243 Ways to Win

May 28, 2013

When slot machines were first invented they were very basic machines, completely mechanical in operation. The first of them had just one reel, and a single pay line. Wins were detected by a clever system of notches and gears, and this was about as sophisticated as they could get using the current technology. As time went on, technology advanced, and extra reels were added, this lead to more pay lines. Who can forget the old one arm bandits with three reels and three pay lines, with the now classic fruit, bells and 7s symbols?

When it came to developing online slot games, video slot developers kept to this familiar format. There was no real need too, the restrictions of fully mechanical, and later electro-mechanical machines did not apply to online slot games. But the format was kept, it was familiar, people liked it. So not much has changed from those original one arm bandits, to our modern video slot games, they still have a fixed number of reels and a fixed number of pay lines, just more of each.

Microgaming has begun to break this mould. Over the last few months most new Microgaming online slot games have done away with the old reels x symbols = pay lines setup, and gone for a fixed 243 ways to win. But what is meant by fixed 243 ways to win? How does it work?

Well, these new Microgaming online slot games have 5 reels. When a player spins these reels, wins are built from left to right, in a free form structure. As long as one symbol is adjacent to another symbol anywhere on the visible reels, it will go towards building a win. Microgaming also usually allow bonus symbols, scatter symbols and of course wild symbols, to work in this way as well.

What this means for online slot fans, is that when they play one of these Microgaming fixed 243 ways to win video slots, they do not need to adjust their coins size to open up the maximum number of pay lines according to their wagering budget per spin. Instead, the player simply tells the slot how much they want to wager a spin, and that’s it.

We think it is great to see Microgaming beginning to break away from the old restrictions of mechanical slot games, and hope to see them come up with more innovative ideas in the coming months.

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