£3 JACKPOT
PROCONN
27 WAYS TO START THE BEAR STREAK

This particular Bear Streak used to be playable at Reel Fruits in Maidstone before the arcade closed, and it’s one of those machines that has become increasingly difficult to find out in the wild.

It’s proper 1990s classic fruit machine territory.

Three physical reels.

Holds and nudges.

BARs and 7s.

A wonderfully simple-looking game that still managed to give you plenty to chase.

And sitting right across the top of the glass:

“27 WAYS TO START THE BEAR STREAK”

That was all the encouragement we needed.

The surviving records identify Bear Streak as a Coinworld machine running on PROCONN technology, and it comes from that mid-90s period when a £3 top prize was still perfectly capable of keeping you stood in front of a cabinet for far longer than originally intended.

The entertainment was getting the holds, nudges and streak going and seeing what the machine was prepared to do.

And just look at the artwork.

Those three bears across the top.

The bright orange and yellow glass.

The huge BEAR STREAK artwork across the bottom.

It’s exactly the sort of machine you could spot from the other end of an arcade and instantly recognise.

Sadly Reel Fruits Maidstone is no longer with us, so Bear Streak disappeared from there along with the rest of that wonderful collection.

But hopefully this isn’t the last we’ve seen of it.

We’d absolutely love to see Bear Streak turn up again at one of the other classic amusement venues at some point.

Machines like this are exactly what the classic arcades are brilliant for.

Not necessarily the biggest top prize.

Not necessarily the most famous machine ever produced.

Just something you haven't seen for years that suddenly makes you stop and think:

“Bloody hell… I remember THAT!”

And if this particular Bear Streak does ever reappear…

We’ll certainly be dropping a few coins in for a proper session.

So who remembers playing Bear Streak?

Did you play this one at Reel Fruits Maidstone, or do you remember seeing one somewhere else back in the 1990s?

And for the proper lo-tech fans…

Would you still happily sit down and play a classic retro cabinet today purely for the nostalgia?

Because we bloody would. 🐻

Retro Bandit Raiders

19/08/2026

BOOM HITS — ALL THE ACTION. NONE OF THE WAITING.

We take our biggest UK cabinet sessions and cut straight to the stuff worth watching:

Big features
£500 cabinet action
Premium play setups
Huge spin counts
Risky board decisions
And the moments where everything suddenly kicks off

BOOM HITS 9 takes us back to the arcades in Blackpool, where one session looked like it had completely run its course...

Then BOOM.

If you want the biggest moments without sitting through all the quiet drops, this is exactly what BOOM HITS is for.

WATCH BOOM HITS 9 NOW: https://youtu.be/6UcFwez2fQk 🎬

19/08/2026

NOW THIS IS A RARE BARCREST… RED HOT KNIGHTS HAS ARRIVED AT ONETEC ESTON!

Well look what’s just appeared on the floor at OneTec Amusements in Eston…

BARCREST RED HOT KNIGHTS!

20p PLAY
£15 TOP PRIZE
BARCREST MPU5
FROM 1999

And this isn’t one we see turning up in arcades very often at all.

As far as we’re aware, the only other public arcade we’ve seen with a playable Red Hot Knights was Mr P’s Classic Amusements.

So seeing another one back out on an arcade floor in 2026 is pretty special.

And if you’re looking at it thinking…

“Hang on, I’ve played this before…”

You probably have, just wearing different clothes.

Red Hot Knights is essentially from the same game family as Barcrest’s Neptune’s Treasure.

Neptune’s Treasure appeared in June 1999, with Red Hot Knights following just a couple of months later in August 1999.

Same familiar late-90s Barcrest DNA underneath, but Neptune and the underwater theme have been booted out and replaced with knights, castles, fire and enough medieval artwork to make the Round Table look underdecorated.

And THIS is why we enjoy these cabinets.

Proper physical reels.

A massive feature board.

Prize and feature trails everywhere.

Loads of lamps.

Real buttons.

And a whole cabinet dedicated to ONE game.

No touchscreen.

No scrolling through fifty different screens.

