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As a rule, fruit machine games are usually fairly lousy. What could possibly be more boring than playing a basic fruit machine with nothing but "Holds" to amuse you, and no chance of winning anything at the end of it all. Codemasters have attempted to go one better than the rest of the fruit machine games by bringing one out that has all the realistic features of the fruit machines you would see today in the West End, rather than yesteryear's machine parked in the local chippy.

The object for most people when they play a fruit machine is to win money, so what is the point of putting it on computer? Today's fruit machines have many different games, sub-games and features, some of which could even be considered remotely interesting.

The Codemasters 'Cash Bash' machine pays out with the two of three fruits in a row type stuff as does any other machine, but the major difference is that the symbols on the reels of the Cash Bash machine have numbers on them. Each unit of the numbers shown lights up one letter of the word C.A.S.H.-B.A.S.H. If you fill up the word you are asked to choose a feature. But, as anyone who has ever played a fruit machine will know, it's not so much choosing a feature as simply pressing the button at random because it flashes far too fast to judge.

The four features available to you are Nudge Pot: stop the nudges on anything between one and fifteen nudges, and then you can either auto nudge, gamble and nudges, or bank them and save them for a rainy day. Cash Bank: stop the flashing ten pence and earn yourself anything between 10p and £1.50. You may then gamble the cash you've earned, but only as far as £1.50. Skill Climb: this gives you the chance to use your amazing reflexes to earn some dosh. You must time pressing fire so that the cursor lands on one of the coins shown, rather than on a 'lose' light. The Auto Win feature is considerably lousy next to the other three, choose this and the reels automatically spin in to a winning position, and you receive a random amount.

This section is really what the machine is based around, although there are many other sections. It has all the bog-standard fruit machine kinks such as hold, gamble, skill chance, mega-hold and really most things you would expect to find on a genuine fruit-machine.

So full marks then to Codemasters for authenticity, or whatever you want to call it. Nice scrolling reels, and some decent little tunes in there too. But even with all this stuff brilliantly executed, what has a fruit machine got that this hasn't? Money coming out of its turn, which to me is the only redeeming quality of these otherwise boring machines. I strongly suggest that no-one tries to bring out a perfect copy of a fruit machine until fruit machines get more interesting.