ANDY CAPP -  "Brutal husband beating"

Grannies are fond of telling us, with a tear in their eyes and a stool in their incontinence pants, of the days when they could go out with a single shilling grasped tightly in their grubby urchin's hand, see the Saturday matinee at the picture house, buy fish and chips along with a large mug of tea, and still have enough change left for the bus fare home. My granny always seemed more attached to her knitting, but I'm sure that such a story was always bubbling ominously under the surface, it was only the threat of a dropped stitch and embarrassingly dislodged false teeth that kept it under wraps.

However, halcyon days, real or imagined, are not the exclusive property of kindly octogenarians with big slippers, woollen mittens and tasty scones; fruit machines had their golden age too! Now isn't that exciting?

Andy Capp is a fine machine, and, as far as I can tell, it did fairly good business for Barcrest when it was released in 1993 (it certainly turned up in plenty of pubs and arcades). There's nothing in particular about it that stands out as delightfully unique or different, but it all hangs together as an unusually playable game.

Basics are as follows: Overlaid "Andy" feature symbols add to a six position entry trail, filling the trail, or three Andies in a row (a most tempting prospect for any young lady on the prowl) awards the feature. Once on the feature board, a start (couch) to finish (pub) trail, Andy and Flo take it in turns to make a move. If Flo catches Andy, he is subjected to a brutal husband beating (Flo had girl power long before the Spice Girls decided to hop on the bandwagon) and has to go back home and sleep on the couch, which doesn't sound too bad at all to me, but what do I know?.

Reel wins can be exchanged for the feature, the usual "one successful gamble and exchange" rule doesn't apply here. Sometimes the exchange point will be for the win initially awarded, sometimes it will be one gamble away, sometimes it will be two or three gambles away. As ever, the higher the win exchanged, the further along the trail the exchange point.

As you move along the trail you'll come across increasing cash values, a chance to collect the nudge pot, features, mysteries and the killer "Back to sleep" square. A pleasant touch is that you're safe from the psychotic Flo and her deadly rolling pin of doom on the feature squares, which come in blocks of four. Flo can actually pass you whilst you're on the feature squares, this gives you the opportunity to collect what you're on or risk another spin in the hope that you'll pass Flo or make it to the sanctuary of the next bank of feature squares.

A mistake that "chase" games make with alarming frequency is to kill you off at will with the pursuer and have a standard (i.e. nasty bastard) mystery square to boot. Andy Capp doesn't fall into this obvious idiot trap, the mystery will kill you off when it needs to but you'll generally get an easier ride than usual. There's an extra life of sorts available in the form of "Flowers for Flo", if you have these in reserve when Flo catches you she'll be appropriately fobbed off and retreat a few spaces before resuming the chase. However, the flowers won't save you from the "Back to sleep" squares or the nastier elements of the mystery squares. I can't conceive of any greater suffering that could be inflicted upon a human being than landing on the final "Back to sleep" square whilst still holding flowers for Flo, and the plight of a starving Afghan refugee doesn't even come close.

There are a total of sixteen different features on offer, which get progressively better (in theory at least) the further along the trail they are. The sheer numerical weight of available features adds to Andy Capp's appeal, as does the fact that some of them are quite imaginative or simply well executed. Some of them are imaginative and well-executed, rather like Mussolini.

Amongst others, look out for;

"Each way bet", super hold, can offer jackpot (or if you're feeling cheeky, go for the feature again).
"Max 147", 147 nudges, an easy jackpot (unless you're drunk and nudge in a pound by accident), when the machine's in a good mood, it'll offer this immediately from a £2 exchange.
"Pocket money", fun skill stop that gets progressively harder but never cheats.
"Man of the match", reel match that I had always suspected to be a cheating robbing bastard, and now that I've had the chance to try it in MPU3/4 with a high delay setting my suspicions have been confirmed.
"Skill shot", progresses around the trail one value at a time, maybe it's just me getting old but I always seem to screw up around £2.40 in MPU3/4, I used to be able to get a jackpot most of the time on the real machine, unless I'm deluding myself.
"Cup run", if it starts off £1 > £1.60 > £2 it will carry on to the jackpot.
"Pound a round", the hi/lo reel spins extremely fast and you stop it, whatever number it stops on is the number of pounds awarded. As Andy Capp started off life as a £6 jackpot machine it occurred to me at the time that it would have to jump if you hit it on anything higher than a 6. And true enough, increase the delay in MPU3/4 (ahhh, the wonder that is emulation....) so that you can comfortably hit a 12, and watch the reel carry on spinning long after you've allegedly stopped it. You might think that it would at least stop on the highest valid value available to it after you hit stop, but no! Hit a 12 and it will cheerfully stop on 4, bypassing other higher (but valid) numbers completely. The vicious, hateful twat.
"Bar tender", a basic win series, but will go splendidly mental when it wants to, I think £38 is the best I ever got. When that's all added up in £1.60, £2 and £3 values it lasts a long time. These days, £38 is a jackpot plus a mere repeat and a half.
"One for the road", another win series, but uses the trail to award the values (for some strange reason I prefer this to bar tender). I assume that the title is a little joke by Barcrest's programmers, referring to the fact that sometimes it really will just give one win and leave it at that.
"Seeing double", awards a reel win, and then doubles it. Made sense when the £3 would double up to a £6 jackpot. With a £10 jackpot, it's a little bit sad and pointless as a top feature. Poor thing.

If you make it to the end of the trail the jackpot is awarded, but it doesn't even have a repeat chance, so it's more fun to play for "Bar tender" or "One for the road" and hope that it goes off on one. The machine does have a proper streak, you'll be offered blue or red sevens on the reels with ease, and the feature will send Andy half way round the trail (using "advance" and "evens favourite" on the mystery squares) before Flo's even got her hands out of the sink. A full streak is worth around £40, although mini-streaks of around £20 to £25 are given from time to time.

The sound is fantastic; lots of jolly tunes, humorous samples and solid effects are all used to great effect. The Andy Capp licence offered obvious opportunities for an aurally pleasing package, and Barcrest didn't squander them.

On a final note, today's fruit machine manufacturers (Barcrest included), could learn a few lessons from Andy Capp. Reel wins and features are regular (particularly the feature), the hi/lo gamble is consistently fair, and the feature itself is entertaining and involving. However, in many respects, it's not the programmers' fault that things have gone downhill. When the jackpot was only £6, the machine could let you get a good way around the trail and not have offered anything more than a couple of pounds. As the jackpot gets higher, decent values are offered much earlier on your journey around the trail, hence the need for a swift and violent death for the player. Ever noticed that the "start to finish" trail game has died a death in recent years because of this, to be replaced by dull wraparound trails and evil hi/lo gamble features?......

But that's no way to end a review! So here's an alternative final note. Andy Capp. It's great!

14th October 2001.