I paid for this game in 2021 because I wanted to play Fruit Ninja now and then and I didn’t want to deal with ads or all the weird stuff in the newer version. It is now unplayable without paying for the stupid new subscription service. They’ve basically just stolen the money I paid them now.
The unofficial TI-83 Plus version is free… although you need the expensive calculator
It blew me away that the game could be played on a calculator. It wasn’t exactly inconspicuous to play in class though. The sound of the keys clacking as you dragged your finger across them couldn’t possibly be mistaken for actual math work and made subtlety impossible.
The calculator can handle it because there is no 3D, the fruits are animated 1-bit bitmaps of around 24×16 resolution. (Unlike in the Mario game, sprites don’t even have transparency, they just draw on top of each other.) Fruits can be sliced through in any of the 8 directions but the graphics always just stop animating and split horizontally in half. I’m not complaining, it’s a genius demake. The concept, gameplay, fonts, contrast fadeout with the bomb… all perfect. The watermelon in the menu is a little tutorial, and they even spare a few bytes for “⠟⠇⠯⠇⠯⠂⠿⠅ ⠀ ⠹⠁⠯⠇ ⠀ ⠛⠇⠧⠇⠽⠅⠹⠁ ⠀ ⠻⠇⠞⠆⠟⠇⠿⠅”, a friendly message because CPU-native TI-83/84 Plus games don’t have a standard for that (I’ve seen them use MODE, ALPHA, CLEAR, 2nd+MODE (QUIT), F6, a menu item, or ones that only get exited automatically on game over!)
With some practice, you can get over 95% of fruits while playing stealthily (pressing 1 key at a time with a finger on each of the 3 center columns such as SIN-COS-TAN).