CASH ATTACK - "One more day like today and I'll kill you"

One of Barcrest's better pub machines, with a few novel ideas. Great sound and music, with some humorous samples. Good, fast, solid gameplay and an entertaining feature board. The numbers on the reels award nudges, more numbers can be nudged in to award extra nudges. The ? awards extra nudges (usually 2 or 3). 3 horseshoes on the win line gives a bonus.

The key to this machine is using your nudges wisely, learning the reels helps (make sure you're on the 5 reel view by pressing F11). Don't necessarily auto-nudge in the first win you're offered, if you can manually bring in extra nudges to allow you to get a higher win, do so. 3 holds and flasholds work here, always hold 2 horseshoes, the bonuses are generally quite generous. Go for horseshoes as opposed to wins on flasholds, they're more likely to come in.

Every win can be gambled on the feature board, there is no feature exchange (whenever you get a win you're automatically put on the feature board). The better your win, the further up the board you'll start. You progress on the board by gambling hi/lo, if you win the gamble, you move one square in the direction indicated on the number. Sometimes you will be given "change number(s)" at feature entry, if you're on a dodgy number, press the change number to be given a better number to gamble on. Be warned though, only a 1 or 12 is a dead cert. The machine can give you a 2 or 3, 10 or 11 off a change number and kill you on the next gamble. Every successful gamble advances the cash ladder one amount, with auto-collect at the jackpot repeater.

Dotted across the board are knockout squares, win spin squares, cash ladder repeater squares and cash repeater squares. As is common with Barcrest machines, the knockouts are quite generous and will offer higher amounts than they have to. The win spins can be a bit of a con, using the 60p oranges win to avoid giving the next whole pound as it only rounds up *after* all the spins have been completed.

Reel Skill is the best low-down feature, every reel is lined up to a win, they step past slowly and it's a piece of cake to stop it on the jackpot. As a result, you'll notice that the feature tries very hard to steer you away from the reel skill square! Crazy Cash can give as little as £6, if you've managed to get this far you may as well push on the for the jackpot repeater, if you lose the gamble it'll be offered again shortly.

The Death Or Glory feature is an interesting addition. If you're stuck on a poor number with nothing exciting to collect, try this button. A light flashes quickly across the board and awards you a "random" feature or cash amount (glory) or nothing (death).

Use the "Collect" button to collect the cash ladder value. Use the "Take Feature" button to collect what you're being offered on the feature board. Generally speaking, you're better off at collecting the feature or having a stab at death or glory, if nothing else, it's more entertaining than a boring cash collect.

"Cancel" can be used to slow down some of the bonuses, and also to slow down the bonus selection itself, allowing you to choose the one you want. (Listen for audible signals).

Overall, an entertaining machine, and one I used to enjoy playing back when it could be found in pubs and arcades. There's enough of a game in there to keep the novice player interested, and enough of a challenge to keep the pros happy.

August 2001