You walked up to Red Hot Knights, dropped your 20p in…

…and Red Hot Knights was exactly what you were getting.

And better still, this one is still sitting on that lovely old:

20p PLAY / £15 TOP PRIZE

That alone takes you straight back to the late 1990s.

It’s also becoming increasingly difficult to find machines like this actually available to play in public.

Plenty survive in private collections, but that's not quite the same as walking into an arcade, spotting one glowing away in the corner and thinking:

“Bloody hell… they’ve got a Red Hot Knights!”

So fair play to OneTec Amusements Eston for getting another unusual classic back out where people can actually play it.

RED HOT KNIGHTS
BARCREST
MPU5
£15 TOP PRIZE
20p PLAY
ONETEC AMUSEMENTS – ESTON

Now we need the proper old-school Barcrest crowd for this one…

WHO REMEMBERS PLAYING RED HOT KNIGHTS?

And even more importantly:

Have you seen another one still playable in a public arcade anywhere?

We knew about the one at Mr P’s, and now we've got this one at OneTec Eston.

If you know where another surviving one is being played, stick the arcade and town in the comments.

And finally…

NEPTUNE’S TREASURE

or

RED HOT KNIGHTS

Which version are you playing first? 🕹️

Retro Bandit Raiders


Onetec Casino Lounge AMUSEMENT PARTY WILL BE THIS SATURDAY 22ND AUGUST 2026. POP ALONG AND HAVE A GO.

19/08/2026

3… 2… 1… GLADIATORS ARE READY!

Well look what’s just turned up at Retropolis Classic Amusements in Southend-on-Sea…

MAYGAY GLADIATORS!

And this is a proper one too:

£10 TOP PRIZE
20p PLAY
Classic Maygay M1A-era cabinet

Anyone who grew up in the 1990s surely remembers Gladiators.

Saturday night telly, huge arena, ridiculous events, Wolf terrifying everybody, John Anderson shouting “Gladiators… READY!” and, let’s be completely honest here…

Jet was absolutely bloody gorgeous. 😂

So naturally somebody at Maygay looked at one of the biggest programmes on British television and thought:

"We need to turn that into a fruit machine."

And thank goodness they did.

Just look at it.

The whole machine screams GLADIATORS.

You’ve got the massive illuminated feature board, The Eliminator sitting right in the middle, the Skytrak section running down the side, prize values and features everywhere and those proper physical reels sitting underneath it all.

This is exactly what we miss about machines from this era.

You didn’t walk up to a touchscreen and select Gladiators from page 7 of a menu.

The whole bloody machine WAS Gladiators.

The artwork.

The lamps.

The reels.

The buttons.

The noises.

Everything had been designed around one game.

And when that board started lighting up, suddenly the rest of the arcade didn’t matter because you were convinced this was finally the feature that was going all the way.

Usually about three moves before the machine reminded you who was actually in charge.

But that was the fun of it.

And seeing one back on a public arcade floor in 2026, still running on 20p play with a £10 top prize, is cracking.

These weren't machines anybody expected people to still care about decades later.

They spent their lives in arcades, pubs, clubs and bingo halls, got moved around, converted, stripped for parts or simply disappeared.

So fair play to Retropolis Southend for continuing to find this stuff and actually getting it back out where people can PLAY it.

Not behind ropes.

Not gathering dust.

Switched on, flashing away and waiting for a proper classic session.

And there's something especially fitting about Gladiators appearing at Retropolis because this machine isn't just fruit machine nostalgia.

It's 1990s British telly nostalgia as well.

One look at it and suddenly you're back waiting for:

“3… 2… 1…”

before somebody gets launched off a platform with a giant cotton bud.

MAYGAY GLADIATORS
£10 TOP PRIZE
20p PLAY
PROPER 90s MAYGAY
RETROPOLIS CLASSIC AMUSEMENTS, SOUTHEND-ON-SEA

So come on then…

WHO REMEMBERS PLAYING THIS ONE?

Where did you used to see Gladiators back in the day?

And the important question…

Which Gladiator was your favourite?

Wolf?

