88 Fortunes Megaways slot by Bally is the first of their titles to undergo the licensed Megaways treatment, being based on the original Bally slot 88 Fortunes. Bally are under the banner of Scientific Gaming along with WMS and Barcrest who have themselves released Raging Rhino Megaways and Rainbow Riches Megaways respectively, so I suppose it was about time we had a version of this classic Chinese themed slot. We have a red background and similar symbols to the original game but the music is a bit more dramatic and there appears to be a few facets to the game. Will our bankroll be blessed with at least one of these 88 fortunes, or will none of them find their way to us?
There are 324 to 117,649 ways to win here via varying reel rows and we get the traditional scrolling reel of 4 symbols along the bottom on 88 Fortunes Megaways slot but Wilds can appear on both this and the main reels 2,3,4,5 in the form of a Fu Bat character. The 6-of-a-kind pays are dreadful unless you choose to enhance the top 5 symbols to make them Gold, in which case they pay for your 88-coin bet 1000 coins Bird, 500 Junk, 300 Tortoise, 200 Cups, 100 Tokens with the six card values all paying 50 for a full way. Symbols appear both stacked and singly with a Gong scatter on all 6 reels.
You can get a random feature from the Fu Bat Wilds when one or more appear, as coins go into the pot above the reels and you could get a grid of 15 Tokens to pick from to reveal 10, 12 or 15 free games with a fixed multiplier of 6, 4 or 2x respectively. You may retrigger it too with any Wild and if so you will keep your multiplier but simply get 10, 12 or 15 spins added.
You must land 4 or more Gong scatters on consecutive reels starting from the left for free games which can retrigger. You get 8 more for 3 or more scatters on 1,2 and 3 during them and you get a picker initially to decide your starting amount and any multiplier. All winning actions increase this multiplier by 1x during the spins, thus our familiar Bonanza-style mechanic is present.
88 Fortunes Megaways slot alas suffers from the ultra-low pays issue of many recent Scientific Gaming releases, which is a shame considering the variety of features we get and the good graphics and animations. The 88-coin stake is rather high too for many players although the RTP of 96.07-96.26% is about par for a Megaways slot, and I don't know why the scatter trigger has to be on consecutive reels which is annoying if you land 4 of them and don't have them in the right place. This slot could have been a good one, but unfortunately is not one I believe will attract the type of player wanting those big Megaways hits...
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