This article is an update to our ATEI 2001 review of High Roller Casino. Since ATEI there have been a number of changes to the gameplay, and while a few bugs still remain, it is a much improved and polished product.

The most obvious improvement is the screw fitted to the roulette wheel which stops the ball spinning round endlessly. This was referred to in our earlier article but it's good to see how well it works in practice. The roulette-wheel sensing is improved making it better at detecting of which hole the ball falls into, but this improvement only extends to the original ball launch. The sensing during the Roulette Game appears unchanged.

The biggest area of improvement is the DMD display effects. Several new ones have been added such as when you qualify a cheat game and when the cheat is applied.

The integration of the backglass roulette wheel into the gameplay is improved but still slightly lacking. The Mystery (?) award now shows which award you've won rather than it being a true mystery, and the problem of both dice options scoring the same has been overcome very nicely. If this situation occurs, you get the award from the counterclockwise direction rather than the usual clockwise, though the counter doesn't move backwards. The operation of centre awards remain the real mystery, though.

There is still a bug if you get Collect Bonus as there is often a ball search part way through the count up.

Speaking of the bonus count, if the number of chips collected exceeds 127, the chiming sound runs out leaving silence. This is the case in the backglass award and the real bonus count.

There's one other bug in the backglass awards. If you get Roll Again, the new throw isn't shown and usually just times out unless you select either of the `unseen' awards.

One of the big criticism of the original game was the time taken for the slots to spin. This has been speeded up and isn't an issue any longer.

Elsewhere, the problem of the centre ramp being lit for roulette when it isn't in fact available has been fixed.

In Casino Frenzy, a new Casino Jackpot has been added as a super jackpot which makes the mode more convincing. It's scored from the centre ramp and looks like it the sum of the individual mode jackpots . You can only score the Casino Jackpot when you've completed all the other jackpot shots first.

Sadly, the second sound sample for Break the Bank jackpot shots has disappeared. It added a nice variation to the regularly repeated sample, but has gone leaving silence. This means you get no audible confirmation if you make the shot, something that's rather important when you're trying to control 4 balls and you can't look up to see if one of them really did make it all the way up the ramp.

I don't know if this deletion was due to lack of ROM space, but another similar change is to reduce the number of characters in the highscore table back to just 3 rather than the 10 you could enter before. Perhaps this was due to the number of rude words being entered.

The cashier divertor is still not reliable, leading to some frantic moments when you expect the ball to head over to the ball lock on the right side, but instead it runs straight through and down to the left flipper. Not too bad in an arcade, but in a pub/bar it could lead to some spilt beer and none of us want that to happen.

Finally, there's a problem which surfaced at ATEI and was put down to a hardware fault but shows up on this game too. At different times in the game, the magnet which stops the ball above the pop bumpers fails to operate despite Blackjack, Hi-Lo or Poker being lit on the right or left loops. There's no suggestion that this is a game feature, and the problem goes away on the next ball.

The total effect of these changes is positive with the game rules becoming clearer and the rough edges of the previous version appearing smoother.

The sound effect removal is not so welcomed, but the added display effects and extra jackpot shot more than make up for it and perhaps it will reappear at some stage. A few bugs still remain as indicated above and these are highlighted with the hope that they will be corrected in the future.

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