Hunter?

Cobra?

Lightning?

Jet?

Actually, scratch that.

We already know half the blokes are putting Jet.

Retropolis Classic Amusements
21 Eastern Esplanade, Southend-on-Sea

Retro Bandit Raiders

18/08/2026

🚗🎰 **OLD-SCHOOL MOTORS MEETS OLD-SCHOOL FRUIT MACHINES IN SOUTHEND!** 🎰🚗

Now this has got the makings of a proper nostalgia day.

On **Saturday 29th August**, the **Old Fellas Southend Reunion Part 2** is bringing the old-school car scene back to **Southend seafront** for the Bank Holiday weekend.

And sitting right there on the seafront is somewhere that fits the occasion perfectly:

🔥 **RETROPOLIS CLASSIC AMUSEMENTS** 🔥

If modified cars, old-school motors and 1990s nostalgia are your thing, imagine stepping away from the cars for a bit and walking into an arcade full of the fruit machines many of us were actually playing during the same era.

Retropolis at **21 Eastern Esplanade, Southend-on-Sea**, opposite Sealife Adventure Centre, specialises in classic mechanical British fruit machines rather than filling the place entirely with modern touchscreens.

We're talking proper names from British fruit-machine history.

🎰 **Road Hog**
🎰 **Andy Capp**
🎰 **EastEnders**
🎰 **Monopoly**
🎰 **Rollercoaster**
🎰 **The Italian Job**
🎰 **Cops 'N' Robbers**
…and plenty more from the JPM, Barcrest and Maygay era.

Physical reels.

Feature boards.

Holds and nudges.

Hi-Lo gambles.

Coins dropping into hoppers.

And entire cabinets built around ONE game.

For anybody who was around the car scene in the 1990s and early 2000s, the two things actually fit together brilliantly.

You'd have the modified cars.

The stereos.

The meets.

The seafront.

The arcades.

And somewhere during the evening somebody would inevitably disappear into a fruit machine for "five minutes" and emerge considerably later explaining that it was definitely about to pay.

Some traditions apparently required absolutely no preservation effort. 😂

What we particularly like about Retropolis is that a lot of these aren't just machines sitting behind ropes as museum pieces.

**YOU CAN ACTUALLY PLAY THEM.**

Some of the collection still runs on the sort of lower jackpot levels and traditional gameplay associated with the original machines, giving people a chance to experience how British fruit machines actually played before everything moved towards enormous digital multi-game terminals.

So if you're heading into **Southend for the Old Fellas Reunion on Saturday 29th August**, we'd seriously consider making Retropolis part of the day as well.

🚗 Spend some time looking around the old-school motors.

🌊 Enjoy Southend seafront.

🎰 Then wander into Retropolis and see how many machines from your own misspent youth you recognise.

Because this could basically turn into:

**1990s CAR CULTURE OUTSIDE…**

**1990s FRUIT-MACHINE CULTURE INSIDE.**

And we're absolutely here for that.

The Old Fellas organisers describe this as their second Southend reunion of 2026, bringing the old-school car scene back onto the seafront for the Bank Holiday weekend.

Retropolis is just along Eastern Esplanade and a short walk from Southend Pier, so the two make a pretty cracking combination for anybody into both scenes.

📅 **SATURDAY 29TH AUGUST 2026**

🚗 **OLD FELLAS SOUTHEND REUNION – PART 2**

📍 **SOUTHEND-ON-SEA SEAFRONT**

🎰 **RETROPOLIS CLASSIC AMUSEMENTS**

📍 **21 EASTERN ESPLANADE, SOUTHEND-ON-SEA**

So here's one for all our **Retro Bandit Raiders** followers:

👇 **WHAT WOULD TAKE YOU BACK TO THE 90s FASTER?**

Seeing one of your favourite old cars cruise past…

or walking into an arcade and finding the fruit machine you haven't played for 30 years?

And if you're heading to Southend on the 29th, tell us what you're hoping to see.

