News: Jackpotjoy Finally Release Full House Bingo

After what seems like months of waiting, the ‘Coming Soon’ label on the Jackpotjoy Mobile site has finally been removed from their Bingo title, ‘Full House Bingo’.

    

Will try to get chance to look at this better and do a review this week, but there are quite a few games in the review pipeline that I wanted to get to first…

Brief overview of the functionality mentioned on the download content: -

• Game runs on same system as web games, so you play against web players and have bigger jackpots
• Chat available in-game, with ‘Autochat’ and ‘Quickchat’ (?)
• Progressive Jackpot, Star (?) Jackpot and Super (?) Jackpot – assume these are special one offs or something?
•  Multiple rooms (?) – mentions a Sapphire and Emerald room

The progressive jackpot listed on the site is currently at £5,075 , which as far as I am aware is the highest jackpot offered on a mobile Bingo game…if this is a standard jackpot size on their service, then we could be in for some interesting times!

You can access the download page here

*UPDATE – 10/07/2009*

Since writing this post, Jackpotjoy seem to have removed the game again from the website, as it now says ‘Coming Soon’ – might be a bit of an oversight, but is still available on WAP and their shortcode. So if you get ‘coming soon’ from the link above, try their WAP site at http://jackpotjoy.mobi, or by texting ‘FHB’ to 60504.

Review: Spin3’s ‘Tomb Raider Slots’

I appreciate that this is not a new game, but it has been on my review list for quite a while, and I have to say is one of my favourites.

Spin3’s edition of Tomb Raider slots is part of their suite of 17 (at last count) games, which they offer as a white label product to numerous online casinos including Ladbrokes; Wild Jack; All Slots; 777; and 32Red to name a few.

    

    

Being a fan of slot machines, as well as the original Tomb Raider franchise on the PC back in the day (who wasn’t), this game immediately appealed to me – I guess that was the intention really but there you go. As with any attempt to cash in on a brand, I was ready for disappointment – but was genuinely surprised with what I found.

The game itself is a 5-reel 15-winline and 75-coin slot machine with a maximum coin size of £1. For those not so good at maths, that means you can wager a maximum of £5 per line, and £75 per spin. With a maximum prize of 7500x, thats quite a nice little earner should that spin in.

The game also features Free Spins won on the reels, and a bonus game where 3 icons are selected with coin values awarded to those chosen.

The application is packed with features, which allow you to pretty much do without the PC completely – you have deposit limit controls; deposit and withdraw; responsible gaming info; game instructions and game rules to mention the key ones. You also have the ability to ’send to a friend’ and place the game in ‘Expert Mode’, where you can autospin for up to 10 spins at a time.

In terms of connection, the game does not seem to handle bad signal strength very well. In most cases during testing, if the signal was lost for an extended period, then the game would actually suffer from a critical error and require restarting.

All in all, I am going to give this game a very good 4 out of 5 starts. It would have got a little higher, but the connection issues let it down. Worth playing though, as you will not find much better gameplay out there – the only problem you will have is choosing which casino you want to create an account and give your money to.

News: MFuse Confirm Intent To Develop For iPhone

In a recent podcast for the online site Foviance, Marcus Wareham of MFuse confirmed that they had plans to develop a browser-based interface for their mobile sportsbook offering, so that it can be accessed through walled garden mobile environments like the iPhone.

He also mentioned that there are still reservations within the UK marketplace to advertise mobile gambling, mostly due to an industry fear that, if traffic is sent to the mobile phone, then web or offline retail outlets will suffer. He uses examples of Ladbrokes and William Hill as clients.

Listen to the full interview here: http://bit.ly/12ixvx

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Review: Million-2-1’s ‘Rainbow Riches’

As regular readers will know, big fan of the offline fruit machines and the brands that go along with them – Rainbow Riches was never really one of my favourites though, so didn’t really know what to expect with this one.

Million-2-1 / Barcrest / Kerching are at the top end in terms of product quality, and always deliver nice graphics and sound. A good example is ‘High 5′, which is a very simplistic and well presented slot. This game is no different, but does seem to have overstretched itself slightly.

    

    

The gameplay itself is what you would expect from a slot machine – remarkably you click ‘SPIN’ and the reels spin, who knew. However the smoothness just isn’t there, and the reels seem to take an actual age to spin in. The speed thing could just be a specific phone issue, but on an N73 with good 3G signal, it should not be the case.

My general feeling is that the quality of the games and the graphics (and it is good quality) are tarnished by the cramped content on each screen. the screenshots above pretty much speak for themselves, they just look…cramped. Apart from the ‘Pick Me’ screen which looks fantastic – hats off for that one.

The enjoyment that this game should give is reduced by the speed of the gameplay, and the squished screen content – for that reason i’m going to give this one 3.5 stars.

you can download the game here (you need to open an account first)

Whats the best phone for gambling?

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? My own personal opinion is that Nokia is the way to go, as you are almost guaranteed to be supported by the majority of games providers –  what do you think?

