Play Pikotaro's Pineapple Pen for Free

The fictional singer Pikotaro has a certain style and his sunglasses, leopard-print scarf, white shoes and designer watch are used as the lower-value symbols. You will need to land at least 3 of any symbol, with the exception of wilds and bonus icons, across a payline, running from the left side to win a prize, and these fashionable items are worth from 5x, 10x, or 40x the amount staked per line, rising to 5x, 25x, or 60x for the watch.

A pen is worth 60x, 100x, or 200x when it lands on 3, 4, or 5 reels across a line, while the pineapple pays you 40x, 100x, or 300x and the top prize comes from the red apple symbol, which returns 20x, 100x, or 500x the line stake.

A picture of Pikotaro is the wild symbol, which isn’t worth anything on its own, but will act as any of those above if he’s then able to create extra winning combinations. Each wild will have a little pen, apple or pineapple attached, and these are collected in the P P A P spaces running down the right side of the reels.

Each appearance of the wild symbol adds a pen, apple or pineapple to this section and also triggers a free re-spin of the reels. Once all 4 letters are filled, you enter a unique bonus round, where 15 apples are on show and a click on any of them sees a pen thrown through them and bonus payouts revealed.

Once the 3 apples have been chosen, the values hidden within the others are all shown, so you will know if good choices were made or not, but there’s no bad apples in the mix, so wins are guaranteed.

If more wild symbols are landed in a reels re-spin, extra spins are added on, to a maximum of 3 per round, which may not sound like many, but don’t worry, as there is a separate free spins bonus feature that can be triggered.

The PPAP symbol is a bonus icon which takes you to the free spins feature whenever it’s seen in any 3 or more places in a single spin. Just 3 of them sees 5 free spins play out, while 4 bonus symbols will launch 7 spins and the best outcome is for 9 free games, which begin if 5 or more bonus symbols are seen at once.

Extra wild symbols are added to the reels during this spin, making it easier to get win-lines and to trigger the re-spins feature, although the round can’t be repeated, even if more bonus symbols appear and once the free games are done, you go right back to the main reels again.

To get the reels spinning for real cash awards, you will need just 0.40, and this can be raised to a high limit of 120.00 per spin, which will make any winnings correspondingly bigger. Free Pikotaro’s Pineapple Pen video slots are provided, although you’re not going to win anything in this mode, and with the exceptionally high return to player percentage of over 98%, virtually all coin stakes will on average, be returned as winnings, so most punters will want to make cash bets.

Autoplay and quick spin modes can be activated if you want those wins to come in even faster, and there’s also the option to play the famous song along in the background.

Basing a slot game around a single tune is pretty unique, although there’s plenty of games themed around bands or individual artists. Few of these cover a Japanese, or novelty group however, so if you like music themed slot games, you may have to look at those from more serious artists, such as Guns N’ Roses or Jimi Hendrix.

The Guns N’ Roses video slot from NetEnt plays some of the rock bands biggest hits as the 5 reels spin, while symbols of Axl Rose, Slash and Duff will pay out some high value prizes and the band logo is a wild symbol. Spinning a bonus wheel takes you to extra features such as the Crowd Pleaser pick a prize round, free spins with stacked wilds, or the Legend spins with more wilds added with each free game.

Jimi Hendrix is a suitably trippy slot game that takes players through a purple haze to a number of guitar-centred bonus features. These lead to free spins, pick a prize rounds and multiplier awards in a game that’s accompanied by a number of his greatest hits.

This highly original game is going to have a huge number of fans in Japan, but outside of the country, people may need some persuading before taking these colourful reels for a spin. It would be a shame to miss out on it though, as there are some unique features, particularly in the way that wild symbols lead to the reel re-spins and apple picks.

Although the free games contain extra wild symbols, it’s perhaps a shame that the maximum number to trigger is just 9, but there’s extra chances to set off the re-spins in this round, so you could be looking at many more bonus games than first appears.

It’s fully optimised for playing on iPhones, iPads, Windows or Andrioid smartphones and tablets, although if you are playing in a public space, perhaps it’s best to mute the soundtrack or stick some earphones on if you don’t want to annoy everyone around you.