The action in Cosmic Quest slot is certainly fast enough, with the rocket blasting heaven-wards and leaving a trail of WILDs in its thrust’s wake. That makes it one of the livelier bonus runs out there and the comic book-like graphics mostly work, but the animation of our vaguely John Glenn-looking heroic astronaut’s spacesuit melting off is just damn silly.

But in fairness we must admit that the possibility of the same thing happening to the gravity-defying curves of the sexy female astronaut (Rival Gaming calls her “The Pink Pilot,” but we've renamed her “Sally Ride”) kept us playing longer.

And thank the Rival Space Agency for that, because spinning three Sallies opens the game-within-a-game, or the “Asteroid-Blasteroid Round.” That’s right, children of the 1980s: The fruit machine disappears for a good old-fashioned shoot ‘em up video game.

It gets better still because the facts picked up back in the day of 25-cent arcade games: namely, stay low when possible, don’t get backed into a corner, and nail that space bar like a bongo-beating monkey on amphetamines. Try this and other space slots while the rocket is still out of the earth's atmosphere.