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The "Always Win" Slot Machine / ATM

Mystery Pinball Theater 3000·video·26m 32s·analyzed·Nov 13, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.017

TL;DR

Mystery Pinball Theater visits a hybrid ATM/slot machine novelty build by Strange Parts and Brendan Small Change Arcade.

Summary

Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 documents a novelty ATM/slot machine hybrid built by Scotty from Strange Parts and Matt from Brendan Small Change Arcade. The machine combines a functional ATM interface with a mechanical slot machine that dispenses quarters when players win, creating a gamified ATM experience. The episode showcases the three-month build process and Matt's custom full-scale arcade cabinet work featuring original arcade boards and CRT monitors.

Key Claims

  • The ATM/slot machine hybrid took three months to build, with the first three weeks being mostly complete and the remaining two months spent debugging and fixing issues

    high confidence · Scotty and Matt explicitly stated this timeline when asked how long the build took

  • The idea for the ATM/slot machine hybrid came from seeing pachinko parlors in Tokyo and wanting to give players a guaranteed jackpot experience

    high confidence · Scotty explains the conceptual origin when asked 'What even gave you this idea to do this?'

  • Matt from Brendan Small Change Arcade builds full-scale custom arcade cabinets with original arcade boards and CRT monitors, not MAME boxes

    high confidence · Host explicitly shows and confirms the cabinets contain original arcade boards and CRT monitors with custom cabinetry

  • The machine dispenses quarters via a mechanical payout system using a coin hopper and PVC pipe delivery

    high confidence · Host visually documents the coin hopper, ramp system, and quarters dispensing mechanism during machine walkthrough

  • Only two people have ever built an ATM/slot machine hybrid like this

    medium confidence · Host states 'How many people have ever done this? Two.' implying Scotty and Matt are among the only ones

Notable Quotes

  • “It's not pinball, but it's probably ten times harder than pinball.”

    Manu (Mystery Pinball Theater host)@ 0:36 — Sets expectation that this non-pinball project is exceptionally complex

  • “What if you paid to win the jackpot? And then we were like, oh, we need an ATM.”

    Scotty (Strange Parts)@ 15:46 — Explains the core concept that led to the hybrid machine design

  • “The reason they moved away from coins was that the serious addict would get annoyed when they hit the jackpot because they couldn't sit and play. They had to wait for it to pay out.”

    Scotty or Matt (exact speaker unclear from transcript)@ 16:25 — Provides historical context on slot machine evolution and user experience design

  • “We were really dumb. I should say that we were really naive.”

    Scotty (Strange Parts)@ 18:12 — Self-aware humor about underestimating project complexity

  • “These are original boards. Let me see if I can get it. Oh, yeah. Can you get it to tilt?”

    Manu (Mystery Pinball Theater host)@ 22:18 — Host verifies authenticity of arcade hardware in Matt's cabinets

Entities

ScottypersonMattpersonManupersonStrange PartscompanyBrendan Small Change ArcadecompanyFree Go WatchproductJeremyperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Mystery Pinball Theater actively documents unique arcade/gaming projects and showcases independent builders, fostering community awareness of custom machine creation

    high · Episode dedicated to documenting and promoting Scotty's and Matt's work, with repeated plugging of their YouTube channels and websites

