MEGAWAYS™ SLOTS
You can read more about these games, as well as full reviews, on our Megaways™ slots pages. In summary, Megaways broke new ground by creating a randomised number of rows on each reel on every spin. Depending on how many rows are on display the number of paylines in play changes. Typically a Megaways™ slot will have six reels and between 2 and seven rows. The games pay out for three or more identical symbols on any adjacent reels which means when seven rows show on six reels, 117, 649 paylines are active!
The Megaways™ boom has spread across the slots universe as rival developers signed up to license the software. Big players like Blueprint, Relax, Quickspin, NetEnt and Scientific have all grabbed a slice of the action as Megaways™ goes supernova.
Here are five of our favourite Megaways games:
- Bonanza Megaways – 117,649 paylines, 26,000x top payout, 96% RTP
- White Rabbit Megaways – 248,832 paylines, 17,420x top payout, 97.24% RTP
- Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Megaways – 117,649 paylines, 72,310x top payout, 96.27% RTP
- Extra Chilli Megaways – 117,649 paylines, 16,877x top payout, 96.26% RTP
- Holy Diver Megaways – 586,971 paylines, 20,500x top payout, 96.39% RTP
MEGACLUSTERS™ SLOTS
After the unparalleled success of their Megaways™ game engine, BTG provided a similar shot of adrenaline into the grid slot market with Megaclusters. Most grid slots follow the classic Cluster Pays model where payouts are triggered by groups of identical symbols landing adjacent to one another. Clusters can consist of anything from 5 icons upwards, with greater payouts distributed for bigger clusters. Cluster Pays games usually use a Cascading Reels feature too. After a winning spin, then the symbols in each cluster are removed and replaced with new ones. This may create more wins so that the process can repeat, until no more win clusters are formed.
The difference with Megaclusters comes with the Cascades. Now, when each winning icon is removed, then the space left behind is filled not with just one symbols, but with three or sometimes even four more. In this way, the grid size expands and so there is more room for Clusters to form and therefore the potential for bigger payouts.
Of course, this being Big Time Gaming so a healthy mix of multipliers and free spins is added to the mix and a chaotic succession of wins can lead to some massive payouts. Check out Star Clusters for a good example.
MEGAQUADS™ SLOTS
You’d think BTG were done by now, wouldn’t you? Well, think again because following the success of Megaways and Megaclusters, they dropped Megaquads on us too! This four reel extravaganza was first aired with their Slot Vegas Megaquads game featuring four 4×4 grids each offering 256 win ways.
The unique part of the Megaquads engine is the ability for the four reels to merge. Landing special Wilds on two reel sets simultaneously causes them to join together to create an 8×8 grid game with 65,536 paylines in play. Of course, it’s also possible to merge all FOUR grids into one mega grid with 16,177,216 paylines on it!
16 million ways to win is classic BTG and it turns four grids into one seismic event where once again, free spins and multipliers combine to turbo charge the gameplay. It’s early days for the Megaquads series but the signs are good that this could make a big impact on the slots market in the same way that their other trademark features have.
MEGAPAYS™ SLOTS
Want more? Ok, here’s another for you! Megapays™ is Big Time Gaming’s answer to the Mega Moolah series from Microgaming. Megapays™ is a progressive jackpot network that is live on a small but growing number of BTG slots. Each one offers FOUR progressives – Mini, Midi, Major and Mega.
The mechanic for Megapays™ works like this:
One symbol is the Megapays™ one for each spin. If one or more of these lands then each instance will lock into place for a re-spin. If more land on the re-spin, then the process continues. The top payout of the Mega jackpot requires a total of 15 Megapays™ symbols to be collected. This jackpot is seeded at £300,000 so it’s well under what you get with the Microgaming and NetEnt Mega Progressives but expect that number to increase as more games are added to the network.
Currently the Megapays™ games available are Bonanza Megapays™ and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire Megaways™. We will surely see more of their most popular titles given the progressive jackpot treatment in the near future. Danger! High Voltage Megapays™ anyone??!!