Zeppelin Games
£2.99

Oh no! All I seem to do these days is play either arcade quiz games or arcade fruit machines! I know so much about all the machines from playing these budget releases I might as well move into the local arcade. So exactly what has Arcade Fruit Machine got to offer that the other fruit machine sims left out? Nowt much. Despite having a slightly different screen display to a game I played recently (mentioning no names!), it's almost identical.

You get 50p to start off with and have to nudge and gamble your way to the jackpot of £1.50, woo! Some features on this fruit machine are unique. You can choose whether you want a reverse or forward start to spin the reels, and there are of course the usual 'special' features like cash pot and skill run. The general idea is to light up all the letters in the 'CASH 'n' GRAB' then select your special feature and win hoards of cash.

All the fruit and coins are quite well drawn in a cartoon style. The scrolling is also very smooth on the reels, but not so on the message at the beginning - yuk! The best graphics in the whole game are on the loading screen, they're really neat. Sound wise, well there is some sort of attempt at a tune on the start screen and the odd 'zoop' effect when something is won. Arcade Fruit Machine's reel let down (groan) is the lack of excitement: you can go for ages without winning a sausage.

While definitely not one of the best fruit machine simulations about, you can get some enjoyment out of it.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Another delve into the recesses of Speccy softstuff with Dr Marcus "stand very still and try not to scream" Berkmann.

Zeppelin
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Yet another fruit machine sim on the market (I think we all know what computer programmers spend all their money on, don't we?), but Arcade Fruit Machine is not, sadly, one of the best. It's playable enough, as you'd expect - the graphics are perfectly acceptable and I have no complaints about speed. But with some of the more recent sims becoming really rather advanced - and needing about as much concentration and brainpower as a flight sim - this could be a little too straight forward for modern tastes. I suppose we've just been spoilt really - CodeMasters' recent Fruit Machine Simulator 2 is light years ahead, and Zeppelin is probably just nine months late. At £2.99, too, it's a touch on the pricey side. For younger players only perhaps (if, that is, you don't mind younger players mucking around with fruit machines). For the rest, the CodeMasters title is a better bet.

Label: Zeppelin
Author: Dented Designs
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Just what the world needs. Another fruit machine simulator. Whilst there's already a glut of turgid simulations filling the toilet of the budget's it's amazing that yet another chocolate log can be produced.

I suppose the production meeting went like this; "OK lads, we need a really big budget success. What's been at the top of the budget charts for the last eleven decades? Oh, Codemasters' One-Armed Bandit simulator. They're easy to write, aren't they? Three rolling graphics, a couple of flashy lights, a few bloopy noises and you're there. Get Daz, Gaz and Waz onto it, and we'll have it in the shops the day after tomorrow."

Well, they got it in the shops alright, and it's a perfectly good fruit machine simulator: you can give yourself up to 99 credits to start with, hold the reels, roll them forwards or backwards, (so long as you ignore the wrong control key given in the instructions), go for the Cash 'n' Grab bonus by lighting up the letters along the top of the reels, nudge, win spins, use the Feature control to stop the reels at a particular point, and all that stuff, but what is the ruddy point? Surely the idea of a fruit machine is to lose all your money, and since you don't have that excitement on the micro version, it all seems rather silly. In any case, anyone mad enough to want to play fruit machines on a computer will already have the Codemasters game, and Zeppelin's isn't sufficiently better to make it worth the effort.

Admittedly, if you're so addicted to one-armed bandits that you pour all your money into them, this might be a cheap way to break the habit. Unless you're a Fun City psycho I really can't see any point in bothering with this one.

Zeppelin
Spectrum £2.99

Here's one for the bandit addicts out there - a whole fruit machine inside your computer! It's got three reels, skill chance, gambles, repeat, and a loadsamoney jackpot!

However, even though it's got all the features you'd find on an average fruit machine, I honestly cannot see any point whatsoever in playing it. The attraction of a bandit is to win money, not points. And saying that, this isn't a particularly good machine either - it's frustratingly tight with the feature holds, and the repeat function is completely obscure.

A complete and utter fruit machine nutter might glean a few hours entertainment from this, but after that it becomes incredibly tedious to play.