Gonzo's Quest MegaWays

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• Developer: Red Tiger/NetEnt
• Ways to Win: 64 – 117,649
• Maximum Win Potential: 21,000x

Gonzo’s Quest is one of the most popular pokies games in the world, and such is a staple at almost every reputable online casino. That’s no different in New Zealand.

Gonzo’s Quest developer NetEnt bought out Red Tiger Gaming in 2019. This meant access to their tasty BTG MegaWays licence.

The pokie received a MegaWays update that same year, and NetEnt absolutely smashed it out the park.

It maintains everything that made the original so popular, including the jungle explorer theme, the avalanche mechanic and the bonus rounds – but dialled it all up to 11.

If you enjoyed the last one, or even if you’ve never heard of it, Gonzo’s Quest Megaways is well worth checking out.

#2 Piggy Riches MegaWays

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• Developer: Red Tiger/NetEnt
• Ways to Win: 64 – 117,649
• Maximum Win Potential: 10,475x

Piggy Riches was the first popular pokies game from NetEnt to get the MegaWays treatment. As such, it’s not quite as polished as Gonzo’s Questing antics.

However, it’s still a great upgrade on the classic original – which was really starting to show its age in the past few years.

The biggest wins here, outside of the Piggy bonus rounds, are the Mr. Piggy Rich Wilds. These cover the whole reel and come in with a random multiplier of up to 7x. They can cover the whole screen with x7 multiplier Wilds in the luckiest cases. Piggy Riches indeed!

#3 Primal MegaWays (Blueprint)

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• Developer: Blueprint Gaming
• Ways to Win: 64 – 46,566
• Maximum Win: 50,000x

Primal MegaWays is set in the age of prehistoric man with roaring beasts and grunting cavemen on the reels. It doesn’t have as many ways to win as the two NetEnt options above, but it does have the standard Blueprint MegaWays maximum win of 50,000x!

As with most MegaWays pokies though, the bonus round is where most of these big wins are found. The cool theme and the slightly less complex paytable might make Primal Megaways the pokies game for you. Good luck!

#4 Bonanza (Big Time Gaming)

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• Developer: Big Time Gaming
• Ways to Win: 64 – 117,649
• Max Win: 10,000 x

Bonanza is the game that started it all, as the original MegaWays release from Big Time Gaming.

This gold-prospecting hillbilly mine themed game has a bonus free spin round with massive multiplier potential, as well as tumbling reels (called reactions).

Each reaction adds a 1x multiplier to the next one, and there’s no limit to how often they can stack on a big win – beyond the 10,000x per spin win as standard on most Big Time Gaming titles.

#5 White Rabbit (Big Time Gaming)

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• Developer: Big Time Gaming
• Ways to Win: 64 – 248,332
• Max Win: 50,000 x

This exciting MegaWays pokies game is based on the classic Alice in Wonderland story. It’s expanding Wilds are the smoking caterpillar from the original Lewis Carroll novel, and it features original psychedelic music that will take you on a journey.

Pulling the Queen of Hearts icon on a fully expanded 12 ways line will expand the line below and give it another spin. Potentially this can add up to a ridiculous 248,332 ways to win – the most of any game on this list!

#6 Vikings Unleashed Megaways (Blueprint)

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• Developer: Blueprint
• Ways to Win: 64 – 117,659
• Max Win: 50,000x

This ancient Nordic themed pokies game has a unique “gamble” feature on the free spins round, and some fantastic period music to top it off.

When you enter the bonus spins round, you start with 10 to 50 free spins and a 1x multiplier. However, before the round starts you can 50:50 gamble your entry – if you win you get double the multiplier and double the free spins. But if you lose, you’re heading back to the main game with nothing.

You can also buy your way into the bonus round with a 100x bet, although this depends on your casino. It may not be available as an option to all Kiwi players.

Bonus Buys

Because of the high variance of MegaWays games, a lot of the potential winnings are locked up in the bonus rounds.

To counter that slightly, MegaWays developers have given the option for casinos to let you buy straight into the bonus free spins round.