I have tried out a few other manufacturers over the years, mostly by nicking the phone of the girlfriend at the time, or the mate in the pub etc – would be interesting to see some opinions other than my own though!

Review: Cometa’s ‘Happy Fruits’

I am a big fan of the slot machine – many an hour has been wasted in a pub/club/snooker hall/service station/chip shop playing these wonderful things, pushing them to get the top features…so when one of the well known offline brands appears on mobile it always makes me that little bit more eager to try it out.

Cometa Wireless have released a few games in the past based on brands made famous by Bell Fruit (in the UK anyhow), and Happy Fruits is their latest offering. Suffice to say this one was downloaded straight away!

On entering the game,  you are greeted by the infamous fruits themselves, dancing away while the game loads and connects…unfortunately this is where the magic ends for me.

    

    

The game itself is pretty much the same game experience that you can expect from any of the Cometa Wireless suite – the menu options are not able to be selected by the centre soft-key (back to the N73 for this one), and the text is very raw and unfinished.

Having played this for a number of hours (and pounds), I can safely say that I never won more than £1 on the reels – there is supposedly a bonus game that has ‘27 ways’ to be won, but I never got near to getting this in over 300-odd spins.

The bonus mechanic with Cometa games is that with every deposit you get a bonus into your account – with the slow return on wagers, it just makes you feel that you are getting your percentage return in the form of the non-withdrawable bonus. Whether this is the case or not, you certainly don’t win it on the reels.

Graphically the game is a nice design, with the recogniseable fruit symbols – but other than that I would steer clear of this one, unless you really love the offline brand and don’t mind losing a few quid.

Overall review rating – 2 stars

Download the game here

Review: Jackpotjoy’s ‘Treasure Island’

Every once in a while you come across a really nice simple design for a game, and you really have to sit back and appreciate the subtlety of the craftsmanship. A good example is ‘Bejeweled Blitz’ on Facebook – it took a few hours of me playing the 1-minute game again and again until I had realised how fun (and how time consuming) the game really was!

Jackpotjoy’s ‘Treasure Island Scratchcard’ is another game in this ilk – the premise is simple, it is a pirate-themed scratchcard (with Captain Pugwash music!) with a treasure map type bonus game, and a maximum win of over £17k from a £2 wager.

As I say, the game itself is really simple, and the gameplay is very intuitive – the thing I really loved though was the fact that it fully supports touchscreen! I recently upgraded to a Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic, and (as you may know) the phone’s alternative stylus looks like a guitar pick…add this to a touchscreen scratchcard game and you have me sitting there literally scratching off the virtual silver coating on the card to reveal my prize! Genius!

Of course I had to keep the N73 to get some nice screenshots for you – try these out for size: -

    

    

There are quite a few nice additional features that also seem to have cropped up since my earlier plays on Jackpotjoy products – they have added a refer a friend button that promises £10 if your mate signs up for an account, and a promotions option in the main menu (currently offering me a chance to win a holiday to Florida) to name a few that I noticed.

All in all, this game gets a suberb 4.5 stars!

Download the game here

Sorry!

OK OK – no excuses this time…I have been neglecting my duties as the mobile informant for mobile gambling, and there is nothing I can do but apologise, and promise to do better in the future

Lots and lots of reviews over the coming weeks though – keep it tuned in, it’ll be worth it!

Probability Launch Head-to-Head

Took me a while to catch up, my apologies!

So Probability have announced recently the launch of their new title ‘Head to Head Poker’, which is the first step towards a higher quality product for the team behind Ladylucks.

This games, a change in direction for the mostly soft-gaming mobile-only casino, is a peer-to-peer poker game based opn the Texas Hold ‘em Poker rules made famous by the late night TV shows. It allows for you to play against another person in real time, choosing who you want to play against and for how much. It even allows you to choose pre-game which character or avatar you wish to appear like on your competitors screen, with a choice of characters Elvis and the Grim Reaper.

My first impressions of this game are unfortunately not brilliant – the reliability of mobile signal strength in the UK is still a bit of a sore topic, and with Probability’s games supporting older phones, playing one on one is incredibly tedious with losses of connection across the board. Add to this that the connection losses are not handled exceptionally well, with it actually costing you your wager should your competitor lose connection and you get bored waiting for them to reconnect! Once bitten twice shy on that one.

The mechanic itself seems a bit strange for my money as well – Texas Hold ‘em Poker is a skill game, where you play the other person not the cards you hold. In the online space, this is more difficult to acheive due to the nature of online gaming removing the face-to-face contact with your opponents. However with a table full of players there is still some skill involved. Once you reduce this to a head-to-head game, surely this is just a 50/50 chance game? The fact that you are playing against someone else is kind of irrelevant, as they have a 50/50 chance as well – would it not cost the player a lot less if you just had a virtual coin-flip?

On the plus side – the graphics are of a higher quality than their previous titles, and the use of caricatures/avatars is a nice touch to the game, reminiscent of a low-spec PKR.

I would recommend checking this out to be honest, and maybe I just got a bad experience on my first go – as time passes and the average phone quality in the UK goes up, the game will get better I guess.