The term ‘jackpot’ is synonymous with online slot machines – every game has one, so why do some casinos choose to differentiate between regular and ‘jackpot’ slots in the category list of their libraries? The answer is that the top prize offered by a ‘regular’ slot tends to be vastly more limited – a figure of about 5,000x or 10,000x the total stake is frequently set. This makes sense – how could a slot machine ever hope to recoup its losses if it were capable of paying a single player millions of times their bet?
That question was probably being mulled over by casino owners from the moment these games first landed on their floors – after all, you can be sure that players are always going to flock to the machines which have the highest potential for huge wins. In the late 1980s, International Game Technology came up with the solution – by linking multiple machines together, their takings could be pooled, therefore increasing the size of the potential jackpot far beyond what would normally be possible from the calculations of the reel strips and Return-to-Player percentage alone.
Why Play Progressive Jackpot Slots?
We’ve come a long way since that first machine – named Megabucks – and its first winner, an American man who claimed the sum of $4,988,842.17 on February 1st, 1987. The question of which is the best jackpot slot available today will largely come down to personal preference – there are hundreds, if not thousands of them, all with different themes, bonus rounds, and levels of variance.
Knowing where to look makes a great start, however, which is why today’s article will be exploring a handful of the many themes and features available in Relax Gaming’s Dream Drop series of progressive online slots. These games take the idea of a linked machine jackpot far beyond what IGT could have imagined way back in the 1980s – hosting the casino jackpots online makes these ‘network progressives’, and the Dream Drop games even share their prizes between many different games, allowing the prizes to build up faster than ever before. Let’s check ‘em out!
Templar Tumble 2 – Dream Drop
The Templars was a shorthand name given to a military order of the catholic faith, officially titled the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. The unit was founded sometime around the year 1,119 and was headquartered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages, eventually becoming less important as the English gave up their Crusades in the Middle East before falling apart completely due to tensions with the rich noblemen of the day.
That’s quite the backstory then, but one that is equally matched by the fun gameplay and enormous prize potential of this Dream Drop upgrade to Relax already popular Templar Tumble sequel. The ‘tumble’ games do away with the usual reel-based conventions of online slots, making them relatively unique whilst also being capable of extraordinarily fast-paced action.
Banana Town
This ain’t no ordinary town! No, not a city filled with people who only eat bananas – the ‘banana’ part of the title refers to the fact that this is a somewhat strange place – a kooky town, along the lines of what some people might describe a ‘banana republic’! The fun vibe that Relax has created here is further supported by an unusual 8-bit graphical style, reminiscent of Thunderkick’s popular Flame Busters online slot.
There is a non-Dream Drop version of this game available too, which does have some slightly higher numbers listed on its paytable owing to the fact that the game doesn’t need to deduct 12% of the cost of each spin to help seed the progressive jackpot prizes. Of course, you can’t win a million pounds whilst playing the non-Dream Drop version of Banana Town either, so I’d probably argue that this is a trade-off that many slot players will be more than happy to make!
Tsai Shen 10K Ways
When the first 243 pay way slots first appeared on the scene, I suspect that many players probably thought that things couldn’t possibly get any better than this… how wrong they were! Relax Gaming has upped the pay way count into the stratosphere with their Tsai Shen 10K Ways Dream Drop machine by extending the height of the games six reels – four rows on reels one and six, along with five on reels two through five.
Games with huge numbers of pay ways are notorious for paying poorly, however – you’ll almost certainly need to hit a win on a huge number of pay ways simultaneously to be in with a chance of collecting a major prize. That’s what makes these games the perfect candidates for conversion into progressive jackpot machines – thousands of pay ways make it easy to win, whilst the jackpot makes it possible for that win to be enormous at the same time!
I guess maybe you actually can have your cake and eat it too…