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.080

0:00
Hello, hello, well not really pinball sign, we're not doing pinball right now, hello welcome MPT3K, where's the camera on this thing, am I looking at the camera, yes, man am I looking I can never tell it what order it is. Is that it? Yeah. All right. I'm at Free Go Watch right now, and I wanted to document this momentous occasion of this ridiculous build. It's not pinball, but it's probably ten times harder than pinball. That, that's with small change. arcade, he's half of this thing that we're showing off, which I think I should not bury the lead anymore, I should just show it. So let us switch the camera and walk around.
1:02
So, hello, what's up, George? Don't panic, Luke, tell me if the audio is okay. It's a little loud in here. This guy got the jackpot. Did we get a winner? We got a jackpot. Super jackpot. Just a normal jackpot. The audio's good? Okay, I'm going to get a little closer. Pardon me. I'm going to sneak around you guys. Excuse me. So, you have to go. If you have land on any of these floors, and it'll always be your name. It's not my name. It's your name. Pardon me. It's your name. I'm going to do this. I'm totally going to do this myself.
2:05
So who you're looking at right now is you're looking at Scotty from Strange Parts. Scotty's one half of the guys built this. The other guy is right here. That's Matt from Small Change Arcade in his house. And I'll show you the stuff that he builds also, which is pretty amazing. The whole fact that they spin this way as opposed to this way is totally like a convention, not a heart. A heart, no. Right. The other thing that I think is interesting is we have some sort of concept that it's like random chance is happening while the wheels are slowing down. And the slot machine actually figures out what you're going to win before you pull the key. When you put the coin in, it's when it makes the decision as to what's going to happen. I figured that. You're taking the magic away. Yeah. Well, I mean, back in the day, when it was actually mechanical, I think there was more of that actually going on. Agreed. Agreed. I'm sorry, I may have misspoke. I think it is actually when you pull the handle, but not when the real stuff.
3:16
Someone told me last night that there was some sort of scam for three internet days, but post-computer days, where someone figured out that the random number generators that run the folder slot machines are predictable, and had like builds for random number generator simulator and then they had like a very complicated scam where they had someone on like a pay phone back to the computer and they were like signaling across the floor of like when to pull the handle.
3:42
I think it was like a speed number in there and it ended up not being random. Right, yes. You had another machine. Can you figure out, oh, I saw this, this, this, this. I know exactly where it is. All right, I want to give this sucker a try. Okay, I'm going to give this thing a try. As soon as he... So Scotty's fielding questions about the ATM right now. Is that a gimbal right there? That is a gimbal. What's up? What's up, Ben Henry? Is this a gimbal right here? This one's nice. Yes, it's a gimbal. Is that doing anything? It is. It is doing something. Look.
4:20
It's just nice and slow. What are you doing here? It's a weekend. It's a holiday, though. It's a holiday.
4:27
All right. Hey, how good are you at holding a gimbal? Because I want to do that. Is that a trick question? Yeah. Because you should be able to just hold a gimbal anyway.
4:38
And so that's still working. I want to do it. Okay. So can you hold it while I... You can hold it from here. You can hold it from there. All right. Cool. All right. I'm going to give this a shot.
4:52
Whoa. Yeah. I did see the last one number. If you zoom in really close and pause it on that exact rate. I'm not going to send my ATM. It was already seen.
5:06
Can I give it a shot? So we're live on Twitch right now. This is Scotty. Strange Parks. Told you already. There's Matt. Small Change Arcade. I'm going to actually... This is scary because this... I don't like slot machines and I hate ATMs.
5:25
We're sending out to change your mind. All right. So what do I do? How do I do this? So it works just like a normal ATM. Just like a normal ATM. Okay. Just do what you would normally do on an ATM. What I would normally do on a normal ATM is be like... All right. Let's see. Okay.
5:46
Okay. I got to be careful. It's actually a little tricky. I'm going to do this on camera. Feed that in. Ah!
5:54