This usually costs you 100x or so the usual bet but can potentially pay out in the 1000s. Some bonus rounds will even let you retrigger the bonus round if you come out with 10x or less.

However, because buying access means your essentially betting a large amount these options fall foul of local laws on bet limits.

That means some casinos for Kiwi players won’t feature this option – but a lot do.

Cascading

Cascading wins means that some (or sometimes even all, such as in Gonzo’s Quest Megaways) of your winning lines will fall down, or off screen, and be replaced with new symbols – for an extra potential win.

You can chain these cascades to create multiple wins over one spin. The name cascade comes from the word for a repeated waterfall. That makes sense, as a cascading reel is a way to get repeated wins. Easy!

Increasing Win Multiplier

Some cascading reels, often only in the bonus round but occasional every time, will give you a stacking bonus multiplier each time a line falls down.

So, if you chain 2 or 3 or more cascading wins, each one is worth 2x and 3x etc.

This can lead to some massive wins, especially with big MegaWays lines and Wilds in the mix.

Blueprint Gaming

Blueprint is one of the most respected slots developers in the game. Just a few of this UK-based developer’s popular titles include:

• Cleopatra’s Riches
• Eye of Horus
• Gods of Olympia Megways

In recent years Blueprint have gone all out on franchised titles, including Ted MegaWays, Deal or No Deal and Rick and Morty MegaWays.

They feature some of your favourite characters from pop culture, with massive win potential and the latest graphics.

Pragmatic Play

Pragmatic Play used to be a relatively bottom tier provider – until they upped their game significantly in the mid-2010s. They’re now one of the fastest growing pokies developers in the business.

Today, you’ll find excellent MegaWays pokies games from Pragmatic at most Kiwi facing online casinos, including:

• Starz Megaways
• Curse of the Werewolf Megaways
• The Doghouse MegaWays

And many more!

Playson

Playson is a decent mid-level pokies developer. They don’t break the wheel with any of their games, but they’ve all got solid mechanics and good payout potential.

Playson has only hopped on the MegaWays hype very recently, with their first release in the format: Legend of Cleopatra Megaways.

This MegaWays update of one of their most popular pokies debuted in November 2020. You may have seen the Ancient Egyptian theme a few times before, but the potential prizes on this one are certainly above average.

Stakelogic

Stakelogic is a relatively new developer on the scene, but they’ve already made a bit of a name for themselves with their own quality 3D graphics engine.

In just the past year they’ve release three new MegaWays pokies games:

• Black Gold Megaways
• Mystical Santa Megaways
• Super Wild Megaways

The most interesting of these is Super Wild MegaWays. As far as we know, it’s one of the only MegaWays pokies titles out there that’s based on the classic three-reel fruit machines of days gone by.

Think lemons, blazing 7s, bells – all that good stuff.

A nice option for fans of the old-school style who are thinking about dipping into MegaWays games then – sweet!

Red Tiger

Red Tiger bought the licence to Big Time Gaming’s MegaWays format in 2018. Just over a year later they were bought out by top-tier European pokies developer NetEnt.

However, in that time they still managed to release no less than four MegaWays updates to their existing titles:

• Mystery Reels Megaways
• Golden Leprechaun Megaways
• Dragons Fire Megaways
• Dragons Luck Megaways
• Paddy Power Gold Megaways

Despite the name, Paddy Power Gold is not actually related to the Paddy Power brand now owned by Flutter Entertainment. Still, all of these games are a lot of fun and offer a lot ways to win.

SG Digital

Scientific Gaming are one of the biggest pokies developers in the business. They now own a few of the most legendary casino floor pokies developers in history, including WMS, Barcrest and Bally Technologies.

Their online MegaWays pokies games are among the most popular in the newly legal US markets at the moment, and Kiwi players can enjoy them on many sites too.

They include:
• 88 Fortunes MegaWays
• Beetlejuice MegaWays
• Raging Rhino Megaways
• Spartacus MegaWays

And quite a few more!

