Get your engines revved up, because Big Time Gaming has released a new online slot game called The Race Megaways. Oh, wait, The Race Megaways has nothing to do with speeding vehicles or people or anything else that moves quickly. Rather, the tone of The Race Megaways is that of a game show. Actually, in 2006, a British television series named “The Race” debuted, but a quick YouTube search reveals that the two have very little in common. Now that we’re back at square one, we may as well start The Race Megaways and let it to its own devices.
Visually, it does appear as though contestants have entered a studio where they will be asked a series of multiple-choice questions for the chance to win cash or consumer items. Not quite dissimilar to Big Time Gaming’s popular Who Wants to Be a Millionaire model. A 6-reel game grid takes center stage, with a bolted-on 4-symbol extra reel situated at the bottom instead of the typical location at the top, while red lights twinkle on each side and additional illumination shoots down from above. I can’t quite wrap my head around it. The scenery isn’t terrible, but compared to other game shows like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” or “Wheel of Fortune,” “The Race Megaways” just doesn’t have the same excitement.
As such, admission to the show costs 20 p/c every spin and can cost as much as £/€20 per paid game round. The game has a very high variance and a return to player value of 96.27% (or 96.36% with the bonus). Each spin has the potential to generate up to 117,649 ways to win, depending on the amount of symbols that land on the main reels.
If you spin in a winning combination from left to right, beginning with the first reel, you’ll receive a payout. Six of the lower-paying 9s through As are worth 0.5 to 0.9 times the wager, while six of the four higher-paying gemstone tiles are worth 1 to 12.5 times the wager. Wilds play a significant role in The Race Megaways, acting as substitutes for other pay symbols and also contributing to certain game elements.
Race Megaways Slot Machine Options
In this case, a wild symbol might replicate itself after the reels stop spinning. All of the regular symbols on the vertical reel are switched out for wilds once a Wild Duplication happens. During the bonus round, the Wild Duplication feature awards a multiplier of up to x5 for each new Wild that appears on the reels. Reels 1 and 6 never get a wild.
Reactions
The response mechanism, a staple of Megaways features, causes the appearance of symbols from above on the primary reels or from the right on the additional reel whenever a winning combination is formed, with the exception of scatters. When there is no longer a new victor, the reaction stops.
Round of Bonus Hearts
At least three scatters anywhere in the base game initiate the Heart Bonus Round (or you may pay 100 times your wager to skip straight there). Here, unique reels that produce only Hearts or blanks trigger 3 respin opportunities. When a heart icon appears, it sticks to the reels and triggers a new round of free spins. Once all places have been filled or there are no more opportunities for respins, the round finishes and free spins begin.
Free Spins With No Limits
Lives are awarded based on the number of Heart symbols visible at the end of the Heart Round Bonus. Here, the response multiplier for wins begins at x1 and rises with each chain of reactions. One life is taken whenever a Terminator sign appears. When all of your lives are gone, the bonus spins round is over. During the bonus round, there are no scatters.
The Successful Swap and Bonus Buy
Players who have won 100 times their initial wager can pay 100 times their wager to enter the Heart Bonus Round. Players can exchange any win between 25x and 100x their wager for a chance to enter the Heart Bonus Round.
Slot Machine Results for the Race Megaways
I’m not sold on this idea. The Race Megaways is a passable slot machine in theory; it has wild duplicating action, free spins with a “unlimited” multiplier, and a pre-feature bonus round in which lives are collected. Strangely, for a game that alludes to racing, it lacked any real sense of urgency. In many respects, The Race Megaways is a puzzling position since, excluding our glaring oversight, there appears to be very little racing taking place. Long, drawn-out bonus rounds usually resulted in nothing more exciting than seeing the win multiplier slowly increase.
When compared to Big Time Gaming’s other game show-themed slots, this one falls short. True, those (like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Wheel of Fortune Megaways) were based on genuine television programs and had widespread name recognition as a result. If the makers of The Race Megaways wanted to stay unknown, they might have prepared a pilot episode and had it axed by the network. There’s nothing wrong with trying a new spin on a classic format, but The Race Megaways just didn’t have the depth, personality, or whatever you want to call it that makes an average television program into a phenomenon.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that Big Time Gaming has created some of the most iconic slots of all time, as well as one of the most popular gaming mechanisms in the gambling industry, so that when a new release does come out, it is met with a great deal of anticipation. It’s doubtful, though, that our reception to The Race Megaways would have been much warmer had it come from a brand-new, unproven studio. There wasn’t the usual Big Time Gaming flair for drama, innovation, or enthusiasm. To put it another way, it would be difficult not to immediately change the channel if The Race Megaways ever appeared on television.