Heh, I did enjoy the Blue Moon vid mate, fascinating stuff. I think the net was far more vibrant and exciting then than now, despite all of the tech advances. FF was pretty much loaded onto my browser day and night I worked very odd hours and I still do, and yet even in those small hours of the morning, people would still be posting, stuff would still be happening in abundance. Of course, as I was to soon discover, the incredibly energetic, turbulent and volatile 'scene' was at least as interesting as the emulation itself, and I would marvel at all the shenanigans, schisms, massive strops and imploding forums over the next few months alone.

I was around from late 2001 I think I stumbled across The Hovel, and then Fruit Forums as a result, and I well remember reading Hearthly's very helpful MPU3/4 getting started guide for dummies, and marveling at *actual fruit machines* playing on my unbelievably awful and shonky Time Computers (remember them?) Win98 home PC. (None of this was discussed openly, but people were prepared to share behind the scenes.) I do remember the figures on how many copies of the emulator Chris sold as being single figures, like literally less than 10 sales. In fact, thinking back it's possible I'm getting a bit mixed up, maybe it was the mailing list that Chris posted to about MPU3/4 and not a newsgroup? (Or maybe he posted to both.) It was through that mailing list that I got my very first contacts, and was told about forcing Barcrests, the Lotta Luck/Psycho Cash Beast knockback method, and a few other things as well. I've got it in my head they had a newsgroup named after them but I could be mistaken on that.

There was also a URL for the CMA Members' 'Golden Page' on their website which had some AWP information as well, I wrote a couple of guides for it. It was a mailing list that was put together by someone flogging off 'fruit machine tips' although this was actually useful stuff - there were emptiers but nothing new however there was a lot of good info on best ways of playing some machines to max your profit (like playing club cops n robbers and ignoring everything but the cashpot symbols within 4 nudges) - Chris Smedley is the name i remember from the list and googling his name + club machines gets you some old pages about the mailing list he used to run Chris (Wizard( was on that mailing list and offered it on there first a little while before he tried the newsgroups Yes that's the 'Club Machine Association', I paid £45 to join it and got the 'secret tricks document' which sounds like the one you're referring to there, I've still got a copy of it in fact It was mostly club machine information and older information at that.

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