All right. Please wait a moment. Okay. English. Okay. This is the part. Zoom in. Let me zoom in. Coming in bright.
6:06
Do you like to check your balance? No. And I'm going to do a withdrawal. And would you like to continue the transition? We don't have a receipt. No receipt.
6:21
Alright. Are they checking? Let's do 20. Let's do 20, give him the highest ATM fee ever. Oh, I'm getting $20 and a quarter. Well would you prefer the super jackpot Yeah He wants the super jackpot super jackpot So am I going to cancel out
6:44
I'm just going to get over this line. I better not get broke. Get over here. I'm going for the super jackpot now.
6:53
This is insane. Everybody good with it? Any chat? It asked for the huge- Oh, the timeout. Okay. There you go. One card. Okay. All right. That's good. Yeah, it is good. A little safety. All right. Let's do it again. Super background still on the album.
7:21
All you people are watching. This is the weirdest ATM thing ever. His big end to the six. No. No withdrawal.
7:37
Yes, no receipt. Checking. 20. Wait a moment. Yes, I'll pay this $9.95. No, it's not. It's not. Yes, I'm going to continue. All right.
7:56
All right. Pull the lever. Not quite. Not yet. Wait. Continue. Connecting to host. Transaction approved! Oh!
8:06
Not like before. Okay. I'm dispensing your money. Please wait. Get ready. Alright. You can hit the back button. Okay.
8:25
Alright. Thank you. Now pull the handle. Come on, big money, no whammies. Big money, no whammies. Yeah!
8:40
I won my money. Honey, get in the car. Remove it. What the heck? Oh my god, I've won. What did I win?
9:16
It's still going. Yes! Super Jackpot! Woo! Oh, my God. Who's playing pinball tonight? Not you.
9:46
We're not even close. You know this is going back in there, right? Yeah, it is. I know a guy who buys pennies for his business. Does he? Yeah. Okay.
10:02
That's the game. So we're in prison. I won for this show. I did. Oh. Yeah. Oh, my. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's fair. Oh, my God. Congratulations. Good to meet you. Hi. Oh, my God. Hi.
10:22
Oh, my God. He's going to get a back brace. Yeah. We're going to look inside of it. I got it.
10:47
Guess the weight. That's $20. This is $20. This is where we can build. Like, make builds.
11:04
Is there anything like, you know, you don't want to see? No. No, it's all right. By the way, you can check out, I know you can check out Scotty on Strange Parts on YouTube. If you just search for Strange Parts on YouTube, he's the guy who built an iPhone because he wanted to. from parks.
11:29
That's a thing you can do, I guess. I hear logic boards are really hard to get. No, they don't. All right, check it out.
11:38
I'm going to refill this here. I'll show you what just happened to you. So we're going to refill this puppy.
11:46
I can't read the chat. Sorry, chat's all the way over there, but I'm sure you guys are asking great questions why would I subject myself to 20... How many coins?
11:58
2,000. So that's the penny house right there. Usually it's full, and there's a little bit left. And then it goes down this ramp, this thing here that goes down. You see that?
12:13
That's what the quarters just come out right there. Wait, is that a PVC pipe there? Yeah. Yeah, it's high... Wow. High-tech coin shooter.
12:22
and goes straight in. Oh, this is heavy. Let's have a bunch of those back in there. Yeah, so how do we do this? So I can throw those back in, and then what I was thinking is we could re-enable this debug menu and let you pull up your quarters. And you get your $20 quarters. I think you actually want quarters.
12:45
I know you. I've seen you in here before. I know for a long time I was like $10. That is an awesome football player. That's what he's got. Why don't you give me a $20 bill too? No, no, no. I'll make more money. Yeah, that would be my big plan.
13:02
So this is legit now. How many more of these are you going to build? That's a question for that. Are you going to bet on it?
13:10
By the hundred By the hundred I going to figure out the price first Oh my God You going to figure out the market He said he would build another one for the right price How many of these slot machines are just sitting in and waiting to be built like this right They're out there. Squires and Corey in San Mateo have a whole bunch of slot machines. You've got to watch the YouTube video that you guys put together. It's a strange sports latest video. It's about this whole process of fighting a slap machine, getting an ATM, and jamming them together with lots of blood, sweat, and tears. These two things don't want to be the same person. How many people have ever done this? Two. Wow. Also, what I want to make sure to do is show some of Matt's terrific work. He makes this. What is it? Low, small scale, full arcade machines, Ms. Pac-Man. He's got a Robotron over there. Not Robotron. Robocop.