🚗 **What old-school car?**

🎰 **And what old-school fruity?**

Now THAT sounds like a proper Southend Bank Holiday. 😎

18/08/2026

LOOK WHAT RETRO SLOTS BLACKPOOL HAS BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE… ANDY’S FULL HOUSE!

Now THIS is what preserving classic fruit machines is all about.

Retro Slots Blackpool has managed to get hold of one of the much less commonly seen machines from the Barcrest Andy Capp family:

ANDY’S FULL HOUSE

And they haven’t simply dragged an old machine out of storage and stuck it on the arcade floor.

They’ve rebuilt it, restored it and brought it back into fantastic working condition.

Looking at the finished machine now, with that enormous blue cabinet, illuminated glass, physical reels, original-style buttons and the unmistakable Andy Capp artwork glowing again, it’s difficult to believe just how old this style of machine now is.

Andy's Full House belongs firmly in the classic Barcrest MPU4 era.

The surviving fruit-machine preservation records confirm Andy’s Full House as an MPU4 title, although interestingly even those archives don’t give it a definite release year, recording it simply as:

199?

So we’re not going to invent a date just because the internet enjoys filling empty boxes with confident guesses.

What we DO know is that this is proper 1990s Barcrest territory.

And anyone who remembers the bingo halls of that period may well remember seeing machines like this sitting around the gaming areas.

There was something very distinctive about walking into those places back then.

The bingo might have been the main attraction, but around the edges you’d find these enormous brightly lit fruit machines quietly competing for everybody’s spare change.

Andy's Full House fitted that world perfectly.

Physical reels
Lamps everywhere
The huge nine-window FULL HOUSE feature
Super 7s
A proper prize ladder
Real buttons
Andy Capp artwork covering the entire cabinet

And this surviving example tells us a little more from the glass itself:

25p PLAY

£10 TOP PRIZE

72% MINIMUM RETURN OR GREATER

Just reading those numbers transports you back to another era.

A £10 top prize.

25p a play.

And one complete machine dedicated to one game.

No touchscreen.

No scrolling through pages of titles.

No menu containing another forty slots.

THE WHOLE CABINET WAS ANDY’S FULL HOUSE.

That’s something we think modern players sometimes miss when looking back at these old machines.

You didn't just recognise the game.

You recognised the CABINET.

You could spot it from halfway across a bingo hall or arcade.

You knew the artwork.

You knew the sounds.

You knew what the various lamps and features meant.

And after playing one for long enough, naturally you became convinced you understood exactly what the machine was about to do.

Usually immediately before it proved otherwise.

But there’s another reason this particular machine deserves some attention.

Andy’s Full House simply isn't one of the Andy Capp machines you see turning up everywhere today.

Most classic fruit-machine fans will immediately recognise names such as:

Andy Capp
Andy’s Great Escape

But Andy’s Full House is a much less frequently seen survivor.

That makes restoring one rather than allowing it to disappear particularly important.

Because these machines weren't originally built with preservation in mind.

They were working amusement cabinets.

They went into bingo halls, pubs, clubs and arcades.

Then technology moved on.

Machines were moved around, converted, broken for parts, put into storage or eventually scrapped.

Nobody in the 1990s necessarily thought:

"We’d better preserve this because people are going to desperately want to play one again thirty years from now."

And yet here we are.

Which is why we have a lot of respect for places prepared to put the time, effort and resources into rebuilding these machines and getting them working properly again.

Retro Slots hasn't just acquired Andy’s Full House.

They've rescued another little piece of British amusement history and put it back where people can actually enjoy it.

And look at the finished result.

The cabinet.

The glass.

The illumination.

The reels.

The buttons.

Andy and Flo.

That massive brick FULL HOUSE logo.

It looks absolutely cracking.

And rather than ending its life switched off in somebody’s store room, it's going back into an arcade in the one town where seeing a classic fruit machine glowing away still somehow feels completely natural:

BLACKPOOL.

That is exactly where machines like this belong.

Not hidden away.

SWITCHED ON.

FLASHING.

MAKING NOISE.

AND BEING PLAYED AGAIN.