NetEnt

NetEnt is the biggest provider currently with a MegaWays licence. Their nearest rivals in popularity, Microgaming, don’t have a MegaWays licence at the current time.

This huge European pokies developer is behind some of the most iconic games of the last decade in the scene, including:

• Starburst
• Gonzo’s Quest
• Hall of Gods
• Mega Fortune
• Dead or Alive

And many, many more! Just recently they released a MegaWays version of their classic jackpot slot Divine Fortune, to add to the Gonzo’s Quest MegaWays that dropped last year. We’re sure there’s much more to come from NetEnt and the Megaways format.

ReelPlay

ReelPlay were one of the first developers to licence the MegaWays system from Big Time Gaming.

They released their first MegaWays game, Hypernova Megaways, in early 2019. Since then, they’ve added:

• Atlantis Megaways
• Big Bucks Bandits Megaways
• Odin Infinity Reel Megaways

The company focuses on creating the “craft beer” of pokies, according to their founders. That means less titles per year but each should be of a higher quality.

Our favourite MegaWays game from ReelPlay is Odin Infinity, which combines their own Infinity reel format with MegaWays for a truly unique experience.

Iron Dog Studio

A fairly small-scale pokies developer, Iron Dog took a big risk paying out for a MegaWays licence. However, their first Megaways game – Pirate Kingdom – was a surprise hit among pokies fans last year.

Their second game, Branded VIP Megaways, is a cool idea, but not the most inspiring as an actual game.

Branded VIP Megaways is designed to let casinos plaster their own branding over the top of the standard design.

This could easily prove popular among smaller operators who want some exclusivity without paying for a whole game. However, we found the general design to be a bit – boring.

Standard slap bass soundtracks and bog-standard visuals aren’t too interesting. But, you can win up to 40,000x your stake on one spin. So there is that!

Games INC

Games Inc are a strange one – this company sign yearly contracts with other studios to make pokies games for them. For example, in 2018 they were with NetEnt and in 2021 there with Relax Gaming.

Their two MegaWays slots since joining with Relax in 2019, are:

• Joker Megaways
• Megaways Respin

Joker Megaways is a cool because its based on a three-reel classic slot, which is a rarity in the Megaways sector. It also has a fun bonus round with good win potential. We like that!

Megaways Respin however is widely regarded as one of the worst MegaWays slots to come out of any production studio. The graphics, symbols and music are boring to say the least – and the bonus round is extremely high variance, meaning often you’ll get barely anything from it.

One to avoid!

WMS

WMS are one of the oldest developers on this list. The All-American company first started making pinball and pokies machines back in the 1950s.

Today they have two MegaWays games on the market:

• Raging Rhino Megaways
• Montezuma Megaways

Raging Rhino is a game based upon an old casino-floor pokies machine, so some older players who remember it will have a blast playing this updated version.

Both WMS’ Megaways titles come with 3D graphics, cascading reels and gorgeous sound design. Raging Rhino has an RTP of 97% as well, which is a top score for a high variance Megaways slot.

Relax Gaming

Relax Gaming has three MegaWays pokies games on their books, as well as their two in collaboration with Games INC we looked at above. Their three in-house titles are:

• Hypernova Megaways
• Temple Tumble Megaways
• Machina Megaways

Temple Tumble is the most original of these titles – and it was the first to introduce tumbling or cascading reels to the MegaWays format. That’s been adopted now by almost all new MegaWays games, so some success there for sure!

Relax are known for releasing a lot of pokies each year too, so keep out for new MegaWays titles from them coming soon!

NextGen

NextGen have been around since 1999 but have never really been at the top of the game.

They make decent pokies, and have had some hits, but generally they’re a little late when it comes to innovation and new formats.

So it was surprising to us that they hopped on the MegaWays train in 2019, with Medusa Megaways.

It offers some tidy 3D graphics, a cool theme and the ability to reroll the bonus round should you get less than 10x on your first go – which is always welcome.

So far though, Medusa is NextGen’s only Megaways game to hit the market. Hopefully we’ll see more from them soon!