14:14
Donkey Kong. Which one? Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. NBA Jam? What's that called? What was that? Where is it? Oh, shoot.
14:25
Ask Matt about his Tetris. Is he pretty good? Is Matt pretty good? He's like a world champion. Is he pretty good at Tetris? Not a world champion, yes. Not a world champion. Is he all right? Is he pretty good? I guess. Yes. Convince him to stream on Twitch. Please convince him to play Tetris and stream on Twitch. Dude, there's like a girl who sits there and dances in a bikini and gets two thousand people. Just stream on Twitch. Just go watch her on Twitch. Is that your favorite channel, buddy? Alright, don't show that. Hand away for a minute. Okay, your wife just saw that. She's bummed. Um, yeah, we're gonna go check out some of your sponsors. Okay. Wait, wait, here we go. Huh? You want to shoot 20 bucks? Yeah, we're going to get you your quarter like the dying custard. Okay. So this is the cheat mode. The cheat mode. The god mode, so to speak. So it's going to give you quarters, right? Give you quarters. So we're going to see how it looks when you've actually won. When you've actually won. What even gave you this idea to do this? Buddy and I were walking through Tokyo. We were looking at the pachinko parlors. And there are a ton of stuff. And I was like, I'm going to go get some of this stuff. What even gave you this idea to do this? Buddy and I were walking through Tokyo, and we were looking at the pachinko parlors. And there are a ton of slot machines in the pachinko parlors as well. And I was like, slot machines aren't that exciting because you never win the jackpot. How cool would it be to give everybody who wanted it jackpot experience? And then I was thinking, well, how would that work? You wouldn't give away free money. And then I was like, what if you paid to win the jackpot? And then we were like, oh, we need an ATM. And then it was like, oh, yeah. It was just kind of from there. Which you knew you had to get the old school one. Yeah. Right. And we had to get one that spit on quarters and one that had physical reels. Now they're basically video games that operate off the car. You don't even have to pull the thing now. No. You hit the button. Yeah. It's kind of one of the last areas that has this. I'm sure. Yeah. That actually, that's how you get paid. Yeah. But it's interesting. I mean, you just experience why they moved away from coins. Because you're a serious, I mean, the reason they moved away from coins was that the serious addict would get annoyed when they hit the jackpot because they couldn't sit and play. They had to wait for it to pay out. And so by putting it all on the card and all just numbers based, they are much more efficient. Yeah, and you don't have any downtime. It's portable downtime. Wow. All right.
16:49
This is awesome. How many people here are going to do this? Come on. Oh, it's an ATM. Like three or four people going to raise. Really? No, I'm late to the party. I got it. It's like, ah, I'm late to the party. Say it.
17:09
It's currently 1820. It's at the ATM. Okay. So you can only... So we're going to change it to time. It's a little slow. The most we can do is . It's slow now. We have to wait for it to. And it's like going and then stopping and then going and then stopping. This is like the diagnostics mode to just trigger the cache dispenser. It's like spinning out 20. Yeah, but like very, it's like reinitializing each time. So it's still on your bank account. No. No, I have to. No, one dollar. The cash dispenser has this mode where it has a little flap that flips up and it has a reject bin and you can, in the diagnostics, tell it to skip one building to the reject bin just to get it to run the motors and everything.
18:01
So we're doing that, but it's a lot of work. How long did it take to build this, guys? Three months. I thought it was going to take a year.
18:12
Yeah, we were really dumb. I should say that we were really naive. And really, at the end of three weeks, we were almost done. And then we spent the rest of the next two plus months breaking things.
18:32
And now we finally got to the point where we didn't break anything. How did you guys meet? We were talking about the first time. Yeah. We were talking about the first time. Not that way. Jeremy.
