EVERYONE'S A WINNER - "Incontinents' delight!"

This is a machine I've never seen or played in the wild. It's what's known as a "Bingo" machine, and is designed to be fairly simple to play as its natural habitat is a Bingo Hall, where dim-witted senile pensioners will dutifully feed it with pound after pound before the next game of bingo begins. ("House!"). As a result, it's not the most challenging machine in the world, but its simple gameplay is surprisingly enjoyable. 

3 holds and flasholds work, reel wins can't be gambled or exchanged, whatever they're worth is automatically added to the bank when they drop in. The lottery feature is obtained by getting 3 of the "thumbs up" symbols in view (the symbols can be on, above or below the winline in any of 27 possible winning combinations). If the 3 symbols are red, you're awarded a random value from the red column, if they're blue, you're awarded a random value from the blue column. If they're mixed, the machine makes a little noise that sounds like R2-D2 having a good think and awards the red or blue column, but usually blue.

Don't kid yourself that 27 ways to get the feature makes it any easier to achieve than 1 way, our dim-witted granny might be taken in ("Oooh, 27, that was the price of a cup of tea and a scone in 1964, I'll put my pension in this machine post haste!") but us gambling prodigies know better.

The red column has the better awards, although in practice a lot of the good stuff tends to come from the blue column, also, both columns meet at the same jackpot repeater square so either can award a jackpot.

There's not really a great deal more to say about it. The music and sound are quite good, (the lottery announcer is a nice touch), play is fast and fun, and the simple, rather random nature of the gameplay means it plays similarly at high and low %ages. You can actually do just as well on it by not holding anything and deliberately avoiding nudging in wins, as it's as happy to spin wins straight in as it is to respond to "skilful" play. Presumably this to give any dim-witted senile pensioners who also happen to be blind a chance to win enough to buy a packet of biscuits and some comfortable slippers.

I've got four corners! I've got two lines! I've got a colostomy bag!

August 2001