BARCREST ANDY’S FULL HOUSE

CLASSIC MPU4

£10 TOP PRIZE

25p PLAY

REBUILT & RESTORED

BACK ON AN ARCADE FLOOR

Massive credit to Retro Slots Blackpool for putting the work into this one.

Now we need the people who actually remember it.

WHO PLAYED ANDY’S FULL HOUSE BACK IN THE 1990s?

And here's what we're REALLY interested in:

WHERE DID YOU PLAY IT?

Was yours in a bingo hall?

An arcade?

A pub?

A club?

Tell us the town and venue if you can remember it, because with a machine this uncommon, those memories are becoming part of its history.

And for the Barcrest fans…

Andy Capp
Andy’s Great Escape
Andy’s Full House

Which one are you dropping your coins in first? 🕹️

Retro Slots – Blackpool

Retro Bandit Raiders

17/08/2026

THE CLASSICS ARE SLOWLY CREEPING INTO ONETEC HARROGATE… AND LOOK WHAT'S TURNING UP!

Something rather brilliant is starting to happen at OneTec Amusements in Harrogate.

Amongst all the modern slots and terminals, a proper little collection of classic British fruit machines is gradually beginning to appear.

And we're not talking about modern games made to look retro.

These are the real machines.

Proper reels. Proper buttons. Lamps everywhere. Feature boards. Cabinets built around ONE game.

And there are now five machines in particular that should bring back some serious memories for anyone who spent time around British pubs, clubs and arcades.

JPM MONOPOLY 60TH ANNIVERSARY

First up is JPM's Monopoly 60th Anniversary Edition.

Even this machine has now passed the 30-year mark, and it's a lovely example of that period when manufacturers didn't simply license a famous name and stick a logo above three reels.

The whole machine became Monopoly.

That enormous board dominates the top glass, surrounded by prize values, features, nudges and all the little decisions that made these machines something you actually had to learn.

The example currently at OneTec Harrogate is running at:

£10 Top Prize
20p Play

Walk up to it now and it instantly feels like the mid-1990s again.

No touchscreen.

No menu containing another forty games.

Monopoly IS the machine.

ANDY'S GREAT ESCAPE – BARCREST

Then we head into classic Barcrest MPU4 territory with Andy's Great Escape.

This is the sort of machine that represents an entirely different way of designing fruit machines.

Bright artwork, physical reels, a proper feature board and an entire cabinet built around the Andy Capp world.

The Harrogate machine is currently running at:

£5 Top Prize
10p Play

Yes.

TEN PENCE A GO.

Standing in a modern arcade in 2026 and seeing a genuine old Barcrest still offering a game for 10p feels slightly ridiculous.

In the best possible way.

Machines like this were something you learned.

You remembered the features.

You watched what the board was doing.

You knew the sounds.

You convinced yourself you'd spotted something promising.

And then came that immortal sentence:

"I'll just put another quid in."

Quite how that sentence repeatedly became another tenner remains one of the great mysteries of British social history.

ANDY CAPP – BARCREST

Sitting alongside it is another proper Barcrest favourite:

Andy Capp.

Again, this comes from that classic MPU4 world where the characters weren't simply decorative artwork.

Andy, Flo and the whole theme formed part of the personality of the machine itself, with the characters even incorporated into the feature gameplay.

The example at OneTec Harrogate is currently set at:

£10 Top Prize
20p Play

And that's something these old machines did incredibly well.

They had personalities.

You could recognise one from across a room.

You knew its sounds before you could even see it properly.

And after enough time playing one, you'd start convincing yourself you knew exactly what it was thinking.

You didn't.

But that never stopped us.

CRAZY FRUITS RED – BELL-FRUIT

And somehow we nearly forgot this one…

Bell-Fruit Crazy Fruits.

More specifically, that gorgeous RED version, sitting there on the classic:

£15 TOP PRIZE

This is pure old-school Bell-Fruit.

The famous Crazy Fruits characters.

A cabinet absolutely covered in fruit artwork.

Physical reels.

Feature action.

Lights everywhere.

And that unmistakable red presentation that anybody who played these machines will recognise immediately.