18:45
Yeah, right? Me and I founded a company together before I was doing YouTube. And you used to work with Jeremy in a new company. And then you also were watching Strange Parts, I think, before we got into this. Yeah, and then you, like, because I was talking to Jeremy. Yeah.
19:00
And then I went over to visit him at the warehouse, and you were there. And we hit it off. And I had this idea, and I came to Matt, and I was like, I think you might be the perfect person to work with me on this. Do you want to come along on this adventure? Just quick . Yeah. Right. Sorry. Sorry, Jeremy. All right. What's that? I don't think you're ready. What's that? This is, oh my god. So the ATM in this? Right. Yeah. OK. There's no ATM with the hardware. Well, there's hardware in here. All that we're missing is the cabinet, like the metal box. Right. That it looks in at the machine. Right. OK. You changed this up. Yeah. Okay, you are good to go.
19:44
Okay. Yeah, so you just pull him. Oh so good to pull him All right Mom Don say I wasted my time at Foxwoods Come on Big money big money big money Bar.
20:03
You got one penny there. I put that in there. It's stuck inside the door. Awesome. Oh, that's it? Oh, thank you so much. Well, this is... Oh, Matt, we've got to keep this here.
20:33
Well, I mean, I know a place. If they're looking for a place to put it, there's this place around... It's on Waller Street. It's called Freegal Watch. If they want to keep it here, you know. We are looking for a place to put it, so... Oh, okay, perfect. Maybe we should talk to the guy. Talk to the camera guy that's running this here gimbal and let's see. I think it'll all work out. Thank you, Matt.
20:54
Once again, check out Strange Parts on YouTube. Check out smallchangearcade.com and I'm going to grab this so I can show you guys some of Matt's... I'll take my gimbal, man. Oh, really? You want to come with me? No, no. Okay, this way.
21:08
We're going to just quickly show some of Matt's awesome work. So, these are full scale, obviously, right? These are full scale. Like, if you get the scale here.
21:20
Right? Get that. Get that by the full scale arcade game. All right. Now, let's go see what it looks like when you get it from Small Change Arcade.
21:37
Boom! Arkanoid! Oh, my God. I would so take this in my house. I'm not kidding you. Actually, my kid plays. So, my kid comes here. He plays this. all the time. I get mad at him because he's not playing pinball.
21:50
He loves to... He stands up on a little stool and he plays it. Look at that. Stand next to it for a minute.
21:57
How awesome is that? So you built... You built the entire thing. Yeah, it's custom cabinets. And it's... Oh, these are sweet. And these...
22:10
I think everyone should know these are not MAME boxes. These are... Show the original boards. These are original boards. Let me see if I can get it. Oh, yeah. Can you get it to tilt?
22:22
Yeah, a little bit. So check it out. He makes the cabinet so that you can look inside and see that they're actual.
22:29
And they all have CRT monitors, which is the hardest part. I'm sure. The CRTs are crazy. There's a Donkey Kong. This is the one that I played to death.
22:41
She's the queen. She always wins the coin count every time. Look at that. Look at that. Look at this. Oh man, that is so cool.
22:52
So yeah, you can get go to smallchangearcade.com You can talk to Matt about rental or purchase. I think rental only within San Francisco. Hit me up about those holiday rentals. Yep. These are awesome to have at parties, at corporate parties. Imagine coming to a corporate party and then having a bunch of these small scale but real, real arcade. And he's got this one.
23:18
He's got this one in like hyper mode. Fast mode. Thanks for coming. Thank you, Matt. Oh, thank you, Matt. It's awesome stuff, man.
23:30
And you can see all the pinball machines here if we go watch. You know that. Look at me. I'm ready. I'm a winner.
23:38
Woo! I'm going to play everything. I'm going to suck at everything because I have $20 worth of quarters and I can play all night. So these guys are going to keep going. I think I'm going to sign off. There's George's favorite table right there. That's a car.
24:01
All right. Thanks, Matt. I'm going to swap over. Thank you, guys. I'm sorry I wasn't able to monitor the chat, but I can only do the one thing at a time. But hopefully that was fun.
24:16
Oh man, is there anybody left? Alright. Thanks once again for watching. And I'll see you. Check out Small Change Arcade. Check out Strange Parts. See you guys later.
24:46
Thank you.