Bell-Fruit produced different versions of Crazy Fruits, including the familiar red and green machines, but seeing one of the proper red £15 versions back on an arcade floor is something else.

Because again, £15 tells its own story.

We're right back into that period when a £15 top prize genuinely felt worth chasing.

Nobody needed £500 printed in enormous letters across the cabinet.

The entertainment was in trying to get there.

The features.

The feature decisions.

Watching what the machine was doing.

And repeatedly deciding that the next board was definitely going to be the one.

Crazy Fruits also became one of those names that somehow survived long beyond one machine.

There have been other Crazy Fruits games and variations over the years, but seeing one of these proper old red Bell-Fruit cabinets lit up is a completely different thing.

It's the machine people remember.

And if you've ever played one, there's a fair chance you can already hear it just from looking at the photograph.

MAYGAY – THE ITALIAN JOB

And then we come to the machine OneTec has only recently added…

The original Maygay The Italian Job.

And let's get this one right because there are different Italian Job machines out there.

This is the earlier Maygay M1A/B machine.

Not the later Epoch-generation machine that came afterwards.

And this one is sitting proudly on:

£15 TOP PRIZE

That £15 figure takes you straight back to a very particular period of British pubs and clubs.

You'd go out intending to have a few drinks.

Somebody would spot the fruit machine in the corner.

Five minutes later the drinks were getting warm while one member of the group stood feeding coins into a Maygay and confidently announcing:

"It's got to go soon!"

There was rarely any supporting evidence for this statement.

Nevertheless, everybody understood it.

And The Italian Job is exactly the sort of machine that demonstrates why people still love these old classic feature boards.

Physical reels.

A huge illuminated feature area.

Artwork everywhere.

Real buttons.

Loads of lamps.

Sounds and sequences that became burned into your memory.

You didn't select The Italian Job from a touchscreen menu.

THE WHOLE CABINET WAS THE ITALIAN JOB.

And although £15 sounds tiny beside today's top prize figures, comparing them purely by those numbers completely misses what made these machines entertaining.

It wasn't only about what sat at the top of the prize ladder.

It was everything that happened on the way there.

The board.

The features.

The feature decisions.

The noises.

The anticipation.

And the completely irrational belief that another couple of quid would definitely sort everything out.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

And THAT is why what's happening at OneTec Amusements in Harrogate is becoming interesting.

They've now got:

JPM Monopoly 60th Anniversary – £10
Barcrest Andy's Great Escape – £5
Barcrest Andy Capp – £10
Bell-Fruit Crazy Fruits Red – £15
Maygay The Italian Job M1A/B – £15

JPM.

Barcrest.

Bell-Fruit.

Maygay.

Several different periods and styles of British fruit machine design beginning to sit together on one arcade floor.

And hopefully…

this is only the beginning.

Because there's absolutely room for both.

The modern machines keep an arcade moving forward.

But classics offer something the latest touchscreen simply cannot reproduce.

Recognition.

Memories.

Machines people haven't physically played for years.

The sort of thing that makes somebody walk through an arcade, stop dead and say:

"BLOODY HELL… THEY'VE GOT ONE OF THOSE!"

And if OneTec keeps adding machines like these, Harrogate could become a very interesting little destination for classic fruit machine players.

So now we're throwing this over to you.

WHICH OF THESE FIVE ARE YOU PLAYING FIRST?

Monopoly?

Andy's Great Escape?

Andy Capp?

Crazy Fruits?

The Italian Job?

And then the big one…

WHAT ONE CLASSIC FRUIT MACHINE SHOULD ONETEC HARROGATE BUY NEXT?

Not twenty machines.

Not your entire fantasy arcade.

ONE MACHINE.

That one classic you haven't seen working for years.

The machine that, if OneTec announced they'd got one in Harrogate, would genuinely make you consider travelling over for a session.

Put it in the comments.

Let's see which names keep appearing.

Because if OneTec really is starting to build a collection of classics in Harrogate…

we might as well give them a shopping list. 🕹️

OneTec Amusements – Harrogate

Retro Bandit Raiders